PIPER’S CORNER SCHOOL
Buckinghamshire, High Wycombe, UK
The Good of The Hive Goes Global
People always ask me what mural is my favorite and this one might be it. Mostly because of an amazing young woman named Maddie. With any idea like The Good of the Hive, it is ALWAYS amazing when people get excited about what you are doing. It literally fuels me to keep going. But when young people get excited and really see the vision, it is a particular kind of exciting.
Work Ethic of Bees
Maddie, a student at Pipers Corner School in Buckinghamshire, High Wycombe, UK was 15 years old when she emailed me about a project she was doing for school. She and her classmates had to do a report on ‘work.’ The way she explained it to me, she was interested in finding a person doing work out in the world that was uplifting and positive where most of her classmates were reporting on terrible factory conditions or the industrial revolution. Her dad is into bees, so randomly as she was researching the work ethic of bees she found me.
We hopped on a call and she interviewed me for about an hour. At the end, she said, “I am going to bring you to my school.” I told her I was in if she was in. She then proceeded to speak with the headmistress, the bursar and even took the initiative to do an assembly about her intentions.
The Community
To top it off and seal the deal, I happened to be in London in November of 2019 and I paid the school a visit. Done deal. We were supposed to be doing the mural in the spring of 2020, but because of Covid, we postponed it. But it was the amazing Headmistress Helen Van Ness that figured out how to get me there for the fall of 2020. It was not easy, but as she put it, “Matt, your work is essential.” She also believed strongly that having me there working while the girls were in school made the pandemic somehow more palatable. Plus, if I didn’t go then, Maddie was going to graduate the following spring. So off I went. I had to get fingerprinted by the FBI to be able to work at the school during Covid. It was really quite harrowing and exciting at the same time. When I got there, I was quarantined on campus for two weeks only going out at night when everyone was gone. The grounds are spectacular and I was in a near dream state those first couple of weeks walking and jogging around in the evening.
A Transformative Experience
People complain about the weather, but for someone that spends way too much time baking in the hot sun, the overcast skies were a welcome change.
Despite restrictions (I only saw my friends in London once when they came out to High Wycombe to see me), it was a transformative, beautiful experience.
Pipers Corner School has an in-house sustainability coordinator and these girls are being raised understanding the environment. I was truly proud to have one of my murals on their campus. Maddie and I are now lifelong friends and I am most certainly going to campaign for her when she runs for Prime Minister someday.
One 15-year-old girl (with the help of a few of us adults) took my project international, a dream I have had since I painted the first bee.
