Youth Voices Mural

The Youth Voices mural was created as part of Common Walls Festival in Rochdale and led by Hayley Garner (AYLO) as a way of bringing young people directly into the creative process behind a large-scale public artwork.

At the centre of the project was a simple question: What does Rochdale mean to young people growing up here today?

Rather than approaching the mural as something created purely for the community, Youth Voices was designed to be shaped with the community, particularly the younger generation who will grow up surrounded by these public spaces and artworks long after the festival itself had ended.

AYLO worked with local schools and young people through assemblies, workshops, classroom activities, and creative discussions that encouraged participants to share their thoughts, experiences, memories, and feelings about Rochdale. The sessions explored themes around identity, belonging, local pride, history, culture, aspirations, and how young people see both their town and themselves within it.

Instead of asking children to literally design a mural from scratch, the process focused on gathering authentic ideas and recurring themes through drawing, storytelling, poetry, mark making, and conversation. This allowed the young people to contribute freely and honestly without feeling restricted by technical artistic ability.

Throughout the workshops, certain themes repeatedly emerged — community, resilience, creativity, local identity, hope for the future, and a desire to see Rochdale represented in a more positive and inspiring light. AYLO then used those ideas as the foundation for developing the final mural concept, translating the collective voice of the workshops into a cohesive large-scale artwork while still maintaining the visual quality and storytelling expected from a professional mural piece.

One of the most important aspects of the project was creating a sense of ownership and connection. Many of the young people involved had never seen behind the scenes of how a mural is created, and for some it was their first experience engaging directly with professional artists working within the public art world. By involving them in the process from the very beginning, the project helped show that creativity, storytelling, and public art are things they can actively contribute to rather than simply observe from a distance.

The finished mural became more than just an artwork on a wall. It became a reflection of the voices, ideas, and perspectives of Rochdale’s younger generation — a permanent reminder that public art can carry the identity of a place and the people within it.

For AYLO, Youth Voices represented an important part of what Common Walls Festival was about as a whole: creating work that leaves something meaningful behind, not only visually, but socially and emotionally too. The project demonstrated how large-scale public art can become a tool for engagement, confidence building, and connection, while giving young people the opportunity to see their own thoughts and experiences represented within the spaces around them.