CTV News | Leah Larocque
A group of high school students in Barrhaven are taking their artwork to the road.
Students from three schools in the Ottawa neighbourhood have put their own designs on 18 traffic control boxes to beautify the drab pieces of road infrastructure.
"It’s sort of out of the ordinary. You’re designing something around the city and you feel like it's going to be a mural or something, and it's a traffic control box," said Grade 11 student Vinny McMillan, who attends St. Mother Theresa High School.
The initiative was spearheaded by the Barrhaven Business Improvement Area (BIA) as a way to add colour and fun to the roads. The project received funding from the City of Ottawa.
Student artists from Grades 10 to 12 created a design of what Barrhaven and the community meant to them.
McMillan has a box at the corner of Jockvale Road and Strandherd Drive. It features an outdoor scene showcasing one of Barrhaven’s dog parks where McMillan says she spends a lot of her lunch hours with her friends.
Sarah Lyne Bactol, a Grade 11 student at St. Mother Theresa High School, said she found inspiration in designing a control box that features all the schools clubs and extra-curriculars, including drama and the school mascot.
"It's a really nice way to showcase students’ art on traffic control boxes because they're going to be here for a while and it represents their school," she said.