Compton Verney is an amazing country house in Warwickshire with a world-class collection of artworks.  Like many cultural institutions during the pandemic their visitor numbers took a real hit, and their planned exhibition, On Colour was cancelled.   Thankfully, due to the Cultural Recovery Fund, they were able to consider ways in which might engage families with children of primary school age with their collections online. Additionally, with the launch of site specific works from Morag Myerscough and David Batchelor over 2022, the theme of colour provided a fantastic opportunity to build an engaging piece of content that would showcase our award-winning expertise in delivering online art tools. 

Go Colour is a two part application.  The first part, Make a Palette, encourages kids to explore artworks from the Compton Verney collection and perform a colour analysis on them, showing all the different colours that feature within a particular artwork.  They can then drag and drop their favourite colours from the selection into the palette area, creating a bespoke set of colours based on a particular artwork, before moving onto creating their own original masterpiece with them.

In the Make a Picture section, kids can browse more artworks from the collection - this time rendered as line art, ready to colour in.  We’ve also included an image of the exterior of the gallery so that children can decorate its pillars in the same way as Morag Myerscough did for her 2022 installation. And there is a range of playful tactile art tools within which to paint - either using the colours available in the standard colour wheel or using your bespoke palette. 

Go Colour is a brilliant example of how cultural institutions can extend their reach, engaging with young audiences beyond the gallery walls. It also provides us a with yet another example of how we can encourage children's online creativity with playful and original digital art tools.

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