My first day working with a group of kids from the Blazers’ Boys and Girls Club, I asked the group to draw something important to you. That could be a family member, a friend, a role model, a sports team, a video game, a pair of nice shoes, an ideal, whatever. Something that you’d like to recognize as important.
Over the next month and change, I’ll be working with some of the young people from Boys and Girls Club to learn about, design, and paint a mural. The goal of this exercise was to get the young people thinking about what they feel strong enough about to put out in public.
I’ve been reading a lot about deeply political murals like those of Mexican Muralists Diego Rivera or David Siqueros, with titles like The March of Humanity on Earth and Toward the Cosmos. However, one of the ways murals are most powerful is in empowering people to say what is important to them. A public (and celebrated) expression of individual and community voice. The kids I’m working with are the ones who should, and will, be coming up with a theme and design for the mural. Some of the things that were important to them in their drawings included:
- God and Jesus
- Helping the Homeless
- Kids playing basketball
“What is it that’s important to you about money?” I asked the 7 or 8 year old who had drawn himself standing on a stack of money. “I can use it to by things, like hats or a big house.” “Well, draw that for me then.”
So their theme ideas may not be about the fall of capitalism, but this mural will be completely theirs, and it seems that there’s some power in that alone (“Maybe one of these kids will pick up a brush later in life and remember ‘Hey I painted a mural once!’ and then go out and paint another”, a muralist suggested to me). Besides, there are some really interesting overarching themes (companionship, shelter [both physical and emotional], community) in their suggestions. The hard part of my job will be to draw out and focus some of their ideas, while still keeping the mural a pure expression of their voice. There are enough other social/political/economic forces out there trying to take away or alter that voice. The point of this community mural project is to celebrate it.
And who doesn’t like puppies, anyways?