This school year, R CITY Art Shop decided to take on creating a mural in our neighborhood. It was the perfect activity to do safely during the pandemic allowing us to be creative outdoors. We knew what we wanted to do and we had our idea ready but we didn’t know where we could bring our idea to life. When Lori, one of our students, found out that we needed a place to do a mural, she asked her landlord if we could paint on a wall in the backyard of her apartment building and luckily, the landlord agreed to let us do it.

Our time making a mural was a fantastic learning experience for our students teaching them to take a concept drawing and scale it to fit an entire wall. But not only that, it ended up being a time for us to bond with each other and our neighbors. When we began the mural a young girl from the apartment building saw that we were painting and within the first week she asked us if she could paint with the art shop students. Art Shop was started by the desire to give students a space to express themselves creatively and the fact that a student that wasn’t one of our own wanted to join us bought us even more joy while doing the mural. There were times while painting that neighbors would be out on their balcony looking on as we made our mural or folks passing by smiled as they saw us creating or having fun being outside.

It was amazing to be able to tell a new story in 2020 of our youth adding beauty to our community. We were able to be a positive presence on a block that is usually filled with a lot of commotion to the point where kids can’t really be kids on that block. When our youth are surrounded by so many stories of anger, confusion, and violence, we love that we can show that there are other narratives being told this year of beauty, hope, love and peace.