Kids Serve Youth Murals
From February-June 2002, seventh graders in David Kubrin's science class at San Francisco’s James Denman Middle School learned firsthand lessons about renewable energy. Working with supervising artist Josef Norris and arts education program Kid Serve, they turned thousands of bits of glass, mirror, ceramic tile, and marbles into a mosaic mural called Suncatchers. At more than 2,200 square feet, the mural spans two surfaces; the east wall measures 17 feet high by 120 feet wide, the west wall 7 by 35 feet.
Suncatchers Mural
San Francisco
Students ultimately created a design approved by both their own principal and that of the adjacent elementary school. They worked on the mural site in shifts of five at a time for six weeks.
For the project, students took field trips, wrote grant proposals, and assessed the mural’s impact on its Excelsior district neighborhood. Guest speakers helped spark their planning. A representative of the Voter Solar Initiative spoke about solar energy and its increasing popularity in California following the rolling blackouts and the PGE and Enron scandals. A local landscape architect discussed the history of the Excelsior district and ways to transform it by growing trees. A youth environmental action group pointed out local examples of environmental racism—that the mostly low-income residents of Hunter’s Point, for instance, have one of the nation’s highest cancer rates and that two-thirds of its kids suffer from asthma.
A project of the Every Child Can Learn Foundation, Kid Serve is an arts education program for San Francisco students in grades 2-12. In semester-long workshops, students create permanent, outdoor murals on themes relevant to their neighborhoods. Working with the San Francisco Unified School District and Linking San Francisco, Kid Serve has completed over 20 murals with area youth. For more information, go to www.kidserve.com.
