The mission, which we chose to accept: instigate, mobilize, and help facilitate a new school partnership nearly 3,000 miles away to complete our first School Murals project in Los Angeles.
Our phenomenal collaborators: Urban Youth Workers Institute, which was hosting its national conference with nearly 2,000 youth workers at Azusa Pacific University; Neighborhood Homework House, a local after school youth center; artists Ritchie Kong (@chicreate) and Ronnie Robles (@whereuatro) of Urban Arts Outreach; Azusa Unified School District and nearby Sierra High School; and eighteen students from NHH and from Ms. Elaine Stricklan’s murals class at Sierra HS.
The theme: “ImPossible 2017.”
Special thanks to:
- Larry Acosta and Robert Aboites of UYWI for saying yes and fully sponsoring the project;
- Jennifer Hicks, the enterprising executive director at Neighborhood Homework House who went all-in as point person and found the perfect school for the partnership;
- Elaine Stricklin, the extraordinary art teacher at Sierra High School who has been teaching mural making at the school for twenty years; and
- Art director Ritchie Kong, who collaborated with Thrive Collective in New York in December on the Holidays Thrive mural, and fully embraced the opportunity to lead this collaborative school mural back home in LA.
The mural will be permanently installed at the school this week.
SoCal, we love you!
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