Summer Rising with Thrive

May 20, 2022
News & Updates
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As we anticipate another extraordinary Summer of Service this year, the NYC Department of Education sent us this video recap from Summer Rising 2021.

Last year, we provided visual arts and school murals program at eleven summer schools as part of the City’s Summer Rising and City Artist Corps initiatives, along with three community murals, two murals at juvenile detention facilities, and eight live murals for NYC’s Homecoming Week hip hop concert series (plus a dozen basketball tournaments and community events).

Two fun facts about the video:

Two Thrive Summer Rising 2021 murals at PS 105 and PS 130 made the cut, and the mural from PS 130 is the backdrop for Commissioner Gonzalo Casals’ interview.
The Resilience Mural at PS 329 was the backdrop of the pop up performance featured throughout the video, including the final scene. That mural from the fall of 2013 was the third school mural project Thrive ever produced for the one year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy. Prior to Resilience, school murals were fun, one-off community and school collaborations.

Resilience was the tipping point for 20/20 Vision for Schools to ultimately evolve into Thrive Collective. Schools began to call, so the following spring we evolved to include in-school arts programs, and produced four school murals. The Comptroller published “The State of the Arts” report, and Thrive decided to go all in to help eradicate artless education and Bring Art Back to every student and school. Here’s the backstory on the Resilience mural, produced by an NYU film student for a documentary film class.

Eleven summer school murals in six weeks.