Client: Building Child and Family Initiatives

Overview

Community-based mural involving middle-school students in the City of Lansing. Approximately 60′ W X 30′ H. Spray paint and latex paint. Summer of 2021. Muralmatics partnered with Building Child and Family Initiatives (BCFI), to introduce new programming to BCFI students that coupled traditional mural making with contemporary street art while centering students’ experience in the process and the product.

Goals

BCFI serves mostly BIPOC students and families. A central component of this project was centering and representing BIPOC students ideas, voices, and likeness.

Process

Muralmatics facilitated team-building challenges, brainstorming and sketching sessions, warm-up activities, spray painting tutorials and more in the process of painting this mural. The final design includes patterns and ideas [cooking, dancing] taken from students sketches, along with students themselves. After observing the audience of the mural site [state workers, developers, politicians] and the location [next to the Capitol building], students workshopped what words to include in the mural and came up with “Believe you have a voice.” BCFI provided funding, administrative and student support to the project. The City of Lansing provided additional funding to the project.