Rise To Change
Mixed Media Mural, 2017
O’Day Park, Villa Victoria, Boston, MA.
A resilient flower wraps itself around gears as it grows, interrupting their steady turning. These gears stand in for the cycle of youth violence. The growing flower reflects successful community interventions to that cycle; its petals reflect their victory.
Rise to Change was created alongside peer leaders from the IBA Youth Program, who engaged in a series of group activities and discussions to choose the topic for the mural. They landed on youth violence because it was something they had each been affected by. Many had lost friends or loved ones; others worried about the fear they felt when entering neighborhoods that had longstanding conflicts with their own.
Through backwards brainstorming and a Restorative Justice Circle led by one brave teen, the group identified community interventions they felt were successful. They then translated these ideas into images, critiqued and revised their images, and used them to create silk screened tiles and mosaic these into the mural. For the gears, the young leaders chose quotes and original poetry that they felt expressed the factors that keep the cycle of youth violence going. These we engraved with laser into marine plywood. The young people also hand-burned imagery into the gears to illustrate the words. Finally, they hand-painted tiles for the flower petals to represent each artist’s idea of what victory over youth violence could look like… and then we put it all together.