Franklin Middle School - Melodee Strong - 4 hours
There were no classes today because the date was reserved for parent-teacher conferences. We took the opportunity to bring in scaffolding into Franklin Middle school from storage to begin preparing for mural projects coming up in March and the summer. I'm excited to be helping out with a mural project coming up this spring break! Melodee Strong will be leading volunteer middle school students in a painting project covering a large slab of black and grey wall facing the main entrance of the school.
Franklin Middle school is a brand new school and their building is a reworked high school building meaning there is a lot of blank and grey space that Melodee plans on productively transforming! I've worked on a couple of mural projects this past summer and really appreciate her communal approach. For example, she invited the community to paint the FLOW mural and we as artists were there to simply facilitate and encourage the community to build a mural with artistic skills we all house.
I feel like the Franklin Middle school students will feel empowered knowing they participated in the creation of something permanent and positive within their school. The youth, specifically in Northern Minneapolis, sometimes need to be reminded of their great talents in a world that is not so nurturing.