Rural and Migrant Ministry’s Youth Arts Group (YAG) is a culturally diverse group in which high school-age individuals come together with a determination to create change in our lives and communities. Through engagement in creative action, we are dedicated to the task of influencing other youth to join in our mission to create political, economic and social changes. Part of our creative action is artistically presenting our political views to voice our ideas and opinions. Four years ago, our group created a mural (8’x20’) depicting the theme of “Breaking the Barrier,” dealing with the topic of racism. Many of our group members have graduated and there is no longer a strong personal connection with the old mural. We have proposed creating a new mural with a theme that relates to the barriers in our daily lives (peer pressure, violence, negative media, racism) We will be working on our mural the week of April 21st-25th and it will be presented at our annual “Just Us” Youth Conference on May 3rd in New Paltz, New York. After, the mural will be traveling to various presentations and conferences with our group. The mural will be painted in acrylic on four panels of plywood. It will be free standing with a wooden frame and able to be dissembled and transported.

YAG is a group of young adults who seek to create change in their lives and communities. The group used their artistic abilities to express the concerns they had in their community and created their Mural for Social Change. The mural deals with issues such as violence, teen pregnancy, negative influences from the media and the struggles immigrant families deal with in their daily lives. All of these issues are difficult to address, but they effect our teens in so many ways. This mural was a form of expression for YAG and other teens in their community. By addressing these issues, teens as well as adults can acknowledge the problems in their community and encourage a change and for others to take social action.

The members of YAG had many ideas and images they wanted to include and express in this mural. There were several meetings where ideas were discussed and different layouts were drawn out. Several of the members presented sketches that they wanted to include and the group took several trips to sit down and draw out the mural. After the theme and design of the mural, we assembled the sketches in a coherent format on paper. Once our first draft was done, we scanned it onto a computer and then projected the image onto a large piece of canvas. We outlined our figures in crayon. We then started painting. Painting took place in various locations as the canvas was easily transported. After many, many hours of intricate painting we finally finished- the night before YAG's 5th Annual Just Us Conference, where the mural was to be presented to many groups of teens from the surrounding area. We finished the top with grommets and hung it with rope. The theme and message was extremely strong and was effectively expressed through the images selected by the group. One of the members explained the imagery and meaning of the mural to a group of about 50 teens and adults.

Express yourself too!