SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Bringing color and encouragement to kids and communities, that’s the goal of a partnership between the Wide Open Walls mural festival and Sacramento City Unified School District.
Throughout this school year, artists have painted more than 20 murals on each of six SCUSD school campuses, with a seventh school set for beautification in May.
The district is paying more than $210,000 for the project this school year, funded with federal dollars allocated to schools through the American Rescue Plan. The SCUSD Board of Education will decide whether to include funds in next school year’s budget to continue the project.
“Which one’s your favorite so far?” Abraham Lincoln Elementary School Principal Laura Butler asked her students, as they returned from the weekend to see some two-dozen murals covering campus.
“There’s a little turtle!” one girl exclaimed.
“Those are all California-native,” Butler told her. “That’s the California state bird, the state flower, the fish.”
Erica Thomas is one of the mural artists.
“Seeing the kids’ expressions, having them come up—because we get to come in early and work during the school week, so the kids surround us, ask questions about the mural process,” she said. “Their spirits are just lifted as they come up, and you can just see it in their eyes and their questions and their engagement. It’s just wonderful.”
12-year-old Kian Williams is a sixth grader here and went around talking to as many artists as he could when they were on campus.
“The one over there with the robot, I like that one!” he exclaimed, acting as the tour guide for ABC10.
Turning to a mural with a fighter jet and a woman in a pilot uniform, he said, “This one reminds me of my grandma because she was in Air Force.”
“One of the things I love is that it’s all different and so to expose them to different kinds of art,” Butler said. “After the pandemic, the kids – they had a rough go, so to be able to give something like this to them is amazing.”
So, who decides what goes on the wall?
As Wide Open Walls founder and CEO David Sobon explain, “Surveys are sent out to the kids, the teachers, and the parents to find out what is it that they want painted to their school.”
This is the first school year of this partnership between SCUSD and Wide Open Walls, something Sobon says he hopes can expand to other districts as well.
“We have had other districts from around the county and around the state and around the country come to us to replicate the exact same program,” he said. “There are enough artists to keep busy, to keep work.”
The artists are paid for their murals and schools are chosen with a focus on equity, said the district’s community engagement manager Niki Kangas.
“The way that we select which schools are getting prioritized to be painted first is through an equity index map that we’ve created for our capital projects,” Kangas said. “We use that same map to identify neighborhoods that are more marginalized.”
Each school that is selected gets a community fair, where the public is invited to watch the artists paint.
“When we come to these neighborhoods, we’re providing free meals, free bicycle repairs, brake light repairs, and all kinds of different community resources, live entertainment,” Kangas said.
One of the murals at Abraham Lincoln Elementary School is of the school’s plant operations manager, whom the students know simply as “Mr. Juan.”
“Beautiful recognition,” he said, standing alongside the mural depicting his face.
He said all of these murals send a message.
“I think it’s important and very vital because the kids have to see that, in general, that the community cares,” he said. “Just the full display of everything around the campus - the art, the colors – it’s this level of vibrance that’s needed all the time…just an open display of just good energy, positive vibes and—push forward.”
Principal Butler agrees.
“They deserve to be in a place that’s beautiful and welcoming,” she said.
