“Renewal and Rebirth” was made by and for the students of East Brooklyn Community High School. The rich symbolism embodies the hopes the artists have for themselves and for their peers. First, students came together and reflected on the challenges and dreams shared by their community. They wanted to offer solidarity around issues relevant to their community, such as pressures in their environment and stereotyping. However, they also wanted to celebrate their capacity to generate knowledge, power, and justice. The students used their artistic voice to channel their desires to depict a future filled with transformative power. Their mural shows the school mascot, the Eagle, born from the city background, ignited by a lightning bolt of knowledge, and carrying the words “Inspiration” and “Opportunity.” Each aspect of the mural calls for change, rebirth, and renewal of the old ways of thinking, seeing, and doing. The mural is filled with hope and action, and demonstrates that creative articulation brings us closer to fulfilling our dreams.

To create “You Smoke…We All Smoke” and "Attack of the Second Hand Smoke,” students from IS 318 explored smoking as a public health issue in partnership with Woodhull Asthma Awareness Program and Brooklyn Smoke-Free Partnership. First, the young artists engaged in workshops with their community partners to educate themselves about the dangers of first-hand, second-hand, and third-hand smoking and the relationship between smoking and asthma. Then they explored how visual art has been used throughout the 20th and 21st centuries as the battleground between anti-smoking initiatives and cigarette advertising campaigns.
 
Equipped with an understanding of the health consequences and social history of smoking, as well as their artistic communication skills, the artists developed educational and provocative posters to promote smoke-free living. The artists drew from imagery used in vintage public health ads and Work Projects Administration posters while riffing off of cigarette ads. Their posters now hang in the lobbies of housing developments throughout the city to promote smoke-free living.

To create “You Smoke…We All Smoke” and "Attack of the Second Hand Smoke,” students from IS 318 explored smoking as a public health issue in partnership with Woodhull Asthma Awareness Program and Brooklyn Smoke-Free Partnership. First, the young artists engaged in workshops with their community partners to educate themselves about the dangers of first-hand, second-hand, and third-hand smoking and the relationship between smoking and asthma. Then they explored how visual art has been used throughout the 20th and 21st centuries as the battleground between anti-smoking initiatives and cigarette advertising campaigns.
 
Equipped with an understanding of the health consequences and social history of smoking, as well as their artistic communication skills, the artists developed educational and provocative posters to promote smoke-free living. The artists drew from imagery used in vintage public health ads and Work Projects Administration posters while riffing off of cigarette ads. Their posters now hang in the lobbies of housing developments throughout the city to promote smoke-free living.

This safety sign project was the third in a series of five projects in the StreetWise: Hunts Point initiative. Funded by The Rockefeller Foundation and its Cultural Innovation Fund, and in partnership with NYC Department of Transportation, this two-year campaign uses a series of community mural-making projects to engage community members in identifying and prioritizing transportation and related-environmental concerns in their South Bronx community.
 
For "RESPECT: Embrace your community," seniors from the Pio Mendez Center in Hunts Point worked with students from the nearby MS 424. The seniors engaged in a five session project in which Groundswell artist Frank Parga and NYC Department of Transportation Safety Educator Maria Cruz facilitated a collaborative exploration of what constitutes a safer, cleaner neighborhood. The dynamic and powerful interaction led to discussions with MS 424's Principal about arranging regular visits of the students to the Pio Mendez Houses, opening up the potential for a longer-lasting dialogue between the two groups.
 

This mural aimed to improve the literacy skills and deepen understanding of poetry through reading and writing amongst students at the Rose M. Singer Center at the Austin H. McCormick Island Academy on Rikers Island. The team, which consisted of young women from the school,  read ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost, and developed imagery based on the poem. In the finished mural a series of five orbs are presented, each one held by a different set of hands. The spheres are realistically rendered, appearing metallic and reflective, mirroring the hands holding them. In each mirrorball is a distinct image that reveals itself in the distorted reflection of the orb.
 
The largest of the five, is in the center and covers a large portion of the composition. This mirrorball shows a young woman standing before an elevated train track which extends in opposite directions, bending to the curve of the globule. She looks out of the ball, directly ahead, making contact with the viewer. She is also, presumably, looking back at herself. A long shadow is cast down the center of her face, dividing her portrait in two. She is wearing a necklace with a golden key. Piercing the surface of the mirrorball, are two keyholes on opposite sides of the person, puncturing the ball where the tracks disappear into vanishing points. The students who participated in the project became increasingly impressed with how the mural blossomed and were proud upon its completion. Having contributed something beautiful and thought provoking to the facility that incarcerates them, the project was a cathartic experience for the participants, who expressed it as transformative.

Throughout the spring of 2001, Sunset Park residents, together with Groundswell, met to design a mural that reflected the range of cultures present in Sunset Park. The mural was to be painted over an old mural on the southern side of a Citibank building on 54th Street —the same wall the block’s residents had painted some 20 years previously. The result is a mural which not only asserts the richly multiethnic identity of this neighborhood but projects the universal and timely messages of connection, cultural understanding, tolerance, and unity. Over 50 community residents representing a range of ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, including African Americans, Arab Americans, Asians, Latinos, and Whites, participated in the design and painting of the mural. The 54th Street Block Association, Neighbors Helping Neighbors, the Arab American Family Support Center, UPROSE, and the Chinese American Planning Council also participated in the mural’s creation. The mural stands today as a testimony to the power of collective creativity and a vision of cultural diversity for Sunset Park and for the world.

“Washington Avenue Elephants” was created as part of a two day community mural jam, open to the public. The mural was the first in a series of murals to be painted along Washington Avenue, a vibrant commerical corridor in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. The mural jam brought together artists, young people, and community members in a joyous celebration alongside our community partners, the Washington Avenue Merchants Association, the Brooklyn Museum, Prospect Park Alliance, and the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens.

In the summer of 2000, sixteen fifth and sixth graders in a Brooklyn summer camp program worked with Groundswell and community partner, Warren Street Center, to create a mural on two adjacent walls of the library of a family health and day care center. The youth were faced with designing a collaborative mural that would enhance the library environment. The group explored all the amazing worlds that books open up as well as the wonderful spaces in which each liked to read. They came up with the title theme and decided to camouflage the theme throughout various environments where they read and where reading takes them. The title words are written in languages reflective of the Warren Street Center: Spanish, English, Chinese and Sign Language.

Groundswell’s first annual Summer Mural Jam was a great success. The main objectives were threefold: (1) to give past Groundswell participants the opportunity to return, connect with other youth and learn more mural making skills; (2) to give local artists the opportunity to give back to their community; and (3) to provide free useful portable murals to community groups in the Brooklyn area. Ten alumni youth muralists and their families participated. Each lead artist worked directly with one of four community based organizations to determine the theme and design of the mural.

In a collaboration between Groundswell Community Mural Project and the Center for Anti Violence Education (CAE), a diverse group of nine young women worked together to create a mural around the theme of anti-violence, with a special focus on anti-violence against women. The project created an opportunity to learn on a number of fronts. Among these included: how to express an idea visually, how to accept, tolerate and collaborate with people whose ideas differ from your own, pride in oneself and others, patience, the complexity of public art and interpretation, the importance of listening and a deeper connection with the group. In addition, project “gliches” became opportunities to learn.