Our mural project was funded by a Mass Cultural Council STARS Residency Grant. The
grant enabled visiting artist Rebecca Cote, of Cambridge Creativity Commons, to
collaborate with Haggerty’s art teacher, Laurie Gaines, to develop the yearlong project.
The 5th grade have worked hard to create the fantastic painted
body shapes and decorative border now permanently on display on
our playground wall. They started by tracing an outline of their bodies
on paper and filling these life-size cutouts with designs, patterns and
symbols that represent them as individuals and their diverse cultures,
heritages, interests and personalities. You can see these on display
around the gym this morning.
We then took a portion of each student’s design and meshed them
together like pieces of a puzzle to form four composite bodies.
Students picked a favorite design or pattern from their original and
painted it onto one of the four bonded aluminum panels.
The whole school participated in creating the decorative border.
JK through 5th grade painted and primed all the boards. We then
pulled details from student work over the course of the year to inspire
the designs. And, of course, we were sure to include our Haggerty
school motto, Everyone is Different, Everyone Belongs!
We hope that future fifth grade classes will add more figures and
border panels in the coming years. In the meantime, we painted two
frames directly onto the wall in between the body figures. After the
unveiling, students will be allowed to draw in the frames using chalk.
We hope this will encourage them to take ownership of the project
and to take care of the mural pieces, as well as inspire them to think
about what designs they might add one day...