Lower Liberty Heights Mural Project
By Youth Leaders in Action
Bilingual Veterans Outreach Center
Springfield, MA - Summer 2007

I facilitated this project over the course of 3 weeks with Youth Leaders in Action, Springfield, MA. The program was looking for a wall in the community and found a wall at the Bilingual Outreach Veterans Center. The staff at the center invited the project to be on their wall and requested that the mural theme include the youths experience with the current war in Iraq, since so many people are affected in their community by the war. We met as a group and brainstormed the feelings, images and thoughts that were associated to this war. The mural honors veterans but also acknowledges loss, fear, peace and hope that were incorporated into symbolic imagery in things like a heart being split into two by a missile, a ying yang inspired a happy and sad face depicting the two sides of war. A tear turning into a shed leads into imagery about the cycle of life with a pregnant woman. The youth generated a poem that ties the mural together asking; “Hope is the light for when brave soldiers stand tall and blood tears fall. How would you feel if those you loved were absent?”

See the Bilingual Veterans Outreach Center's website on the murals here.