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Students Speak Out on Violence, Create Amari Brown-Inspired 'Peace Mural'

By Alex Nitkin | August 3, 2015 6:10am
 Ten students spent a month creating an anti-violence mural on the wall at their school, Spencer Technology Academy.
Ten students spent a month creating an anti-violence mural on the wall at their school, Spencer Technology Academy.
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DNAinfo/Alex Nitkin

AUSTIN — Anti-violence messages are usually directed at young people, but that doesn't mean they have to come from adults.

Ten students at Spencer Technology Academy in Austin added their own voices to the growing chorus of nonviolence advocates when they finished a month-long "peace mural" on the wall of their school's entrance last week.

The mural shows a dove inside a red sun, with rays shining down on photos of all the students who worked on the project. On Wednesday, the students completed the project by spray painting: "Interrupt the Violence, Not our Future."

"We just hope that every time people walk past this, it makes them think about what they're doing before they start anything," said 13-year-old Ashanti Ellis. All the students who worked on the mural were between ages 5 and 13.

 Art teacher Shannon Lane (l.) helps Quandell Washington, 13, add finishing touches to the mural.
Art teacher Shannon Lane (l.) helps Quandell Washington, 13, add finishing touches to the mural.
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DNAinfo/Alex Nitkin

"Violence really affects all our lives around here — it makes it so much harder to just hang out with friends or play basketball. So we wanted to send a message to try to get people to stop."

At the beginning of the summer, Spencer art teacher Shannon Miller applied for a grant from Chicago Public Schools to engage students with a social justice project. The project took off right around the time of 7-year-old Amari Brown's July 4 murder, and the students wanted to create something that addressed shootings, Miller said.

"They immediately started talking about violence, since it's something they can really see and relate to all the time, and they wanted to show how they feel about it," Miller said. "We started talking about [the documentary] 'The Interrupters,' and we watched it, and they felt they wanted to go in that direction."

As one student said in the video created by Miller to feature the mural project, "Violence has affected me ... because we feel there's a need for us to come outside and be able to, like, protect ourselves."

She added, "Violence makes me feel sad because every day it's like some different person being killed, mostly over nothing, or somebody shot the wrong person."

Miller said the graphic and color style of the mural were inspired by Shepard Fairey, the artist behind the iconic Barack Obama "Hope" poster.

It was a style that appealed to Quandell Washington, one of the students involved in the project.

"I like how [Fairey] takes regular stuff, like from the street, and turns it into art," Quandell said. He said he usually spends his summers playing sports, but working on the mural helped him discover a new hobby. "I'm starting to like art more, just all the stuff you can create with it," he said.

Art's accessibility, Spencer Assistant Principal Alaric Blair said, is what makes it such an effective vehicle for students.

"These guys all had a personal investment in this project, and giving them this way to express themselves really gets them to buy into the message," Blair said. "They see stuff about violence on the news and around them, and this is their answer to that — their chance to say how they feel about it. And it's much more powerful than any news report or speech or tweet could be."

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