Art Builds Community, Community Creates Change

As one of six projects in our Summer Leadership Institute, young women participating in Voices Herd Visionaries painted a monumental mural exploring female empowerment, immigrant rights, and gender equality: a call to end discrimination in all forms. The mural was designed to show how, from night to day, through motion and connection, we can build community through the arts. The composition moves from right to left and includes large-scale figures of each Voices Herd participant. Each figure is linked to the next by symbols that honor various human rights movements researched by the young women. The figures begin in a crouched position, their clothes filled with images of the night sky. The buildings on the back of the first figure depict a dense community that suffers from pollution. Bicycle riders move away from the polluted environment to a greener world. Figures are linked by circles and a scale to symbolize legal justice. A chain also weaves its way through the mural, representing the immigration process.