Think Round’s Children’s Mural Program,
The CMP
For the full story of The Children’s Mural Program, please…
The Children’s Mural Program & Hunters Point Shipyard
Hunters Point Shipyard (HPS) is a National Priorities Lists (Superfund) site. The environmental problems there, while serious, are fairly typical of any site with a 75-year history of heavy industrial use. Restoration of the facility is required by law and will be paid for by the Navy. HPS is now in the middle stages of a massive environmental cleanup prior to its transfer to the City of San Francisco and its eventual reuse. The enormously expensive and complex clean up is a matter of grave concern to the surrounding community, raising issues of public health, employment and economic development.
Providing education about environmental issues in itself meets an important need. However, Bayview Hunters Point has a particular and pressing need. As the shipyard clean up is estimated to require as many as twenty years, and will fundamentally determine the pace and character of new development on the property, there is a significant need for educating community youth about this project. Today’s youth have been living with this clean up throughout their childhood, adolescence and are now in early adulthood. Their future livelihoods, along with those of thousands of children now growing up in neighborhoods adjacent to the shipyard, may depend on its productive reuse. These children, youth and young adults need an accessible way to begin to understand this very complicated issue.
In 1992, an environmental education program, the Children’s Mural Program (CMP), was devised to initiate this learning process through the visual arts. The CMP has been presented for the past fifteen years in five community elementary schools for the Bayview Opera House. Delivered by professional fine artists who live in the community or work in private studios at Hunters Point Shipyard, the CMP curricula combine environmental science lessons with basic art instruction.
This book provides a compilation of the feelings, thoughts, experiences and artworks of many of the approximately 4,000 third, fourth and fifth graders who participated in the Children’s Mural Program. Additionally, it provides a look at how the CMP expanded to: 1) include KEEP! (Kid’s Environmental Education Program), a fieldtrip program that provides hands-on activities related to the environment; 2) take ten of its students to Dakar, Senegal and Paris, France for exhibition of their artworks through the Bayview Opera House Global Arts Program; 3) create Heidi Hardin’s CMP-inspired Human Family Tree Project; and 4) the founding of Think Round, Inc.
Think Round, Inc. (TRI) was created to expand the outreach of CMP and KEEP! to middle and high school students in Bayview Hunters Point, Potrero Hill and Visitation Valley. In hopes of mitigating the inevitable gentrification of these neighborhoods as redevelopment projects in Southeast San Francisco proceed, and to promote creative ownership of the Shipyard through its public art outcomes, TRI’s new classes will encourage again our now-older students to attend school and training programs at HPS, as well as, to look forward to owning a home and business there, to shop, play and otherwise seek happy, healthy lives in their own backyards at Hunters Point Shipyard. In this way, Think Round, Inc. programs are designed to be models anywhere for teaching the complex issues when serious environmental concerns meet neighborhoods.
Watch below the very first five-minute video documentary created with CMP students and artists that helped launch our nationally acclaimed, long standing, highly successful, sophisticated, In-Schools environmental science program that uses art as the teaching tool.
Scroll through this gallery of photos that provides a glimpse into the many years of annual Final Celebrations and a few portable public murals!
Think Round’s CMP students are our greatest ambassadors to carry our simple message to their parents: when the air, water, and soil are happy and healthy, so too will be the plants, animals, and people. In 2020, when asked how do we restore balance in nature, New York Times science and environment reporter Jim Robbins said, “fundamental ecological literacy should be taught in every school because these ecosystems sustain us.” Think Round has been doing this for decades and we hope to do it for decades more with children from around the world.
Think Round, Inc. loves sharing the important news about the clean up and reuse of Hunters Point Shipyard. As the redevelopment process proceeds in earnest in the coming months and years, 750 acres of waterfront property will become available to San Francisco residents for enjoying home and business ownership, shopping, and recreation. Our curriculum makes the complex issues of the environmental cleanup and reuse accessible to students of all ages while making learning about the precious nature of air, water, and soil and the past, present, and future of the Shipyard lots of fun. Each year after twelve weeks of painting about the environment, our students create a public artwork for display in their neighborhood or potentially at the Shipyard. Join us!
Listen below to Heidi’s explanation of her career as a community-based fine artist, arts administrator, and art teacher that led to the many broad-scoped programs and projects she created over the last twenty years that are now being implemented under the auspices of Think Round, Inc.
CHILDREN'S MURAL PROGRAM OUTCOMES
MURALS
Portable murals painted on plywood and permanent murals painted on ceramic tiles have been favorite public displays of the Children’s Mural Program. Participant’s public artworks are part of the ongoing annual contribution to the beautification of their community. Currently, there are murals mounted in the Bayview Hunters Point community at The Bayview Opera House (inside), The Bayview Plaza Shopping Mall, The SF Main Post Office, The SE Community Facility that houses an SF Community College Campus, and Southeast Water Treatment Facility, Quesada Gardens public stairway, and Hunters Point Shipyard.
Stream of Consciousness
A new public artwork produced by Think Round Inc., commissioned in 2010 by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, created by Heidi Hardin working with Colette Crutcher, Margo Bors, and Nikki Lau—all teaching after-school and fifth-grade students at Willie L. Brown Jr. Academy with help from students and teachers at Thurgood Marshall Academic High School and Amador Valley High School all supported by a cadre of teen artists/interns from City College of San Francisco.
It is a rich banner of animated visual images telling the story of water—from the depths of the sea to the constellations of the sky—through original visual images that were handmade in clay by children and youth and our artists. The children’s tiles are interspersed by a ribbon of specially selected quotes from historic and contemporary science and literature that were hand-stamped into clay by interns. When the panels are laid in one line, they will stretch 120 feet across the back of two public park benches at Hunters Point Shipyard becoming an integral element of outdoor seating for the under-construction Hillpoint Park. STREAM will be a prominent design feature of the new public park that will afford both visitors and residents stunning views of the Bay Region. Water’s story was created over a period of six months in a workshop classroom at Willie L. Brown Academy in San Francisco. The artwork is composed of 24- handmade panels. Each panel is 1’ high by 5’ long and approximately 1” thick.
FINAL CELEBRATIONS
This annual event brings children, their families, and teachers together from all five community elementary schools. The ethnic diversity of our students mirrors the ethnic diversity of the neighborhood. Our thinking is that it is never too early to begin reaching out to our fellows to celebrate the creative and scientific endeavors of all of the hundreds of students whom we serve annually.
At this fun party, children, parents, principals, teachers, and civic leaders shared their thoughts and the kid's essays and artwork about the environment as well as a super banquet.
At our annual CMP/KEEP! Final Celebration civic leaders like Mayor Willie Brown, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, and Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, as well as our funders and collaborators like Roy Willis and Willie B. Kennedy, along with parents and teachers, honor the children’s artwork, essays, storyboards, photographs and murals that are outcomes of our award-winning program focused on the environment.
Nancy Pelosi speaking at our annual CMP/KEEP! Final Celebration.
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi has been an active supporter of the CMP and KEEP! programs for a dozen years. Pelosi provides inspiration at our Final Celebration by closing her speech to the children like this, "I will personally hand your anthology of essays to the President of the United States so he will know of your love for the arts and the environment. Thank you for sharing your artwork and ideas with us!"
ESSAY ANTHOLOGIES
Each year at our Final Celebration, CMP participants read their essays from the stage at the historic Bayview Opera House/Ruth Williams Memorial Theater…the highlight of our evening.
Scroll below to see samples of our CMP Student Essays, Awards & Commendations…
Scroll below to see more images of our final celebrations, as well as our portable and permanent public artwork on display throughout the Bayview Hunters Point community and inside the historic Bayview Opera House. STREAM now is installed at Hunters Point Shipyard in the new Hilltop Park as one of nine public artworks commissioned for the site.
