About:

The Children’s Mural Program (CMP) is an environmental education program that uses instruction in visual art techniques as the basis of a curriculum to explore various environmental issues of concern to members of Southeast San Francisco, especially the Superfund clean-up and reuse of Hunters Point Shipyard. Our program has been developed and expanded over the past twenty years. In 2008, the Children’s Mural Program commenced its sixteenth successful year, having served more than 5,000 community children. The program was begun in 1992 in a single school, and has been presented with ongoing support of Hitachi America, LTD., The Hitachi Foundation, The San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, The Mural Resource Center, and the Bayview Opera House at four community elementary schools for ten years. In 2001, the scope of the CMP doubled with the inclusion of Kids’ Environmental Education Program, KEEP!, serving annually with CMP approximately 700 children. 

In 2010, The Children's Mural Program founder and director, Heidi Hardin and Think Round were awarded one of the nine public art commissions for HPS through the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency (SFRA) HPS Public Art Program. In 2010-11, more than 60 local CMP students participated in the creation of this commission, titled STREAM of CONSCIOUSNESS, a 1’ x 120’ handmade ceramic and mosaic tile mural. See OUR PRESENT for more details about STREAM...

Need for this program:

Many of the problems in Southeast San Francisco are directly associated with the 1974 closing of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. For many years the shipyard was the primary source of employment for neighborhood residents. The shipyard is now in the middle stages of a massive environmental clean-up program prior to it being transferred to the City of San Francisco for its eventual reuse. The enormously expensive and complex clean-up is a matter of grave concern to the communities adjacent to the shipyard, raising issues of public health, employment, and economic development. Providing education about environmental issues by itself fulfills an important need. However, the residents of Southeast San Francisco have a more pressing need. The shipyard clean-up may require twenty years to complete, and will have a significant impact on the lives of the people in the surrounding communities—especially Visitation Valley, Potrerro Hill and Bayview Hunters Point. Today's youth, who will be living through this clean-up process and whose future livelihoods may depend on the productive reuse of the shipyard, need an educational program that will make sense of this complicated issue. The Children’s Mural Program and KEEP! are the only such a programs fulfilling this objective.

Children's Mural Program Outcomes

Murals

Portable murals painted on plywood and several painted on ceramic tiles have been favorite public displays of Children’s Mural Program participant’s public artwork as part of their 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 a SF Community College Campus, and Southeast Water Treatment Facility.

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 that for the under-construction Hillpoint Park. STREAM will be a prominent designs 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 fro 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.

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!" 

Essays

The highlight of our Final Celebration each year is the reading of essays by the children that they have written about their experiences working with CMP artists, learning about art and the environment, and being good stewards of our most precious natural resources: air, water and soil. This year, several readers were shy but still adamant about all they now know about protecting the environment and using art as a fun way to share their ideas on the subject. Our 12th Annual Anthology of Essays contains a complete record of all our children’s thoughts and feelings about our program. Below is a sample of an essay written by one of our children.

Awards

Kids Environmental Education Program!

The Children’s Mural Program (CMP) provides instruction in visual art techniques as a basis of a curriculum to explore various environmental issues of concern to the community, especially the Superfund Cleanup and Reuse of Hunters Point Shipyard. KEEP! expands that knowledge base. 

KEEP! (Kid's Environmental Education Program)

New Visions/Broadened Scope: The Bayview Opera House received a grant in January 2001, from the Urban Resources Partnership (URP) (a collaboration between the US Department of Agriculture and the US Forest Service serving major cities across the nation since 1994) to expand the Children’s Mural Program to provide a comprehensive environmental education curriculum for SF elementary school children in both the fourth and fifth grades. A second year component to the CMP, called The Bayview Opera House Environmental Education Program (BEEP!) [now called KEEP! (Kid’s Environmental Education Program)] for Community Elementary Schools, has provided workshops in the schools and fieldtrips into the community for hands-on experiences related to the environment at: 1) Hunters Point Shipyard (HPS) presented by: the US Navy, the EPA, the environmental clean-up scientists working at HPS (TetraTech), the urban planning team designing HPS (SMWM), the SF Redevelopment Agency, SF Planning Department,  BAYCAT, the HPS developers (Lennar/BVHP Partners and the CAC (Citizen’s Advisory Committee for Reuse of Hunters Point Shipyard; 2) Heron’s Head Park presented by  LEJ (Literacy for Environmental Justice); 3) Decorative Plant Services; 4) City Hall presented by Mayors Brown and Newsom, Supervisors Sue Beirman and Sophie Maxwell; and 5) the Bayview Opera House presented by the six Artist/Instructors there.

The CMP proposal funded by URP also established guidelines for integrating the CMP/KEEP environmental education curricula into the fourth and fifth grade elementary school teaching units. This  provides a more effective, holistic learning experience for ~400 children and for easier, more integrated lesson planning for the teachers. Additionally this curricula can be used as a model for bringing this important information about the history, Super-fund Clean-up and re-use of Hunters Point Shipyard, and the need for stewardship of the environment to additional neighborhood elementary schools in the Mission, Potrero Hill, Bernal Heights and Visitation Valley. The student populations in these neighborhoods, along with Bayview Hunters Point, will be most affected by this enormous transformation of this expansive SF bayfront property over the next twenty years as the clean-up and reuse of the shipyard progresses.

Think Round, Inc. was founded to fund the expansion of both the Children’s Mural Program and KEEP! to these additional schools and to recapture our elementary school students by providing middle and high school curricula to schools in these neighborhood. KEEP! in four years has taken approximately 750 children—with KEEP! Journals and cameras in hand—on community-focused environmental education fieldtrips.

TEEN Theater Arts (Set Design/Mural) Program

Bringing community history to life on stage through inter-generational oral history, drama and art projects. 

• Theater - Teaching all aspects of set design & creation—including  props, costumes, makeup, lights, sound
• Painting classes & exhibits - Highlighting student artworks about community-related topics promotes self-expression & civic involvement while enhancing learning of academic subjects in-&-after school
• Sets become community murals - Giving ongoing voice to our students’ ideas as well as creative ownership of their neighborhood

This program was presented in collaboration with the Education Department of the de Young Museum and was conceived, designed and coordinated by Think Round, Inc.

Classes were presented in a 12 weeks series on Saturday mornings from 10-11:30 a.m. at the Bayview Opera House. Classes were introduced by artists from the community or by Ambassadors from the deYoung Museum are based on artworks from Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas and Oceania. Our artists guided projects that explore family roles: ancestors, grandparents, moms, dads, boys, girls, infants, adolescents and family setting: home, front yard, backyard. Family members worked together to make masks, button blankets, Grecian urns, ancestor dolls, pyramids, Kachina dolls, animal masks, ceramics of all kinds. Having fun and learning new things about each other and the world was our purpose.  The art made is displayed here for your viewing pleasure.

This Bayview Opera House class celebrates family and explores family creativity!  It is free to Kids ages 2-12 with guardian; Teens ages 13-17.  Continental breakfast is available for everyone. Join us in our next program that will begin in the near future if all goes as planned.

We served 32 community residents ranging in age from 2 to 82 from 12 families in this first session of the FAMILY ARTS PROGRAM. Over the past eleven weeks, we have served: grandparents, parents, teens, youth, children and infants from all ethnic groups.  Our families return weekly and our classes are growing. We are prepared to expand our weekly capacity as the program grows in the years to come through outreach and word-of-mouth recruitment. Our artists are from the community and Hunters Point Shipyard and also include de Young Museum Ambassadors. We are currently seeking expanded collaborators with the 100 Families Project/Oakland and with the Education Department of the Asian Art Museum.