"Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.”
— Maya Angelou
During a month-long residency over Summer Break 2017, local teaching artists Lesley Anne Numbers and Lauden Nute worked with teens at the Dane County Juvenile Detention Center to transform a long wall in the narrow hallway between the visitation room and their daily space. Leslie and Lauden presented the concepts behind mural design and worked with students to generate ideas and themes relevant to their feelings and experiences.
They handed out markers and a stack of note cards to students and court officers, and began asking basic questions about how they experience that hallway through their 5 senses before, during and after walking from the detention space towards the visitation space, and vice versa. Lesley and Lauden took individual notes but also collected all of the note cards, and took them home in order use these responses while designing the mural on a laptop.
Lesley and Lauden came back with some draft designs were able to offer feedback and suggestions before transforming the hallway. Over the next 3 weeks, the teens used pencils and marker to transfer the design to the wall, and then paint and outline the entire design.
We were not able to capture sharable footage of the design process due to the angles of the hallway.
