In St. Louis Park, Minnesota, four Girl Scouts engaged community members in a Developmental Asset painting project. Working toward their Silver Award, these young women, all students at St. Louis Park Junior High School, have collaborated with their Girl Scout advisor, Jeanne Tatarek, and their community advisor, Karen Atkinson of Children First, to commission 40 paintings, each representing one of the Developmental Assets. The paintings, completed by community members from all over St. Louis Park, have been displayed at events and photographed to be a part of a poster that is available for distribution.
Forty organizations in the community were invited to participate in the project, and all accepted. If the first person the girls talked to was not interested in being the artist, that person helped find someone else in the organization that wanted to take part. For a full list of the organizations that created a painting, click here.
The group provided a canvas and painting supplies to each artist and, as part of the project, interviewed each of them for their artist bios. It was important to the girls that the local bus company be included in the project because of the influence bus drivers have on young people every day. The bus driver who volunteered to paint was a recent immigrant and a self-taught artist, and his story both impressed and inspired the group. The girls enjoyed getting to know different people in the community and learning more about their lives and who they were as people.
The paintings were displayed together at the Children First Ice Cream Social on May 17th, 2009, and images of each have been incorporated into a poster distributed around the community to share the Developmental Assets message. Each of the artists received a copy of the poster, which was made available with a donation at Children First’s annual Ice Cream Social. The idea for the poster was inspired by the Monroe County Asset Partner Initiative’s poster, which reflected paintings done in the communities of Monroe County, New York.
The group is currently making decisions about where the paintings will be displayed in the community, including City Hall, local coffee shops, and the St. Louis Park Library. Eventually, each painting will be given to the organization that produced it.
To see the poster, click here.
For more information on the project, contact Jeanne Tatarek at jrochetatarek@juno.com or Karen Atkinson at atkinson.karen@slpschools.org.
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