We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Darren Villegas a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Q: Darren, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
A: I recently completed a multi-site mural project at local high schools, involving student participation, called the Inland Empire Future Muralists Program. The program was funded by the California Arts Council, and was based on a grant proposal that I wrote in collaboration with the Alliance For Education. I lead a workshop series at three high schools, around the topics of mural arts as a storytelling platform and a means for inspiring social change, to an audience of roughly 40 students at each campus. The students were then educated by guest speakers about topics like environmental issues, social change, and civic engagement. Then the students engaged in a group dialogue, exploring how they feel about the topics, how the topic directly affects them, their families, and communities, and what some possible remedies are for the topic. This dialogue served as the foundation for a mural composition, based on imagery that the students created. I then lead the students through the mural creation process, which included hands-on technical training, and students painting. At the conclusion of each mural, students engaged in a reflection session to explore what they learned about each topic, the creation process, and possible future careers in the arts. The program will impact approximately 1,500 – 2,500 students, since the entire student population of each campus will be exposed to the art work, (typically high schools range between 1,500 to 2,500 students). With the mural being a permanent fixture on each campus, those numbers will increase to 3,750 – 6,250 students in a ten-year period.