PLACE Program

Saturday November 20, 2004 the painting of the Living Mural commenced again! Painting consisted of images and stories gathered from all working on the Living Mural: The Big Brother Big Sisters' Crossroads group and UNM Community Art Students with inspiration through dance by Visiting Artists Mary and Kobiana Nakigan.

Welcome ALL Mural Participants:

The PLACE Program welcomes all who come to participate in the College of Fine Arts’ Living Mural Project. Our goal for this project goes beyond painting the mural. We are exploring how the fine arts can transform a room full of strangers into a community. We are exploring how collaboration can raise our awareness of the collective sum—often greater than its parts. As we create together, we are also exploring something about ourselves: who we become when we work with others on a common project. We look to all of the Living Mural participants to teach us, the College of Fine Arts community, about the significance of community service learning.

Whether you are a curious artist or a future teacher, volunteering your time and talents with others is a rewarding experience. You’re not only expanding your own community circle, you’re also contributing to the experience of our community guests and to our community as a whole.

Everyone who participates in this project will be recognized formally for their service. Your names will go onto our website and into our project archives as we begin to record the history of this wall. In addition, each of you will receive a Certificate of Service Appreciation from the PLACE Program that is signed by the Dean of the College of Fine Arts and the Community Education Supervisor.
The Service Learner Orientation:

The difference between volunteer service and service learning is the LEARNING. A service learning experience is framed, from beginning to end, by learning objectives. These learning objectives may be knowledge-building, skill-building, capacity-building, or all of these. Self-reflection and situational-reflection are key components to the service learning process. Through pre-framed questions and follow-up reflection, the service learner moves through their service experience with heightened awareness of their activities, interactions and the effect of their service on the framed experience.

The key to a successful service experience is framing service-learning objectives that benefit the service-learner’s professional development and the organization’s mission and needs. It’s often presumed that the service-learner benefits more from the service experience than does the organization. More often, it’s overlooked that the organization has an opportunity to benefit from the service-learner’s reflective observations in addition to receiving supplemental staff support, By framing some organizational needs into the service-learning objectives, the organization can get valuable data from the service-learner while supporting their professional knowledge and skill development.

The Living Mural Project offers participants the following tangible service-learning benefits: Certificate of Service signed by College Dean, part of documentary on CABQ Downtown Window on the Arts, wider circle of professional and peer contacts, personal reward, bonus points towards the Expressing Community Grant.