The Mosaic Project: "A project in the neighborhood that we did together."

Patti McIntire, a longtime resident of the Highland Park area of Los Angeles, had struggled for years to improve the blighted neighborhood walkway known as the San Pascual stairwell. Children had to pass through the stairwell’s trash, broken glass, abandoned shopping carts, weeds, and walls of graffiti to get to local elementary and middle schools, and parents worried about their safety.

So when Nancy Blaine, community advocate at Hathaway Family Resource Center, contacted McIntire to see how the center could best help address the needs of the community, McIntire knew exactly what to tell her. Thus was born the San Pascual Pedestrian-Safe Learning Corridor, or San Pascual Stairway Mosaic Project.

The partnership

Hathaway partnered with the Garvanza Improvement Association, which had grown from a neighborhood watch group. Neighbors knew they could count on Hathaway, says Rosa Rivas, one of the association’s founders. As the mother of four foster children, she had depended on Hathaway’s counseling and after-school programs. "Having Hathaway on my side motivated me to keep going," she says.

They received financial support from the L.A. Dept. of Public Works’ Neighborhood Matching Fund to help local school children and community volunteers transform the stairwell into a work of art. Together they made 1,000 colorful tiles depicting local plants and animals, to adorn the 125 steps. The theme, says Blaine, would discourage local kids from branding the area by tagging and skateboarding.

The activities

Through school activities, aided by the Audubon Society and Wildlife on Wheels and a series of community events, everyone from preschoolers to grandparents cleaned up the area, learned about local wildlife, and made the tiles, which were fired and stored for free at Eagle Rock Cultural Association. A local landscape architect is volunteering time to plan the next phase, which will include middle schoolers planting trees.

Sandra Chavez was one of the mothers who accompanied the groups of third, fourth, and fifth graders to the park for Audubon Society lessons in local plants and animals. "It was really good to see the kids using their imagination," she says, but she had to tell a few, "you can’t put tigers and coconuts."

The community

It wasn’t just for kids, says Chavez. For the tile-painting parties, she brought along her 59-year-old mother, who painted four tiles of her own, and her 25-year-old brother. Her husband got in on the final phase, helping to place and grout the tiles at a recent weekend Glue N’ Grout Extravaganza.

But it was much more than a fun art project for her family, Chavez emphasizes. "It’s a project in the neighborhood that we did together. Kids will defend their tiles and say, ‘No, my family did this, don’t mess it up.’ Our neighbors will know who our children are, and the children will say, ‘that’s the lady down the block; she was there helping to paint tiles.’"

As Nancy Blaine puts it, "This is marking territory in a different way. It’s about investing in the community."