Art Project Features Portraits Of Students On Trash Bins

Art Teacher Kayla Lashley created an art project with By The Hand in Moving Everest that depicts the students and beautifies the community. PHOTO PROVIDED BY BY THE HAND CLUB FOR KIDS.
Art Teacher Kayla Lashley created an art project with By The Hand in Moving Everest that depicts the students and beautifies the community. PHOTO PROVIDED BY BY THE HAND CLUB FOR KIDS.

Art Project Features Portraits Of Students On Trash Bins

By Tia Carol Jones

An art teacher in Austin created a project for students aimed at beautifying the community. Kayla Lashley is an art teacher at the Moving Everest Charter School. She, along with students from By The Hand Club For Kids in Moving Everest painted trash bins located down Laramie Avenue. The bins feature portraits of local students.

By The Hand Club For Kids began in 2001 in Cabrini-Green, serving 16 students. The goal of the program is to help children who live in under-resourced communities live abundantly by supporting them from kindergarten through college. The program currently serves more than 1,700 students on the South and West sides of Chicago in communities that include Austin, Altgeld-Murray, Cabrini-Green, Englewood and North Austin.

Lashley has been working as an art teacher at Moving Everest for two and a half years. For her, the project was all about representation and including the students in the project, not just having them work on the project, but having their faces on the trash bins. When she told them about her idea, the students were really excited about it.

“Me doing that automatically gave them a sense of dignity and they were proud of working on it,” she said.

Lashley painted the portraits of the students on the seven trash bins and the students  worked on the mosaic part of the project. It took them about a week and a half to complete the project. The students worked on the project during their break times. She wasn’t surprised the students wanted to work on the project outside of class. She said the students are always looking for ways to feel involved and be a part of the school. The best way to get them involved, Lashley has found, is through art.

Lashley is proud of the finished project and the fact that she and the students were able to work on it together. She said she loves the way the trash bins look outside the school and the fact that the project is beautifying the community. Lashley teaches 500 students and she said they were so excited and proud of the project that each of them wanted to be on a trash bin.

“Just to see them being involved in their community and their school is a wonderful thing for me,” she said. She added that she would love to expand the project as much as they can.

Lashley said the students she works with are amazing in every way. To see the students come in with a sense of pride and pushing themselves in the face of obstacles, with involvement and joy is amazing. She said they are so ambitious and she enjoys working with them.

For more information about By The Hand Club For Kids, visit www.bythehand.org.

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