Young artists in Boston are going underground and into the streets with a creative plea for harmony.
Student artwork carrying an anti-violence message will travel throughout the city in the fall. Posters will be plastered on Boston’s buses and in its subway as part of the “getting along” project, a collaborative effort of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Boston public schools.
The Charrette Corp., which runs a chain of art-supply stores, and the A.C. Ratshesky Foundation, a Boston family foundation, are also providing support, and Ackerley Communications has donated billboard space.
The project builds on recent efforts that helped Boston students design and build a 50-foot-long mural and two billboards with anti-violence themes.
“In most cases, artists don’t get to do such a major thing,” said Mark Cooper, the Boston-area artist who helped start the project after organizing a similar subway-art effort with students in Washington.
Boston City Hall this past spring displayed the collages of scenes of violence and harmony and poetry and other writings. Since then, the students’ work has gone up on two billboards in the Boston area.
Graduate students from the museum school have served as mentors to the student artists at the city’s schools, some of which offer no formal art classes.
Perhaps taking a cue from their city’s youths, Boston adults are also working to get along better.
The Boston Private Industry Council has planned an event to link principals and business leaders. Representing local business, education, community, and labor leaders, the council’s mission is to improve job training and employment opportunities in the Boston area.
The Principal/CEO Leadership Summit, scheduled for Oct. 29, will pair Boston school and business leaders so that each can learn about the other’s challenges and management skills.
The business executives will begin with visits to schools with their assigned principals. Later in the year, the pairs will plan “reverse shadowings,” in which the principals observe and learn from the business executives’ management.
The summit is an effort to forge deeper ties between the two worlds, said Jo Corro, the council’s partnership manager. “It’s harder to get companies to do something long term, but if we can get them to come to this one day, we hope we can hook them in.”