PAAC 5-5-2010 Item VIII

Linden Park Tile Mosaic Peace Project Background Information: This year, the 6th and 7th grades at NOCCS, the North Oakland Community Charter School, have been involved in a Service Learning Project that was designed to build connections with our neighborhood. At the beginning of the year, we walked around the community and recorded our observations as we mapped the neighborhood looking for assets. We interviewed community members to discover more about the assets and needs of our neighborhood and to help us to prepare projects that would benefit our community and build connections between our neighborhood and NOCCS. We presented our projects to a panel of community members and received warm and cool feedback that we incorporated into our final projects. One of the groups is the Community Art Group. This group is proposing to create a community tile mosaic in the park dedicated to peace. NOCS is located at 1000 42nd Street between Adeline and Market next door to Linden Park. NOCCS has adopted Linden Park through the Public Work’s Agency “Adopt a Spot” program so we have a long-term relationship with and feel a responsibility towards this park. Last year, we built a leaf compost bin and began planting flowers, cleaning litter and tagging, and weeding sections of the park. This year, one of our other service learning groups has prepared a section of the park for resodding to improve the quality of the field. Objectives: We hope to bring our neighborhood community together through the creation of a tile mosaic dedicated to peace. Currently, there is a play structure that has a short concrete retaining wall around it. We would like to beautify this wall by building a tile mosaic on it. On April 10, we sponsored our first Cesar Chavez Community Service Day when we invited families from our school and members of the neighborhood community to an event in the park. We had food, music and activities for everyone to participate in. One of these activities was a table where we had four-inch blank tiles and glazes for people to decorate tiles with a peace theme. People decorated one hundred peace tiles on that day. We plan to incorporate these tiles into the mosaic. Our teacher, Lee Tempkin, and his daughter made a tile for the Berkley Peace Wall over twenty five years ago, and they still go back to see it. We are hoping that this will also happen with our mosaic, connecting families in our community to Linden Park and establishing a feeling of ownership of the park. Community Support Besides the panel of adults from the neighborhood that reviewed our project ideas, we have been in communication with the Longfellow Community Association. One of their chairs, Lorna MacMillan, was on our panel and is a supporter of the tile mosaic. She told us that the most important short and long-term need expressed by this group was the beautification of the park and that the tile mosaic would help with this goal. On Cesar Chavez Community Service Day, many community members were very excited about our project and decorated a peace tile to be included in the mosaic.

PAAC 5-5-2010 Item VIII

Budget: We have received donations of tiles and other materials that we need from our own school community, neighborhood people, and local tile stores. The Tile Shop in Berkeley was especially generous with a donation of $1800 worth of beautiful tiles for the mosaic. This year, NOCCS received a City of Oakland - Artists in the Schools Program grant that we have used for some of the costs of this project. We are applying for other grants to continue the tile mosaic next year. We are prepared to raise additional funds through bake sales if needed. Time Table: We would like to complete several sections of the tile mosaic before the end of the 2009-2010 school year and have sufficient tiles for this purpose. Depending upon approval of our design we may be able to complete more before the summer break. We expect to have a second community event next fall where additional blank tiles would be decorated to enable us to complete the tile peace mosaic. We will take full responsibility for maintenance as needed as we have adopted Linden Park and will care for all aspects of it. Design We envision a rainbow mosaic on the horizontal upper surface (see the photograph) and the peace tiles on the vertical face of the concrete wall. There would be elliptical and round glass pieces and smaller pieces of tile connecting the two areas and between the peace tiles. Since this area surrounds a toddler play structure all pieces would be smooth and safe for a child’s touch. Mosaic Team: The mosaic is going to be put together mainly by the 6th and 7th grader members of the Community Art Group. We have several adult volunteers with various skills including contractors and artists. There are individuals with specific experience constructing tile mosaics. Amongst them are: • Winoka Turin, parent and art teacher at NOCCS and Marin School • Gina Dominquez, Snapshots Mosaic Respectfully submitted, Lee Tempkin, Community Art Group teacher supervisor April 21, 2010