Shady Oaks Park - Hayti Mural

Created at Shady Oaks Park in Durham, North Carolina, this interactive walkway mural grew from the research, ideas, and vision of the Hayti Promise Youth Corps Youth Leadership Council.

The project began after Youth Corps members helped care for the park by removing trash and invasive species. Wanting to continue investing in the space, the Youth Leadership Council decided they wanted to create a mural for the community. Before approaching muralists, they did the deeper work of learning what that mural should hold.

They canvassed the surrounding neighborhood, going door to door to speak with residents. They met with community groups, interviewed people who lived nearby, and listened to stories shared by elders who had grown up in the area. From that research, they began shaping a mural that could honor Hayti’s history while also feeling active, hopeful, welcoming, and fun for the people who use the park today.

The youth selected the historic content woven throughout the design, including nine historical figures and nine landmarks, along with nine facts placed inside large lily pads. They imagined a positive-affirmation hopscotch, bubbles, playful elements for neighborhood children, and a large sun as the central image containing an aerial view of the community surrounding the park. They also envisioned a reflection activity for the end of the walkway, inviting visitors to think about what they learned as they moved through the mural and reminding them to choose hope.

Once that vision was taking shape, the Youth Leadership Council researched and interviewed muralists. That process is how they found me.

My role was to help translate their ideas into a cohesive, paintable visual journey across the walkway while preserving the heart of what they had already imagined. Together, we moved from research and concept into scale, composition, placement, color, sketching, painting, and installation.

For approximately a week before returning to school, members of the Youth Leadership Council joined me on site full time. I walked them through the mural-making process step by step — from gridding and scaling the design to transferring the drawing onto the concrete and beginning the painting process. After school began, they later returned when time allowed to devote additional time to completing the mural.

As the work progressed, the site became a gathering place. Youth, staff, neighborhood residents, and volunteers painted alongside one another. Some residents stopped by daily to talk, share memories, watch the mural progress, or lend a hand. Volunteers joined in. Young people connected with elders. Conversations happened naturally across the walkway as the artwork grew.

My role extended beyond painting. I helped organize the work so that people with different experience levels could contribute meaningfully, prepared gridded and numbered reference materials, taught mural techniques, guided volunteers, answered questions, refined painted areas, and kept the overall composition moving toward a cohesive finished piece.

What makes this mural especially meaningful to me is that it belongs to many people at once.

It belongs to the young people who researched their community, listened to its residents, made creative decisions, and helped paint what they envisioned.

It belongs to the elders whose memories helped shape the story.

It belongs to the residents who stopped, talked, painted, encouraged us, and watched the work unfold.

It belongs to the children who can now hop, play, read, explore, and discover something about the place around them.

And it belongs to the city that carries the history represented within it.

I had the honor of becoming part of that community for a time — working beside the Youth Leadership Council and staff, teaching what I know, learning from the people who live there, and helping turn their research and ideas into something permanent enough to be walked across, played on, talked about, and remembered.

This mural is for the young and the old. For the people who came before, the people who are here now, and the people who will shape what comes next.

Past. Present. Future.

Title: Shady Oaks Park - Hayti Mural
Size: 10' w x 279' long, approx 2790 square feet
Site/City: Durham, NC
Medium: INSL-X TuffCrete
Date: August-September 2026.