Engaging Community Through Art

Daniel Kinney (BFA ‘00/MA ’09) has found a colorful way to combine art, teaching, and service.

Currently an Art Education doctoral student, Kinney is working with groups to create murals that are more than just decoration.

“Murals are meaningful in that they are in environments where people live,” he said. “They’re a way for stories to be told and by involving communities in that process, my goal is to give communities ownership of their environment.”

Kinney spent two summers working with students in Uganda to paint a mural depicting what their country means to them. As a teacher at Elizabeth Tate High School, an alternative school in Iowa City, he’s utilized his students’ creativity to produce murals throughout the community.

Art Education Professor Rachel Williams, Kinney’s academic advisor, said she admires the way he works collaboratively to create his art.

“It’s not just him as an artist slapping his vision up on a wall somewhere,” she said. “It’s a concerted effort to engage community members with an image.”

Williams said she’s also enjoyed observing the way Kinney often involves his Tate students in his work.

“They get to see him as an artist and a teacher and they get to do something where they leave a mark on the community, literally,” she said. “That’s changed some lives.”

His latest project has been at the Broadway Neighborhood Center in southeast Iowa City, a part of town that is experiencing a demographic change as many new residents move in from Chicago. The work is part of the CrossingBorders project he started with two UI journalism students to promote “meaningful and constructive discourse” and perhaps help with Iowa City’s potential “growing pains” as it becomes more culturally and economically diverse.

Kinney worked with several neighborhood volunteers to create an image incorporating silhouettes of real people who use the center, which offers after-school and day-camp programs for neighborhood children as well as other family and community activities. The mural transformed a stairwell leading to the kindergarten room in the basement.

“The goal is to create an image that shows the diversity of the community. All of the silhouettes will be in different colors and give the residents a sense of ownership over their neighborhood center by including their image into the environment,” he said.

Kinney is also working with neighborhood children to add to a mural he started in 2008 at nearby Wetherby Park. For that mural, he invited residents to tell their stories and help him come up with a drawing to represent their story and then to incorporate it into the mural.

Kinney said he hopes the murals will continue to grow and change in the years to come, just as the community will continue to grow and change.

“The idea of the mural is that it’s never finished, it’s an ongoing thing,” he said.

Sue Freeman, director of the Broadway Neighborhood Center, said Kinney is an amazing teacher and brings out the best of the people he works with.

“He really wants to empower youth and empower their ability to be proud of their stories, to tell their stories, and become invested in their community,” she said. “He certainly has a gift.”