“I really loved it so much,” said Simon, a senior at Carrboro High School. “The organization that I did it through does similar projects here once or twice a year, so after I got back I really wanted to make this happen whether it be in my school or in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area.”
Simon said the students took many steps in order to get the project started, including sending out a survey to students that would allow for the muralists to get a better idea of what to paint.
“We started a few months ago and sent out our first survey over email and we weren’t really getting enough responses,” she said. “So we printed out the surveys and gave them to all the students in their English classes.”
Simon said they reached to a wide variety of groups at the school, such as professional education classes and the journalism club.
“When the muralists were actually here, they spent the first day that they were here going around to different classrooms of a variety of subjects,” she said. “A lot of them were Spanish classes so the students had the opportunity to practice Spanish with them.”
There are two wings of the school each with its own mural and each one represents something different but related to Carrboro High School, Simon said.
“One mural on one wing of the school represents the ‘now’ of some of the issues that are in our lives now and scenes that are relevant like ones with global warming or our connection through technology,” she said.
Simon said the second mural portrays the student-teacher relationship, with a bounty of fruit in the middle that represents diversity, all meant to portray a hopeful future.
