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By the Youth; Of the Youth; For the Youth; With the Youth
The Youth Visions Park – A Call to Action in Full Color
Special to The Truth
Opening on July 11 at 1:00 p.m. in Wilson Park, the Youth
Visions Park is a youth-centered, youth-planned,
youth-built, youth-maintained park within which the insights
and shared visions of neighborhood youth are heralded to the
public through creative expression. This park stands as a
permanent monument celebrating the creative leadership
potential of our most precious natural resource—our youth.
Young people from Toledo’s 2014 YouthBuild cohort have
invested time, talents, and energy in creating a space
within which the visions of hundreds of their peers can be
displayed. These youth have cut a symbolic walking path,
built reflection benches and helped with the installation of
the murals.
Further additions and enhancements to the park are currently
being planned. Ideas have already been generated for
additional murals that will be painted on the park
buildings. The park will serve as a safe gathering place
for youth, an outdoor gallery, a site for reflection and
dialogue, a recreational space, a canvas for showcasing the
talents of neighborhood youth, an educational field-trip
site and a historical land-mark.
Murals for the park were produced over a period of several
years in partnership with many local organizations including
the Youth Opportunities Program, the Toledo Police
Department, the Neighborhood Association of North Toledo,
Adelante, and the Teen Outreach Program.
The signature Creative Peaceful Resistance (CPR) ©
approach—described below, has been used to produce murals
besides those that will be installed in the reflection
park. Murals on the Cherry Street Mission building, in the
Juvenile Detention Center Main lobby, in the Summit YMCA
Youth Center, in the Kwanzaa Park (Nebraska), and on Summit
and Lagrange Street buildings have all been produced using
the CPR approach.
Conceptual Background: Since the spring of 2006,
listening and learning sessions were initiated with
hundreds of youth in Toledo’s urban areas. The very first
sessions were organized to help young people in North Toledo
to process their thoughts and feelings following a Neo-Nazi
intrusion. In the wake of this incident, many youth felt
violated and they expressed feelings of intense anger and
even despair.
Over the course of several weeks, the youth were introduced
to creative peaceful resistance as a strategy for peacefully
protesting injustices and sharing visions for hope and
renewal with the public. Intrigued and excited by the idea
of CPR, youth responded with great enthusiasm. This
approach seeks to harness the creative energy of youth, and
channel it away from destructive actions and towards self
and community transformation.
During the process of trying to identify ways to practice
and promote CPR, the production of murals was clearly the
most popular option.The process of producing CPR murals has
helped hundreds of youth to learn how to constructively
share their sentiments, insights, and visions for change.
Specially trained artists sketch out the insights of youth
and work closely with the latter to create full-color murals
reflecting the visions of participating youth. All CPR
murals are youth-informed, youth-guided, and youth-approved.
For more information, contact Lorna Gonsalves, Ph.D,
architect of the CPR Program, at
lornagonsalves@yahoo.com; John Page, youth specialist,
YouthBuild, at
jmpage@wsos.org; Dennis Garvin, commissioner, City of
Toledo Parks, Recreation and Forestry, at
dennis.garvin@toledo.oh.gov; Charlie Johnson, program
manager, Community Integration and Training for Employment
at cjohnson@co.lucas.oh.us
This event is free and open to the public
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