Help Revive the Franklin Mural Project

The Franklin Mural Project started in 2005 as a student-teacher collaboration to construct a visual timeline of Northeast Los Angeles history. In 2008, after years of dedicated conversation and research, they were successful in creating the first of four murals. Located in the main entrance breezeway of Franklin High School, that mural has greeted thousands of students, staff, parents and faculty everyday for the past 15 years. The teachers, Reies Flores and Arturo Romo, were already in progress with a new cohort of students on the second floor mural when the project unfortunately stalled half-way through, the sketches of which have remained on the walls of the second floor breeze-way for over a decade (2013-2024).

Finally, after many years of dedicated effort, and with support from a small grant start-up grant, the Franklin Mural Project is back! We are picking up where the project last left off, completing the unfinished illustrations of the second floor mural. To us, this has also meant honoring the spirit and the practice of the original Franklin Mural Project, teaching students history through creative means, and in doing so, to connect them to the land their families have made a home on. Reies and Romo first did this by inviting historians, ecologists, and the Gabrieleno San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians to teach the students. This past academic year, we have invited Tongva artists, Tongva Art Historians, and experts on the critical history of California Missions to talk to the students about the reverberating impact on that moment in history. We believe that this is crucial work. Not only to teach our students about the past, but to make them feel more invested as part of this land's future.

We cannot continue this vital project without your help. We are calling on alumni, parents, sympathetic community members, and all others to consider gifting whatever amount they feel capable of giving. Every little bit helps. We will use the money to help us boost our small budget for materials, food for students, and compensation for the hundreds of hours donated by our volunteer staff.