Turnaround Arts: California launched our Community Arts Project initiative to support community-building and well-being as schools returned to in-person instruction following the pandemic. Partner schools, including teachers, students, and families, were paired with local artists and arts organizations to conceptualize and implement unique art installations on their campuses.
We thank the partnering schools, artists, and arts organizations who made these projects possible!
Partner Schools: Ellen Ochoa Learning Center, Cudahy Garfield Elementary, Alhambra Hoopa Valley Elementary, Hoopa Janie P. Abbott Elementary, Lynwood John J. Montgomery Elementary, Chula Vista Willard Intermediate School, Santa Ana Zamboni Middle School, Paramount
We are proud to share our recently completed Community Arts Project at Turnaround Arts: California’s longtime partner school, Hoopa Valley Elementary!
Hoopa Valley Elementary is located in Humboldt County in Northern California. Students are 90% Indigenous Americans and members of the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk tribes.
The community has strong traditions rooted in Indigenous American cultures that they wanted to honor and celebrate through a public art project. Students worked with local artist and cultural bearer, Naishian Rainflower Richards, to create a unique art installation, that runs along the school’s fence. Entitled “Na:yk’idilyeh,” which means “necklace” in the Hupa language, the piece is inspired by the traditional necklaces created and worn by tribal members. This large-scale “necklace” showcases oversized wooden, painted replicas of the community’s invaluable dentalium used to make their necklaces.
Naishian worked with the high school woodshop students and their teacher, Mr. Johnson, to create the necklace pieces, and the elementary school students painted them in traditional patterns. Naishian shared: “This project represents our wealth in culture. Dentalium was the currency in our local tribes, and this is a reminder to those in the school that we still have this wealth.”
We send a very special thank you to Ms. Stephanie Silvia, Arts Integration Teacher, who oversaw this project and has been a tireless advocate for the arts at Hoopa Valley Elementary.
About Naishian Rainflower Richards: Naishian Rainflower Richards is a member of the Western Shoshone tribe and a descendant of the Northern California tribes of the Hupa, Yurok, and Redwood Creek. She shares indigenous arts in the Hoopa community, previously serving as a Cultural Consultant for the Indian Education Program at Hoopa Valley Elementary. Naishian has also served as a youth and college mentor with Two Feathers Native American Family Services, teaching about local ceremonial grounds, food sovereignty, and revitalizing coming-of-age ceremonies. Through this work, she has come to understand the gap in access to these teachings. She shares that she is proud to see “students creating our local history and learning how to stand tall in this world.”
As highlighted in this NPR report, the arts have been a powerful tool to build safety and self-expression for young people amid an unprecedented mental health crisis. Turnaround Arts: California launched our Community Arts Project initiative in 2021 to support arts projects like the one at Hoopa, to create space for healing and connection since schools have returned to in-person instruction. We’ve been pairing local artists with teachers, students, and families to design and implement unique art installations on their school campuses ever since.
Turnaround Arts: California launched our Community Arts Project initiative in 2021 to support healing and community-building since schools have returned to in-person instruction. We’ve been pairing local artists with teachers, students, and families to design and implement unique art installations on their school campuses ever since
This mural at Janie P. Abbott Elementary in Lynwood is the result of a months-long collaborative project where students and local artist Lilia “Liliflor” Ramirez worked together to choose the themes that would be represented visually, from love for the environment to school pride. Within the butterfly’s wings is a tribute to the Gabrielino-Tongva Peoples indigenous to Los Angeles County, showing their houses, called “Kiiy,” as well as plants native to the area including the oak tree, the poppy, and white sage. The butterfly, representing transformation and growth, is set against space showing the vast interconnectedness of our lives.
Following are photo highlights from the creation, installation, and unveiling of this exciting project.
The process started with students creating their own sketches to share their ideas of what they’d like to see represented in the mural. Liliflor reviewed student ideas and identified common themes. She then created the overall design for the art piece.
The mural was created using a polytab technique in which the artist and students painted the entire image on parachute fabric prior to installing it on the wall.
The mural was unveiled in February 2023 with a celebration featuring students, teachers, Abbott’s Principal, the Lynwood Unified School District’s Superintendent, leadership team, and board, lead artist Liliflor, and the entire sixth-grade class.
SEASIDE — Students’ lessons at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School of the Arts Thursday featured scratching and blending — DJ techniques taught by their “Turnaround Artist” mentor, IZ Avila. Monterey Peninsula Unified School District — which was recently named one of the best communities for music education in the United States for the third year in a row — includes two Turnaround Arts schools: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School of the Arts in Seaside and Marina Vista Elementary Arts Academy. Both schools are supported by Turnaround Arts: California, a nonprofit organization aimed at using the arts to engage, empower and transform historically marginalized schools and communities. Avila works with several Turnaround Arts schools across the country. His return to Seaside and Marina this week was met with cheers and applause from the students and marked his first visit to one of his “adopted” schools since before the pandemic.
“At one point, I didn’t think I’d get an opportunity to be back because we didn’t know where things were at,” Avila said. “Honestly it feels somewhat surreal.”’
Avila joined the Turnaround Arts program in 2016 when he adopted Standing Rock Middle School in North Dakota. He said witnessing firsthand the students’ loss of hope, excitement and imagination because of the things they had gone through changed his life.
“I really bonded with those kids and they opened up to me and trusted me,” he said. “That was an incredible process for me because once I saw how interested they were with music, I started cultivating them and helping them understand what DJing was.”
Avila witnessed that excitement for music again Thursday at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School of the Arts. In DJ workshops, he taught the students what DJing means, how to use the soundboard and how to blend two pieces of music together cohesively, which he said is the most important part of DJing. “Just because you can put everything on your computer doesn’t mean you should play it,” he advised the students. “As a DJ, the last thing you want to do is clear the dance floor.”
“You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.” -Grace Lee Boggs, Chinese-American Author and Activist
Turnaround Arts California condemns the attacks against Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) across the United States. There have been over 3,800 documented anti-Asian hate incidents between March 2020-February 2021, 45% occurred in California, 13% against youth ages 12-17, and 5% occurring at school. There are many additional cases that are misclassified, ignored or unreported. This month’s murders in Atlanta of 8 people, 6 of which were Asian Americans, sits at the intersection of gender-based, class-based and race-based violence. We all deserve to feel safe and live without the threat of violence in our daily lives.
As educators and artists, we must play an active role in combating bias and bigotry especially in our schools. When students experience negative stereotyping in school, it can impair self-perception and student performance. That AAPI students are often subjected to positive stereotyping in the “model minority” myth, does not exclude them from psychological harm and impaired student engagement and performance. As with other racialized groups, Asian American is an umbrella term that covers broad and diverse peoples, overlooking vastly uneven trajectories and educational outcomes. We commit to repudiating violence and harassment on the basis of race, class, gender, sexual orientation or ability. We know that the arts help students develop self-knowledge and empathy, and support school community-building around our shared humanity, and we will continue to support our partner schools to ensure that all of our students, families and staff are represented, included, and celebrated in their school community.
PBS’s Asian American docuseries about the individual stories that make up the role of Asian Americans in shaping our nation’s story
Toolbox for Care – You may wish to extend and adapt this community self-care activity focused on the pandemic to current events of Anti-Asian hate
COVID-19 Anti-Asian Resources for K-12 – Comprehensive recommendations created for the American Library Association, including links to podcasts, videos, news articles
This fall, Turnaround Arts: California hosted Inside Out Project Group Actions to support our newest cohort of schools in making bold, visual statements about their commitment to leveraging the arts for educational equity. From our state’s southern border to our northern coast, first-year #TAcalifornia teams transformed campus walls into celebratory messages of creativity, community, and identity — bringing the magic of teaching and learning through the arts from the inside… out!
In 2014, Barton Elementary School in San Bernardino partnered with Turnaround Arts: California to use the arts as a tool for school change. This is their story.
Mary Chapa Academy partnered with Turnaround Arts: California in 2014, and their journey of school change through the arts is truly remarkable. Thank you to Nabil Abdulkadir for capturing their story!
Have you heard? Turnaround Arts: California is expanding to include 10 more elementary and middle schools this August!
This means that, in total, we will be serving:
Partner Schools
School Districts
Educators Supported
Students Reached
In preparation for Turnaround Arts: California’s expansion, this past spring we held three principal-focused meetings across the state.
New & experienced Turnaround Arts principals at our middle school principal meeting in Santa Ana, CA
Current principals shared sage advice with our incoming principals about what it takes to be a #TAcalifornia elementary and middle school. Scroll down to see our favorite words of wisdom:
& even more…
Be patient, be flexible, and always do what’s best for the kids.
Advocate for the arts by sharing your school’s #TAcalifornia story through press and social media platforms (i.e. instagram, facebook, and twitter).
Create arts-based traditions throughout your school calendar (E.g. Latin Dance Festival, Spring arts showcase, etc).
Ask the Turnaround Arts: California Principal Leadership Coach, Dr. Akida Long, questions! There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. You can learn from others and then tweak it to fit for your school, staff, and students.
Say YES! Participate in everything you can.
Relationships matter! Build strong relationships with your teachers, aides, custodians, everyone on campus.
Catalyze teachers to grow beyond their comfort zone and give the students opportunities to explore and experience things they haven’t.
Always identify and celebrate your school’s successes, ALWAYS.
By leveraging resources, building school capacity, and raising visibility about why and how the arts have helped their schools, principals are a key pillar in leading arts-fueled school change efforts.
Jaqui Hope, Visual and Performing Arts Coordinator of the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District
We recently spoke with Jaqui Hope, the Visual and Performing Arts Coordinator (VAPA) of the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District (MPUSD), to gain a more in-depth view of her work to improve K-12 education through the arts.
As a VAPA Coordinator Ms. Hope creates, upgrades, and manages the visual and performing arts at all her school sites – a total of 20 elementary, middle, and high schools! Two of which — MLK School of the Arts in Seaside and Marina Vista Elementary School in Marina Vista — are Turnaround Arts: California partner schools.
What drives you and the work you do?
My motivation largely stems from my childhood experiences. When I was 13, my childhood best friend was killed in an accident and I didn’t have the toolkit to express how I was feeling and what I was going through. I felt crazy and misunderstood. When I turned to the arts – poetry and music specifically – I remember beginning to find solace and acceptance in my thoughts by creating songs about how I was feeling and my journey through processing all sorts of emotions.
Creating songs was critical for my process because mental health was not at the forefront of the adults around me – parents, teachers and the like. I think back to this experience and it makes me empathize with kids that may be falling through the cracks in our current school system.
My goal is to make sure that students experiencing any sort of trauma rise to their fullest potential. I believe that the arts are a great tool to help them get there.
The second reason is because I want to foster our collective future. I feel like sometimes our educational system shuts down a student’s intellect. We celebrate those with a great ability to memorize and those that happened to get the math lesson as it was offered at that particular time.
What we really need is to create a culture of deep thinkers: students with the skills to see that there might be multiple valid solutions to a problem.
Students with regular access to the arts have the capacity to think deeply.
How have the arts impacted the culture and climate of the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District?
Upon Superintendent PK Diffenbaugh’s hire in 2014, MPUSD’s shift towards the arts began. He was intentional about hiring a Visual and Performing Arts Coordinator.
Hiring staff centered on the arts sets the tone – it says that our district places value in the arts and what it can do for our students.
When I first arrived, there was a lot of stress around structure because of mandated minutes — teachers worried themselves over giving enough minutes of instruction in English and Math. I was shocked because I knew that there is so much more out there, so much more for these kids.
Flashforward to now – it’s night and day.
We have a superintendent and leadership team that’s really about growth mindset. We focus on our assets, and understand that we can always improve and bolster our skills. We understand that growth mindset and the arts go together like peanut butter and jelly.
When you’re bringing new arts to kids – I feel like that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Creativity and curiosity is celebrated when there is no one solution at the end of an arts process.
Despite your work being district-wide, your office is located on the MLK School of the Arts campus. How does that proximity impact your day-to-day work?
It’s great! I see the kids a lot. There’s actually a group of fourth graders who like to hang out in my office after school. Which has its pros and cons… sometimes I have to create a spreadsheet and there’s a game of tag going on in my office!
I was at the district office for my first few years and then they decided to place me on campus to support local school arts activities. Because sometimes school staff need an extra hand to talk to the sound guy, or interface with the director, or whatever when you’re having special programs. The close proximity makes a difference.
My more interlocked experience at MLK makes me want to be very intentional about Marina Vista Elementary School when it enters the Turnaround Arts: California program in the new school year – I plan to connect with teachers and faculty even more so, to make sure they are supported.
What did you notice about MLK School of the Arts, after it joined the Turnaround Arts: California program?
There is much more parent involvement.
Whether it’s a group of parents painting to beautify the school or helping out with the plays or the art exhibits. It’s a relaxed way for them to participate. Many of our parents have newly immigrated to California so, understandably, they are new to California’s education system. Inviting them to their children’s school to visit and be involved in their children’s lives – I see a level of comfort and ease that I didn’t see before we used the arts to engage them.
It’s a softer environment – the kids are a little bit more open.
Final thoughts?
I just wanted to thank Turnaround Arts: California for the work you do for kids and schools. I was so moved as I sat there at the Kennedy Center [for the Turnaround Arts Talent Show] in the dark, often with tears welling, listening to the powerful spoken word poetry and watching experts and their students move so beautifully…this is an amazing organization.
Thank you for bringing me into a fold, and making sure the arts are there to catch our kids.
About Naishian Rainflower Richards: Naishian Rainflower Richards is a member of the Western Shoshone tribe and a descendant of the Northern California tribes of the Hupa, Yurok, and Redwood Creek. She shares indigenous arts in the Hoopa community, previously serving as a Cultural Consultant for the 
The process started with students creating their own sketches to share their ideas of what they’d like to see represented in the mural. Liliflor reviewed student ideas and identified common themes. She then created the overall design for the art piece.
