![]() ![]() ![]() This is the fifth summer Long Beach has employed students to beautify its vistas, according to Dixie Swift, the city’s cultural programs supervisor. The youths, most of whom are economically disadvantaged minority students ages 15 to 20, are paid $3.35 an hour for 26 hours a week. “They liked seeing art in the community.”Įarlier this month, the city used federal youth employment funds to hire 19 of the young artists-as well as Sirl, who during the regular school year teaches art at Stephens-to spend their summer augmenting what Williams had begun. “They could identify with it,” he said of his helpers. And almost immediately he began attracting as many as 30 youthful volunteers each Saturday. Every week we would clean it up, and the graffiti would go right back up.”Īrmed with a design depicting a park scene, Williams began painting in earnest three days a week. “Because it’s across from the school, the gangs were using it as a bulletin board. “We were spending several hundred dollars a month cleaning the graffiti off that particular wall,” said Dennis Thys, the city’s neighborhood development project manager. The program began in February when the city hired Keith Williams, a recent art graduate of California State University, Long Beach, to design and paint a mural along a 150-yard stretch of fence directly across the street from Stephens Junior High School on Santa Fe Avenue at 28th Street. “It makes the kids feel appreciated and improves their self-confidence.” ![]()
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