CRYJ’s Mural Project

Teen Driven

After over a decade spent tucked away in the quiet KM Building, CRYJ moved into a new office building at the center of the world (also known as the intersection of Idaho and Main). We wanted our building to visually represent the unique role we fill in this community as a teen-driven space, but we also wanted to highlight the relationship between CRYJ and the community that contributes to our work. As an organization that supports teens in finding their voice, sharing their story, and engaging positively in their community, we hatched a plan to turn voices into art.

The mural on the front of our building is not only a collection of fun lines and colors, but also a collection of voices from this community. Each of those lines is a sound wave, traced from an audio recording. We know you are dying to know: Sound waves of what?!?

Community minded

In the summer of 2022, we chose two questions to pose to CRYJ teens and their parents, volunteers, strangers off the street, downtown business owners, and more. You may have seen CRYJ teens and staff walking around with microphones and recording devices at Ceres Bakery or Spirit Skate Shop back in those days — we were pounding the pavement. Over the course of the summer, we recorded hundreds of responses to the following two questions:

How do you want this community to see you?
What makes a community feel safe?

Asking community members, including CRYJ teens, these questions was a profound reminder that people of all backgrounds, ages, professions, and political persuasions want to live in a community where people are taken care of. People feel safe when they trust that their neighbors respect them, but also when they know that their neighbors aren’t going hungry.

After turning the recordings into sound waves and transcribing the outline of those waves onto canvas, we invited teens and community to our office for a summer paint party!