Local artist Erika Magers supervised children in the basement of the Black Child and Family Institute as they worked on a mural representing Lansing’s Genesee neighborhood.
According to excerpts from the article:
Erika Magers is trying to strengthen a community with art.
In the basement of the Black Child and Family Institute in Lansing, Magers and her assistant, Tom Sheerin, supervised Saturday while children worked on a mural representing the city's Genesee neighborhood.
Magers, a 29-year-old mural artist from Lansing, said the project was intended to represent the history and the future of the neighborhood.
The mural, which will stand seven feet tall and 14 feet wide, will eventually be moved to the institute's east wall, facing a playground.
"We're doing this so that these kids know what their community was in the past and what it can be in the future," Magers said. "It gives the kids something to do, but more importantly, it gives them the feeling that they have a voice in their community."
Marquan Sams, 10, of Lansing, who was drawing a computer on the mural, said he hopes the project can help educate residents.
"I can have this experience to tell people about what happened in the past and what's going to happen in the future," Marquan said.
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