PROJECT REBOUND MURAL

The Project Rebound Mural is a student-driven collaboration between SFSU’s Project Rebound and the True Colors Mural Project of Berkeley City College. Many voices have joined together to create the imagery to demand a new approach to crime and incarceration in our country, a country that differentiates itself from others by the staggering number of prisons and people behind bars or in custody awaiting trial. The design is the result of multiple conversations between members of Project Rebound, the SFSU community and the Berkeley City College Public Art Program’s Mural Design and Creation students, who worked together to give shape to the ideas expressed and shared by people who had firsthand knowledge and experience of life inside the prison industrial system. As artists, we took those ideas and represented them symbolically for Project Rebound. The images in this mural represent the ideas of a growing movement against the unfair system of criminal justice.

The design is an empowering expression of Project Rebound’s history that inspires and educates through the concept of change and manifestation of one’s greatest potential through higher education. Furthermore, the design serves to raise the consciousness of our communities by demystifying the negative stereotypes associated with those who are and have been incarcerated. Its overall messages are: prison abolition; the struggles and eventual triumph of the previously incarcerated; celebration of the human spirit and intellect in breaking through physical and intellectual barriers; and celebration of the visionary work of leaders in the prison abolition movement.

The mural will be painted on canvas this fall and adhered to the wall in December. The installation will span the width of the stairwell in the Tower atrium, and measure approximately 13’ x 35’. Its swirling design will move from imprisonment to liberation, in a left to right sequence, counter-clockwise.

The mural sketch is currently being completed in color in  by Berkeley City College students in Juana Alicia's Mural Design and Creation class. The color design will feature a transformation from a black, white and gray palette to a vibrant multicolored palette as the design moves from left to right and bottom to top. The light sources will be the fiery prison tower, the phoenix, and the lights at the top of the cave and end of the tunnel of prisoners. 

Please join us in supporting the mural project for both funding and site approval at San Francisco State University!