Waiwai Mural

Our project is a community-driven, community-created mural that represents what our students and faculty view as waiwai on and around our campus. It highlights what students raised as one of our school’s greatest strengths: the outdoor learning spaces and environmental stewardship opportunities we engage with. We hope the mural will encourage current and new LJA families to understand how the immense waiwai that we have as a community translates into kuleana for all our abundance. 

We led three meetings (in total) to introduce and facilitate waiwai mapping with different stakeholders in our community. We started by meeting with our HS General Council, a group of 60+ students in grades 9-12, and after introducing the concept, had them get into small groups and create their own waiwai maps of campus. We then ran the same exercise at a staff meeting with our teachers. After finishing both events, we compared the maps and found that students generally emphasized or found waiwai in places that facilitated experiential, often ‘āina-based learning, whereas staff tended to focus on hubs for academic learning. We decided to run one final waiwai mapping workshop led by students to teach the faculty, and get a more holistic, collaborative perspective of our campus’ greatest sources of abundance. We used these final maps and discussion to inform our first draft of the waiwai mural. 

Using our co-created waiwai maps, we worked with our school’s student mural team to draft an art piece that would communicate and spotlight the things that make our community special, our sources of waiwai. We highlighted areas of academic and co-curricular, ‘āina based learning, which also provide valuable opportunities for students and staff to build stronger relationships outside of the classroom. We hope to get a final design by the end of the year, and have the mural team paint the final piece by our campus entrance.

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