Best of CASE District VII Award
 

Institution: University of California, Davis

Title of entry: Struggle, Progress and Paint: The Unfinished Dream Mural

About this entry: The idea for this project came about during lunch. Staff from Student Affairs Marketing and Communications were enjoying lunch outdoors on a sunny day in the patio behind the campus student center — the Memorial Union — and speculating about the identity of some of the figures in the large mural covering one of the patio’s walls. There was nowhere to find this information, either on site or online. Given the central location of this mural and the huge number of people who see it daily, it seemed likely there were others who might have wondered the same thing, and that it might be worthwhile to see if we could do something to help.

From the initial step—emailing one of the artists who painted The Unfinished Dream mural in 1991—the idea evolved into an expansive multimedia story, encompassing a feature article, a video interview and a graphic key to the mural designed by student staff. The project drew on the participation of many parties, including the artists and former students and administrators, and in the end went far beyond the initial goal of providing a simple key for identifying the scenes and persons depicted in the mural; in the process, we discovered the artwork’s little-known origin story in student activism and a hunger strike which also played a role in the founding of the first retention center on campus serving students from underrepresented communities and paving the way for a robust ecosystem of retention and community centers on campus today.