Unveiled yesterday at Rikers Island, Towards a Brighter Tomorrow! is a new mural by Dindga McCannon, presented on the exterior wall of the NYC Health + Hospitals/Correctional Health Services’ Reentry Service Center, a resource hub for recently incarcerated New Yorkers and Rikers visitors.
Through a series of focus groups and discussions, Dindga worked with people incarcerated on Rikers Island who were patients of NYC Health + Hospitals/Correctional Health Service (CHS), a service providing support for individuals with substance abuse or mental health needs.
Dindga worked on the sections of the mural with the incarcerated patients, painting collaboratively to complete her designs. The mural focuses on positive symbols of resilience, family and community as identified by the CHS patients.
Dindga spoke on her project:
“It was wonderful collaborating on this mural with the patients of Rikers Island. It was them who suggested the positive uplifting theme of the mural, as well as enthusiastically helping to paint it...Being one of the last things one will see when released from Rikers, it will send the person leaving a note of positivity. Art is an amazing tool that every person should enjoy on some level. There is a lot of talent within these walls and I hope that it will continue to flourish.”
We offer our thanks to the Community Mural Program, run by the system’s Arts in Medicine department and made possible through the generous support of the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund.
Through a series of focus groups and discussions, Dindga worked with people incarcerated on Rikers Island who were patients of NYC Health + Hospitals/Correctional Health Service (CHS), a service providing support for individuals with substance abuse or mental health needs.
Dindga worked on the sections of the mural with the incarcerated patients, painting collaboratively to complete her designs. The mural focuses on positive symbols of resilience, family and community as identified by the CHS patients.
Dindga spoke on her project:
“It was wonderful collaborating on this mural with the patients of Rikers Island. It was them who suggested the positive uplifting theme of the mural, as well as enthusiastically helping to paint it...Being one of the last things one will see when released from Rikers, it will send the person leaving a note of positivity. Art is an amazing tool that every person should enjoy on some level. There is a lot of talent within these walls and I hope that it will continue to flourish.”
We offer our thanks to the Community Mural Program, run by the system’s Arts in Medicine department and made possible through the generous support of the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund.
18 April 2024
