Colorful Concern
PUBLICOLOR
GOOD NEWS FROM 2004: In 61 New York City schools, drop-out rates and discipline problems are down, while academic performance, college enrollment and attendance of both students and teachers are up.
The credit goes in part to the fresh coats of bright paint applied to the walls of low-performing schools by an organization called Publicolor. Ruth Lande Shuman, an industrial designer with a master's from Pratt and a lifelong interest in the power of color, conducted extensive research on its psychological effects in the early 90s. In 1996, she paired her findings with her concern for at-risk youth and a conviction that inner-city students and teachers deserve safer, more inviting work environments. She founded Publicolor.
The organization has grown into a startlingly innovative web of programs designed to transform public spaces and invigorate the people who use them. Publicolor staff and volunteers act as mentors, teaching painting as well as life lessons in the importance of taking initiative, working within a team and showing up on time. The organization also provides tutoring, summer internships and jobs, and academic and career counseling.
It is a support system that starts with Publicolor's palette, which includes colors like sundance, stem green, sapphire berry, citrus blast, and key lime.
"Color can make people feel depressed and angry and lethargic. Certain colors can also energize, inspire, get people to focus. I'd like to think it's those colors that we put into schools," says Shuman.
"Kids and teachers feel much safer in a Publicolored school. A lot of the schools look dreary and institutional, and you can't teach and learn if your mind is frozen by fear. By putting up warm colors, you can really change the way the school looks and feels."
In Paint Club, the initial Publicolor program, students paint their schools after classes and on weekends. (Volunteers, often from corporations that sponsor Publicolor, paint alongside them.) Shuman and Publicolor combine colors harmoniously and democratically, with Paint Club participants voting on all color combinations. The 10 favorites are then put to a school-wide vote during a lunch break, providing the entire school a say in how their building is going to look. Students thus learn the nuts and bolts of commercial painting, such as calculating cost and quantity by measuring spaces to be painted.
In the programs that follow, COLOR (Community of Leaders Organizing Revitalization) Club and Next Steps, students take on projects that cultivate leadership and nourish academic and professional success. Last fall, 60 students were asked to identify six voters each, get them to register, and go with them to vote. Another project, the recently launched Fresh Coat, is a professional painting crew of 15 students that will go into each of the 61 schools to repaint, ensuring that school walls stay fresh and exposing a new generation of students to Publicolor's offerings. Fresh Coat has become the official painting crew of the African Art Museum in Queens; after the students painted the museum in 2002, the staff invited them to repaint between all exhibitions.
For the past three years, Publicolor has also been painting police precincts, bringing together groups of youth and adults who are not always on the friendliest of terms.
"I'm amazed at how many commanding officers want us. They love the idea of working with at-risk youth. They see the benefits," says Shuman. "It's so important for these two groups to get to know one another and not always be reacting to stereotypes."
Shuman decries the facilities in which the NYPD work: "A lot of them look like disaster zones. There's a major disconnect between our expectation of courtesy, professionalism and respect and the rundown facilities in which they're meant to deliver it. The message is that the police are worth this kind of effort and they deserve to work in a place that looks professional. It's the same message we put in the schools: We're painting respect, welcome, safety."
The effects are measurable. In the schools Publicolor painted in winter 2003-they generally paint three at a time, and at least nine a year-94 percent graduated, as opposed to 50 percent of NYC public schools at large, and 70 percent nationwide. 100 percent of high school seniors planned to apply for college, and the drop-out rate was two percent. With only 10 full-time staffers and another dozen part-timers, Publicolor has engaged almost 19,000 community and corporate volunteers since its inception. Well over 4500 students have joined Paint Clubs, their work reaching about 50,000 area students.
"We go into such neglected spaces, and then if you just put up a fresh coat of paint, that's going to be transformative," says Shuman. "When you apply a fresh coat of our colors, you're not only putting in color, you're putting in design, attention, caring. All of that is unspoken, but it's there, and people feel it."