One Tile at a Time: The Artivism Mural Project
The walls of Luis Muñoz-Rivera Elementary School in Trenton, N.J., just got a little brighter, thanks to a student club at Peddie.
Artivism is a student-run community service club that was born out of a love for art and creation. Since its inception, Artivism members have provided academic tutoring, hosted book drives and partnered with a nonprofit organization to collect used music books for donation.
Recently, current Artivism members worked on their biggest project yet – a mural made of tiles personalized by 480 elementary students.
Club President Elaine Liu ’26 and Visual Arts Leader Sylvania Peng ’26 brainstormed the idea of doing a mural together.
“The mural was something that we were very attached to at the start, and we were figuring out how to make that manageable,” said Liu. “We thought that maybe doing small tiles where they [elementary students] could have their own space to do it instead of all fighting for a space on the wall would be smarter.”
To make the mural happen, the club needed funding. Artivism has received strong support from local businesses since its inception, including Hightstown’s Mannino’s Pizza and The Bent Spoon in Princeton. To help cover the costs for the mural project, Liu took it one step further and started researching community service grants. She applied for a grant from Youth Service America and ultimately won the award.
“It was quite a lengthy application,” remembered Liu. “[We needed] a lot of recommendations from teachers. We had to send in photos of what we thought our project would look like, and say how many volunteers. It was very specific. I needed to have everything ready.”
Both Liu and Peng expressed strong feelings about the importance of art in classrooms.
“I’ve always been interested in visual art as a way to express myself, and the public school that I came from didn’t really have the funding or the resources to make visual art a priority,” Peng stated. “When I came to Peddie, it was totally different because we have such a great Arts Department.”
The mural wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work and dedication of all the club members, Alex Gao ’28, Io Kim ’27, Sree Lakkamraju ’25, Wai Man Isabella Lam ’26, Ophelia Ni ’26, Sophia Pei ’26 and Elyssa Ting ’26, and the helpful hands of faculty members, Club Advisor Mark Cirnigliaro, Emily Miller, John Lucs and Jim Truslow.
When it came time to make the tiles, Artivism club members, along with Cirnigliaro and Miller, took a bus driven by Truslow to Luis Muñoz-Rivera Elementary School and spent the day with the elementary students. Each Artivism leader was assigned to a table and helped kids create their tiles, rotating students about every 45 minutes.
Liu and Peng both recalled the success of the day, with the kids all being really excited to create their tile.
“One kid that really stuck out to me and Mr. C was very loud, and then his teacher was like, ‘please quiet down.’ But we were like, ‘no, no, we love it,’” said Liu. “Beyond drawing on the tile that we gave them, he started drawing all over the paper tarp that we gave him, too. And then he was like, ‘this is the best day ever.’ He was screaming. He was jumping up and down, and he got all the other kids excited, too.”
“It was definitely very rewarding. I didn’t know how they would react to doing something like this, but they were all super excited, and it is contagious.” Peng shared about the day. “I had a really great experience there just because the kids were so excited and willing to do the project.”
After the day was over, Artivism members brought the tiles back to Peddie to assemble them into the mural. Students measured and painted the frame, and Lucs handled the wood cutting and assembly of the frame with the tiles.
Now complete for the students of Luis Muñoz-Rivera Elementary School, the mural stands as a vibrant symbol of creativity, collaboration and the power of art to bring people of all ages together.
