Horizon High School in Pointe-Claire offers a social integration program for students with special needs.
The students got to express their artistic skills by collaborating on a huge mural.
Big, bold, and bright – with a beautiful message – Kindness!
That’s the mantra here at Horizon High School.
Student Rami Moussa says painting the mural with classmates was very satisfying.
“It taught us how to work as a team, have some patience with each other, and how to be proud of our achievements.”
Stretching seven metres long and almost three metres high, student-artist Vivielle Lim likes to point out their contributions.
“I painted one of the lily pads. And then I painted one of the letters in the word kindness,” says Lim.
Booker James added some aquatic touches. “I liked painting the mural and I painted the starfish.”
The word ED-venture is embedded in the mural, which is the specialized program for young people at Horizon.
Teacher Heather Laframboise explained, “It’s a social integration program for students with special needs aged 17 to 21.”
“They come here after they’ve done their time at their high school, and they want to move on to something else. We teach them life skills. We teach them some job skills. They have some in-house internship. A few students go and do outside internships,” she continued.
Laframboise and artist Lisa Kimberly Glickman guided the mural’s creation in the style of Brazilian artist Romero Britto which all started with a black-and-white sketch.
Glickman says, “Not everybody had every idea of theirs included, but everybody had an idea of theirs included in the way that it could all work together as a whole.”
Student Dilum Ethige Silva points at the rainbow spectrum of colours across the top of the mural.
“I like the sunset here. And I also did the fairy here,” he says.
Meanwhile Jeremy Chavez-Foglietta says the colours are of spring and a bright future. “I think it shows hope, it shows hope that all of us are kind.”
