Accessible Arts Mural Project at Kaw Point

A group of teens who traveled the Lewis and Clark Trail in 2003 will participate in Kansas City's Lewis and Clark Bicentennial events at Kaw Point, in Kansas City Kansas, at the site where the Corps of Discovery camped for three days in 1804, and where the Discovery Expedition of St. Charles will reenact that encampment June 26-27, 2004. The fourteen teens, who are blind or visually impaired, will direct the general public in painting a large outdoor mural depicting yellow and green parakeets rising out of the underbrush along the Missouri River, like the flock of parakeets Lewis and Clark saw exactly two hundred years ago in that same place. During the weekend, in the National Park Service's Tent of Many Voices situated at Kaw Point, the teens will twice present a video documentary and discussion of their trip along the Lewis and Clark Trail in 2003. With companions from several Native American tribes, the teens will also create a drumming circle during the weekend.

The parakeet mural will cover approximately 300 feet of the Missouri River flood wall on the northwest edge of the Kaw Point Bicentennial park. From June 19th to June 24th, in preparation for the weekend commemoration, students who traveled the Lewis and Clark Trail will prepare the concrete wall with primer, and then paint background shades of blue. White templates of parakeets will be added as guides for the weekend visitors who will paint the birds in full color. On Saturday and Sunday the Trail teens will distribute paints and oversee the general public in painting the mural. They will also distribute fliers, prepared by the National Fish and Wildlife Service, telling how the birds were hunted to extinction in the early 1900s to provide plumage for ladies' hats. Some templates on the mural depict the hats.

The Discovery Trails Project is a collaboration between Accessible Arts, Inc. (AAI) and the Kansas State School for the Blind (KSSB). Since 1998 fifty-one teens who are blind or visually impaired have followed old pioneer trails westward on two and three week camping trips through the Discovery Trails Project. Each June small groups of teens and their adult companions have traveled thousands of miles by minivan to experience the beautiful and challenging environments encountered by pioneers in the 1800s. Professional artist-educators are among the adults accompanying the teens, helping them record their experiences in journals, songs, stories and images. In the fall and winter, the teens share the excitement of their own adventures with school children and senior citizen groups.

This past summer's group of fourteen pioneering youth followed the Oregon Trail westward, over the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, then followed the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 3000 miles back across the Continental Divide and down the Missouri River to Kansas City. The teens spent time with native peoples encountered by the Expedition, including the Nez Perce of Idaho, the Blackfeet of Montana, and the Three Affiliated Tribes--Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara--of North Dakota.