Mural Therapy is an accessible arts program at Salvin Special Education Center located by South Central Los Angeles. Salvin is a LAUSD public school that serves students ages 4-16 with disabilities. Our program’s goal is to build connections between LA public art and our students’ art education, mental health, and life skills development.

Every year during winter/spring and summer we invite a professional artist to come collaborate with the students to provide exciting accessible art lessons leading up to painting a school mural together. As we do not have an art teacher, our muralist and onsite occupational therapist, physical therapist, speech-language pathologist, nurses, healthcare assistants, and special education teachers work together to build accessible art tools and provide equipment and support so that everyone can be a muralist!

We hope to paint murals not just to beautify our school campus and neighborhood, but also to help our students, staff, and families find meaningful opportunities to support their mental and emotional health. We want all of our students to feel like they can paint and dream as big as possible.

We have included some photos from our current 2026 Mural Therapy Dodgers community mural in progress with Mister Alek as it evolves, as well as our Summer 2025 mural with artist MrBBaby. She and the students collaboratively painted a little girl Maria and the character Chucho riding an adaptive tricycle, feeling happiness and freedom. Most of our students and staff come from immigrant families. With the climate of current events in our neighborhood, we also painted flags of all of the cultures represented at our school and the words "TODOS INMIGRANTES BIENVENIDOS AQUI" to let our families and the neighborhood know that all immigrants and migrants are welcome here in our school and community.

We are looking for funding for our 2025-2026 Mural Therapy program! With your support, we can continue supplying our paint and materials, protective paint shirts and wheelchair covers, artist fees and equipment, and expand on the creative opportunities and happy memories we make possible for our students. Please donate what you can and share with loved ones - we are so grateful for your support! If you are local to Los Angeles and have paint or materials donations, shirt donations, or other ways to support, please reach out to Serena Au. Thank you!