Perry Hilltop and Fineview are two diverse and under-resourced communities on the North Side of Pittsburgh. Both organizations function with volunteer boards and limited resources, yet play an important role in community advocacy by promoting equitable development, preserving green space, and ensuring residents access to City services.

For this project, we will be working together with youth from our communities to design and create a Gateway Sign & T-Shirts that will promote and instill pride in our communities.

The Gateway Sign will be made from stone and will include a beautiful mosaic mural. The mural will be created by high school students and their art teacher Sandy Kessler at The Pittsburgh Project with artistic guidance from Linda Wallen.  Students have already begun interviewing elders of our community to inform the design—rooting it in the history of our communities.

The T-Shirts will be designed by students from The Pittsburgh Project as well. The students will have the opportunity to produce the shirts, by screen-printing their design at Art Image Resource (AIR). They will each keep a shirt. The remaining shirts will then be worn by youth we take to local sporting and cultural events, as a result of our partnership with Tickets for Kids. The t-shirts will promote pride in our community and allow easy identification of the group. Although they are more expensive, we want to use union made t-shirts in a bright color (preferably florescent).