Hello my name is Laurel True. I am an artist and educator. I specialize in site- specific architectural mosaics, community projects and public art and have completed hundreds of projects over the years involving students, volunteers, trades people, other artists, adults and children alike.

I have been facilitating public and community mosaic projects for almost 20 years and have helped to provide job training and arts education to underserved communities in West Africa, Oakland, CA and New Orleans. I have been facilitating community mosaic mural projects in West Africa for 8 years.

This fall, I have been invited to Narobi, Kenya in East Africa to facilitate a mosaic mural project at a Rudolph Steiner school with youth as part of an artist's residency at the magical Kitengela Glass Workshop (www.Kitengela-glass.com) on the edge of the Nairobi National Park. I will be working with the school children to design and create a large glass mosaic mural for the facade of the school.

The school was conceived of by Nani Croze - artist and founder of Kitengela Glass and longtime resident of Kenya. It now serves as a model for similar schools across East Africa. The school has about 100 children from all walks of life, but the student base is made up of mostly local Masai children.

The school children will be involved in both the design process and the process of creating the mosaic mural. The philosophy at Kitengela is "recycling everything, paying fair wages, protecting our environment." In this vein, we will be using all recycled glass generated from the glass workshop in our mural project.

In all the community projects that I do I am interested both helping to foster creative expression as well as in passing on skills that are economically viable. Many times "creative capitol", which everyone has vast and endless resources of, can be turned in to economic capitol. I have seen this happen with the projects in Ghana.

This project will tie in with a larger project that I began in 2006 called Woven Stories, which focuses on creating projects that highlight design collaboration between groups of youth in Africa and groups of youth in the US.

Projects are created using design feedback or actual materials contributed from both groups, possibly having similar themes or visual content. Permanent artworks in the form of public art or community mosaic projects are created in both geographic locations - Africa and in the US. These partner projects highlight cross- cultural design collaborations and foster a sense of community between youth of different cultures and from different continents.

Upon returning to the US, I will bring back design feedback from youth as well as glass elements from Kitengela Glass that will inspire and be used the creation of a future community mosaic mural with youth at a school in Oakland or New Orleans.

I will use funding I receive from those who make pledges on behalf of this project for the African piece of this project.

If you would like to help support my project in Nairobi, please visit www.kickstarter.com and make a pledge!

I am working to raise $3200 by September 1st.