Keeping up with tradition, I partnered with my brother Jeff Shafer and City Year again for another mural on MLK Day. This year’s project took place at Northeast High School, one of City Year Kansas City’s partner schools. However, maintaining the tradition wasn’t as seamless as years past. The week leading up to MLK Day I was out of the country working on a separate project in Jamaica, preventing me to do the amount of design prep typical of our MLK Day murals. But, after landing back in Kansas City around 2:00 AM the morning of MLK Day and catching a couple hours of sleep, I headed straight for Northeast High and we were able to put together something special.

The stripes of the mural match the school’s colors and the phrase, “Nothing is too good for Northeast”, was a statement made by the school’s first principal (the school is 105 years old by the way). Today, the current principal of Northeast High, Principal Bolden, continues to use this phrase as a mantra to motivate the students and the Northeast community.

Also, my other brother, Davis Shafer, kicked things up a notch by creating a virtual tour of my mural and the entire City Year Kansas City MLK Day of Service through his company Vresence. The virtual tour walks you through the entire service site where City Year hosted over 300 volunteers to help beautify Northeast High School. Be sure to check it out below the photos.

Special thanks to Northeast High School, Alyssa Kozak and Selina Rios of City Year Kansas City, and all the City Year AmeriCorps members that helped with strip painting and prep work for the mural.