The Boys & Girls Club in Nashua is under construction. Advancement Director Meghan Fitzgerald said that the building was built in 1974 and hasn’t been updated much since. In recent years, the club has been adapting to different needs after the pandemic, including better mental health services, early childhood care and academic support.
While the $10 million campaign will make the club’s kitchen bigger and create a separate entrance for family services, Fitzgerald said another priority is making the space feel more like home for the 1,300 kids they serve every year.
“We're calling it the Vibrancy Initiative. So really taking our building that is 90% almond paint and making it feel like a homey place for the kids,” she said. “We really want this to be a place that kids want to come, where they feel comfortable being at, and it feels like a home more than an institutional setting.”
Arts and Culture Director Cristhian Londoño is the mastermind behind the art. He’s working with artists from Honduras and Colombia to create three large-scale murals during a weeklong mural festival, including Daniel Correa Osorio, Sepc, Edgar Zelaya, and Jorge Gallo.
Londoño is originally from Colombia and was a member of the Nashua Boys & Girls Cub when he was growing up. He said that art was a way for him to express himself when he hadn’t learned English yet. Now that he’s on staff, he said enjoys working with students and seeing how art can engage them.
The muralists started work on Monday on three large-scale murals that are part of the outdoor playground, the pool and what will become the cafeteria. As inspiration for the pool mural, Londoño said they’re using a technique he learned while he was backpacking in Latin America. It’s called “doodling” where the kids can paint on the wall, which becomes the grid for the large-scale murals.
“It's nice to see that the kids get super involved with these kind of projects,” he said. “A lot of good things are going to happen to the club. So I was like, okay, a cool thing that can happen to the club is maybe bringing some vibrancy to the walls and then do some art around here.”
