A Sparx Residency Story: Playwrights Project + Rainforest Art Project at Taft Middle School
There is a mosaic eagle on the wall at Taft Middle School that will outlast all of us.
It soars in deep blues and purples, wings spanning wide, tail feathers cascading in long layered sweeps of tile. Behind it, a golden sunburst radiates outward. And if you look closely, into the feathers themselves, you’ll find words. Sentences. Voices.
The words belong to Taft’s students. They wrote them. And now they’re permanent, pressed into glass, built into the body of a soaring bird that will greet every student who walks onto that campus for years to come.
It wasn’t commissioned by an architect or designed by an adult with a plan. It was built by middle schoolers who were handed two things most of them don’t get nearly enough of: time to say something true, and a reason to believe it was worth saying.
The result is permanent. Visible. Theirs.
Two Organizations. One Vision.
When the VAPA Foundation brought Playwrights Project and Rainforest Art Project together at Taft Middle School as part of the Sparx initiative, the collaboration was deliberate. Each organization brings something the other doesn’t, and together, they created something neither could have made alone.
Playwrights Project has spent more than three decades teaching San Diego’s young people that their stories matter. Their teaching artists guide students through the craft of playwriting, not as an academic exercise, but as an act of self-discovery. Safe behind the mask of fiction, students explore their own experiences, their fears, their pride, their contradictions. They find their voice. And then, in the best moments, they use it.
Rainforest Art Project does something different but equally powerful: they transform shared spaces. For over twenty years, their team of artists and educators has been creating vibrant, enduring works — mosaics, murals, sculptures — developed in partnership with students and communities. Their work is rooted in a simple belief: when students help build something beautiful in their school, they develop a sense of ownership, pride, and belonging that no curriculum can manufacture.
Put those two things together — the words students found through theater, and the hands-on process of embedding those words permanently into their campus — and something extraordinary happens.
The Legacy Project
The residency at Taft was built around a question every middle schooler carries, whether they say it out loud or not: Who am I, and does it matter that I’m here?
Students began by writing. Through Playwrights Project’s process, they explored what it means to leave a mark on a school, on a community, on each other. They wrote from their own lives. They wrote about where they came from, what they were proud of, what they wished people understood about them.
What came out was extraordinary in its honesty.
“I am from my grandma, telling me she loves me.”
“I am from tacos, carne asada, elotes and quesadillas.”
“I am from ‘I love you, you are important.'”
“I am from never be a bully. Remember there are other people that can be mean, but be bigger.”
“Life is like growing a seed, no matter what, it always grows.”
Students who had never spoken up in class volunteered to share. Students who described themselves as outsiders (“I’m not a fan of Taft, but I will make it work”) found themselves standing in front of their peers, owning their story with remarkable grace.
Then came Rainforest Art Project. The words these students had written, the ones about courage and belonging and pride and loss, were etched into glass. And that glass became part of a permanent mural, installed on campus, where it will remain long after these students have graduated and moved on.
Permanent. Visible. Theirs.
What the Students Said
The scripts the students created were structured around Taft’s own values, the EAGLES acronym that defines the school’s culture: Encourage others. Accept differences. Give respect. Learn to listen. Expect positive results. Strive for excellence.
But the students didn’t just recite values. They inhabited them. They argued for them from the inside.
On Accepting Differences:
“Being different is okay because you are not like everyone else.”
“I am Korean, Chinese, American, and Human.”
“We are all human.”
On Giving Respect:
“When someone is expressing their feelings, you don’t judge them.”
“Every voice should be respected.”
On Encouraging Others:
“You are a hero just in your own way. You have super powers, they are just hidden in you.”
“Don’t listen to what mean people say, and never give up.”
And on what it means to Strive for Excellence, not in the abstract, but in the way a real kid strives:
“I work hard, I get good grades, I try my best to keep my grades up but it is very hard.”
“I’m proud of my eyelashes are long!”
“I’m Spider-Man. With great power comes great responsibility.”
That last one might be the most perfect line in the whole collection. It’s funny and earnest and completely, utterly twelve years old, and it belongs on a wall.
What This Tells Us
The Legacy Project at Taft wasn’t a program. It was proof.
Proof that when you give students the right conditions — a skilled teaching artist, a creative process, a real audience, and something permanent to show for it — they will rise to meet the moment every single time.
Proof that theater and visual art aren’t separate disciplines competing for space in a school day. They are complementary languages. One helps students find what they want to say. The other helps them say it in a way that lasts.
And proof that the students who are easiest to overlook, the ones carrying the most, the ones who describe themselves as “a little crazy,” the ones who aren’t fans of their school but are going to make it work anyway, are often the ones with the most to offer, if only someone creates the conditions for them to offer it.
The eagle on the wall at Taft Middle School will be there when these students bring their own children to visit someday. Its wings will still be spread wide. The golden sunburst behind it will still radiate. And in those deep blue feathers, their words will still be there, etched in glass, built into something that soars.
Their legacy, as they defined it themselves: the echo of a life well-lived, reverberating through time like a symphony of significance.
They wrote that. A group of middle schoolers at a public school in San Diego wrote that, and then they made sure it would last.
We are Eagles. We rise above.
The Taft Middle School Legacy Project was made possible through Sparx, the VAPA Foundation’s $1 million pilot initiative funded by the Conrad Prebys Foundation, coordinating 15 community arts organizations across 28 San Diego Unified schools in 2025–26. Learn more about what Sparx built and what comes next at vapafoundation.org.
