Students Finish Art in Pride Park

BRADENTON – Pride Park is now adorned with some homegrown art thanks to a collaboration between several groups that facilitated School Art in Pride Park. The community and four public schools in the Pride Park and Ten Oaks neighborhoods designed art concepts of what their neighborhood means to them, then painted the works on a graffiti-plagued fence that runs parallel to 9th Street East, just north of 63rd Avenue East.

Artists came from Christian Retreat Explosive Youth, VMI Media Group, Daughtrey Elementary School, Oneco Elementary School, Harllee Middle School and Southeast High School. Each group is being thanked with gift cards to Staples donated by SP Recycling Southeast and a pizza party sponsored by Waste Services of Florida Inc.  

School Art in Pride Park was supported with $5,000 in grants from Keep Manatee Beautiful. The project was a joint effort with the Manatee County Sheriff's Office Crime Prevention Unit, Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, the School District of Manatee County and the Southeast Residents Association.

Other partners included the Manatee County Utilities Dept. Solid Waste-Recycling Section who donated 45 gallons of the paint that was collected at the landfill. Faith Bradburn Keller, an award winning artist and graduate of Ringling College of Art and Design, painted the abstract waves on every other section of this white fence to connect each art concept.