Plato Academy St. Pete – Ms. Tonya Clay’s middle school students are not working on small ideas this year. They are in the middle of painting a large-scale mural titled “Little City” on the fence of the elementary school playground, and the project is as ambitious as it sounds.
The concept started at the Salvador Dali Museum, where students toured a striking mural exhibition that sparked the initial creative energy. Back in the classroom, they moved from inspiration to execution, sketching ideas in sketchbooks before producing preliminary paintings designed to connect, edge to edge, with each neighbor’s work.
That continuity is the technical challenge at the heart of the project. Each student claims a panel roughly five feet wide by six feet tall. Coordinating how one painting flows into the next demanded both artistic judgment and real collaboration, the kind that does not happen on a single afternoon.
The result is a mural built from individual voices that, when read together, tell a larger visual story of a city seen through young eyes.
The work is nearly complete. Once finished, “Little City” will become a permanent fixture at the school, visible every day to the youngest students on campus.
