Participaint · A 501(c)(3) nonprofit
ParticiPAINT is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that creates professionally designed murals with children in pediatric hospitals. We draw the artwork. They bring the color. We hand the children the brushes.
The Reef · Love to the Rescue · Currents of Strength — murals by H.E. Jamaal Rolle
The Idea
“This is a painting done by all of us.”H.E. Jamaal Rolle — at the unveiling
Our Lead Artist draws an original mural directly onto the wall and prepares it as a simple, color-coded painting experience. Then the children take over: choose a color, find your section, pick up a brush, and paint. No artistic experience required.
When ParticiPAINTING ends, Jamaal develops the children's painting into a finished professional work of art. Their contribution is never erased — we build upon it.
Zero cost to the hospital. Fully funded by donors.
Selected children's hospitals receive the complete five-day ParticiPAINT experience — mural, paint day, professional finish and unveiling — at no cost.
Love to the Rescue — Shriners Children's Boston — November 2024
Forty feet of coral reef in the lobby where families check in. A sea turtle the size of a car, a tiger shark that grins instead of bites, jellyfish drifting up toward the ceiling tiles.
It is the last thing you look at before your name is called, and the first thing you see when you come back.
The full story →
Two walls in one day. In the lobby, Jamaal airbrushed a bear in a Shriners fez holding the earth. Down the hall in the seventh-floor playroom, everyone else got the wall.
Patients, siblings, parents and staff filled it with sailboats, cupcakes, cat faces, small handprints, a Bruins “B”, and in teal letters across the top: I ♥ SHRINERS. Someone wrote BE YOU.
A bald eagle over the Merrimack River, four storeys of it, on Merrimack Street. Two weeks of painting with the nonprofit Beyond Walls — and one open day where residents of every age were invited to add a brushstroke before Jamaal finished the piece.
He called that day a Partici-paint. It worked so well that Cindi and Jamaal built an organization around it.
Day one — blank wallRibbon cut
The Film
It starts as a blank corridor by Patient Registration. Then black outlines — a turtle, a shark, jellyfish drifting toward the ceiling. Then flat colour. Then the airbrush, and the whole thing lifts off the wall.
Somewhere in the middle of that, patients, siblings, parents and nurses came and put their own marks on it.
Sixty-six seconds, cut from two weeks of footage.
Fresh from the wall1:01
From the wall
Fresh from the wall: Cindi at the underwater mural, on what actually happened — Jamaal drew it, and the patients chose the colors and painted it in. Staff painted. Parents painted.
“Some of them said, ‘I'm just going to come in for five minutes, put my mark on the wall, and leave.’ The same kid would get so involved in the painting — and love it so much.”
Cindi Gianopoulos — at the wall, Shriners Children's Boston
Voices
Six clips · captions included · scroll →
