PHOTO | ASHLEY MAHONEY

Makayla Binter, a 2020 Emerging City Champion is spending her Knight Foundation fellowship on the West End Youth Mural, a collaboration that highlights a visual timeline of Historic West End as it relates to protest and perseverance of West Charlotte High School.

A mentorship program at West Charlotte High School will provide students with not just a space to voice their opinions, but the tools necessary to show what they experience on a daily basis.

Davidson College alumna Makayla Binter will lead the program as a 2020 Emerging City Champion, one of 20 fellows from across the country selected for this year’s class. The Knight Foundation fellowship serves as a micro-grant program for the next generation of civic innovators between the ages of 19-35.

Each champion receives $5,000 in seed funding, as well as a year of training to complete their project which will be implemented in September. Binter’s work is titled the West End Youth Mural, which will be a collaborative project highlighting a visual timeline of Historic West End as it relates to the history of protest and perseverance of West Charlotte High. West Charlotte students and other neighborhood residents will complete the project under the guidance of local artists.

Binter, who graduated Davidson in the spring, spent a lot of time with West Charlotte students as president of a direct mentorship program, DuBoisian World Scholars Society.

“I had been talking to West Charlotte students over the course of the last year, asking them what they would like to change about West Charlotte if they could, or the ideas they had to make it a better space,” Binter said. “A lot of them talked about image. They wanted to not only have more agency in what happened with the school, but for people to see that it is a great school, even though it is rarely recognized that way.”

Among the mentors will be Beatties Ford Strong organizer and Charlotte Lab School Upper School Planning Lead Ricky Singh. He helped organize two murals on Beatties Ford Road in honor of Jamaa Cassell, Christopher Gleaton, Kelly Miller and Dairyon Stevenson, who were killed in a mass shooting in June. “Beatties Ford Strong” was the first mural to go up at Niki’s Food Shop at 2200 Beatties Ford Road, followed by “West End” at 2020 Beatties Ford Road. The goal with the Beatties Ford Strong movement is to bring people together for active participation rather than mere input.

“It’s making sure that every stakeholder group has an opportunity to voice [their thoughts], but also has an equal opportunity to provide action,” Singh said. “I think that’s the balance. It’s not just ‘we want to hear your thoughts and opinions on a survey.’ We want you to be part of it. We want you to come out and paint with us. That’s what you saw at the ‘West End’ mural. You saw residents come out and pick up [paint] cans. You had everyone from J’Tanya Adams [of Historic West End] to Charles Thomas with the Knight Foundation to real estate moguls to people from the city of Charlotte picking up cans and painting. It goes from theory to action and practice.

“Yes, those surveys matter, and those town halls and panels matter, but are those same people going to be offered the opportunity to do the work? If the answer is yes to both of those, then you are actively building with each other and not for a group.

“We don’t need to speak for youth. The youth can speak for themselves. We just need to figure out a way to leverage and uplift their voice. We’ll be able to see that in Makayla’s project, as well as others that are coming.”

Binter painted the E in West in collaboration with Dammit Wesley, one of nine murals she has been involved in since the end of June. She spoke with others from the “West End” mural including Michael Grant (@infamous_kiddo) and DeNeer Davis (@neerperfection) about creating the art mentorship component.

Binter also hopes to bring neighboring Northwest School of the Arts, a magnet school on Beatties Ford Road and the former West Charlotte High site, in on the project.
“It would be a really great collaborative opportunity,” she said.  

For more information: https://emergingcitychampions.org/champion/makayla-binter

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