The Work Has Begun | Ya Empezó el Trabajo

Dear Friends,

I started at the Healthcare Foundation this past March. In the time since, I’ve gotten to watch the Healdsburg Multicultural Center project take shape in a way that’s stayed with me. I want to share what that has looked like.

I’ve sat in on Design Advisory Committee sessions and watched community members select the colors for the Center themselves. I’ve watched them sit across from our muralists, Jake Messing and Blanca Molina, sharing their stories, their experiences, what belonging in Healdsburg means to them, and then watched those stories become art. The exterior painting is now complete. Two weeks ago, the city council officially approved the murals. Now that same community spirit carries into its next chapter: the mural painting itself, with hands from across our community bringing these designs to life together.

Earlier this month, I attended the city council meeting where the murals were presented for approval. One of our Design Advisory Committee members, Ceci, spoke during public comment. She said she often brought her young daughter, curious and vocal, to this community space. She shared how proud she felt knowing that one day her daughter could walk through this space and know she had been part of shaping it. We were moved by the number of community members who showed up that day to voice their support. It meant so much to all of us at the Healthcare Foundation, Corazón Healdsburg, and the City to see that turnout.

Belonging is a word I hear constantly in this work. Said enough times, it can start to feel like jargon. But listening to Ceci that day, it stopped being a word and became something I recognized.

This past summer, I took my own daughter to Puerto Rico to visit family. The smell of the island air. Latin music drifting from cars on the road. Sunday afternoons at my grandmother’s house, ten conversations at once, everyone a little louder than an inside voice. Speaking Spanish, my first language, without translating it in my head first. All of it made me feel lighter. That is my belonging. It took working on this project, watching others find and name theirs, for me to recognize my own, and why I want to bring more of it into our home here, so my daughter understands that part of herself too.

That is what this project, which you can read more about in this month’s newsletter, is really about. Not just paint and design, but space for people to bring their whole selves and be seen.

As we move into the project’s next phases, I’m looking forward to the new voices and faces still to come, and to seeing Healdsburg show up in the vibrant, celebratory way that feels truly ours.

With gratitude,

Vanessa Miranda-Stewart
Community & Donor Engagement Specialist

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Visions of Belonging

City Council Approves New Murals for the Healdsburg Community Center

This month brought another joyful milestone in the evolution of the Healdsburg Multicultural Center: on September 8, the Healdsburg City Council approved two new murals for the Abel de Luna Community Center, following review by the City’s Arts & Culture Commission in July.

Created by artists Jake Messing and Blanca Molina, the murals grew directly from the community-led process shaping the Center. Both artists received support through Corazón Healdsburg’s Diversity in the Arts grant program, and their designs were developed through an iterative process with the project’s Design Advisory Committee, whose 15 members reflect a range of Healdsburg experiences and include voices often underrepresented in civic decision-making.

The two works offer distinct but complementary visions of belonging. Messing’s mural, developed in close collaboration with local youth, centers on weathered hands holding an abundant bouquet, surrounded by monarch butterflies, images evoking the dignity of labor, migration, resilience, renewal, and the deep relationship between people and the land. Molina’s vibrant, expansive mural draws together cacti, vineyards, poppies, marigolds, grapes, acorns, monarchs, local landmarks, children, agricultural workers, and other cultural imagery around the words, “Juntos, We Are Healdsburg.” A tree stretching across adjoining walls symbolizes the roots created through family, friendship, and shared experience. The two murals together reflect local history, agricultural heritage, cultural traditions, nature, and the many people who have made Healdsburg home.

In a statement to the City Council, Corazón Healdsburg described the murals as an essential part of the first phase of transforming the Center’s physical environment, noting, “The exterior painting and mural work are designed to…signal, visibly and boldly, that this is a place that belongs to everyone.” Even the creation of the artwork embodies that goal: community members will be invited to participate in painting the murals, making the finished works not just representative of the community but created along with it.

Read the Full Article (2 min read)

To learn more about the Healdsburg Multicultural Center project, visit the project’s page.

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