Mural use in enhancing outdoor education : incorporating a mural into the classroom at the Juanita Hults Environmental Learning Center

The Juanita Hults Environmental Learning Center has been owned by Ball State University for nearly thirty years. The property consists of a farmstead and a variety of ecosystems, including wetland, forest, and tallgrass prairie. Local school groups take field trips to Hults, where they participate in hands-on nature activities and games led by their teachers and Ball State students and faculty. Activities mostly encourage outdoor exploration and discovery, but an indoor classroom (located in the farmhouse) is available as well. When I visited Hults for the first time, I saw a lot of unused potential in the indoor classroom space, which had plenty of materials for outdoor education but little organization or child-friendly atmosphere. I decided to transform the space by painting a mural on one of the walls. In this paper I discuss the creative process of designing and implementing the mural, as well as its projected usefulness in outdoor education at Hults.