Case Study

The Unity Council

Latino activists from several organizations joined forces in 1964 to form The Unity Council with the purpose of having a stronger, collective voice for their unrepresented community in Oakland, California. In 2013, newly appointed CEO, Chris Iglesias, approached The Grove to develop a visual timeline of The Unity Council's 50-year history. Information was gathered from written history and through facilitated storytelling sessions with The Unity Council's founders, board members, leaders, and staff. Major milestones, key people, and themes came out in these sessions. The overall comprehensiveness of the services that The Unity Council has provided over the years—in leadership development, education and employment, economic development, and so on—was depicted as a braid of hair, and in so doing, recognized the women that have led The Unity Council.

To develop art for the mural, The Grove collaborated with members of the Oakland community—muralist Ray Patlan, his student Morgan Valdivieso, and an Americorps member, Ricardo “Panda” Fuentes—to brainstorm ideas, draw concepts and eventually paint the final artwork. Ray Patlan's imagery suggestions helped bring the story to life; for example, a hummingbird to represent founder Arabella Martinez, and the quetzal, a bird notable in Mayan history, to represent the organizational surge that has taken place in recent years. Throughout its trail-blazing 50 years The Unity Council has grown from a volunteer organization to a model organization of community-development work. It currently serves approximately 12,000 people per year.