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A Home For All

A photograph of a bright and colorful mural with saturated colors and vibrant imagery. The mural depicts a gray water fed garden and a two story house with the facade removed allowing you, the viewer, into most of the intimate interior spaces. Some elements of accessible design are a large yellow and red ramp reminiscent of the helix ramp at ERC and low counters, a splash-friendly bathroom, dimmable lights, swivel spoons, and more.
A photograph of a bright and colorful mural with saturated colors and vibrant imagery. The mural depicts a gray water fed garden and a two story house with the facade removed allowing you, the viewer, into most of the intimate interior spaces. Some elements of accessible design are a large yellow and red ramp reminiscent of the helix ramp at ERC and low counters, a splash-friendly bathroom, dimmable lights, swivel spoons, and more.

A Home For All

A public community arts mural, “A Home For All,” was inaugurated at the Ed Roberts Campus on May 27, 2026. Projecting the inner workings of our building into the public’s eye, it represents what our consortium manifests—a vision of mutual flourishing. The process and design empowered the abundant belonging that participants experience in programming offered by Ala Costa Centers alongside the greater ERC Community of advocacy and direct services organizations.

The primary facilitators, Carmelo Castro Netsky and Julian Mithra, set the intention to honor Berkeley’s legacy in disability justice while engaging with a new generation’s clarion call for joy and rest. In winter and spring of 2025, we convened a series of open meetings with a core cohort of Ala Costa participants and a showing of employees, artivists, organizers, and neighbors to explore how a site-specific art piece could serve our building and community. How do we design an image of justice and accessibility for all?

Over six months of gentle conversations, we allowed accessibility and function to inform our production process and form. Intergenerational “disability in action” arose as a theme centering adults with IDD. After exploring the theme through play and discussion, we co-envisioned a Victorian house cutaway to reveal the intimate and vulnerable spaces that support a life of rest, artistic expression, activism, care, connection, beauty, and environmental sustainability. Sensitive to access needs for people with physical and mobility disabilities as well as neurodivergence and invisible disabilities, the house was nurtured into being.

Rather than simply depicting a representation of wide accessibility in a domestic setting, we opened our entire process to Ala Costa participants and the wider community. Our model of slow and risky collaboration developed from a commitment to finding ways that anyone could participate. Whether that was designing a poster to get the word out about a meeting or asking a store for donations or sawing a piece of plywood, community members powered each stage of production.

Murals do not solely beautify a neighborhood, however, but create openings for individuals to forge a sense of community through discourse and engagement. The City of Berkeley acknowledges the potential of public art to effect positive change beyond aesthetics. They believe that such connecting projects “bolster community, enhance the built environment, and reflect the unique character of our city.” Furthermore, honoring Berkeley’s unique legacy in the national disability rights movement ensures that such histories remain relevant in this moment of reactionary politics.