This post is part of a series about a mosaic mural project I'm working on with teens at a school in a 'disadvantaged' area of Rotterdam. I'll share with you what I'm experiencing and learning along the way.

Here it is, the end of day #2 with the kids. If you read last week's post, you'll know that there were 13 kids for the 1st session. Today there were about 10. Among the missing students was the girl who "promised" to come this week (see previous post). I'm not giving up on her just yet. She's welcome to come back if she so chooses...but the rest of us will move on. "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink".

So the kids who came today were amazing and achieved a lot. Today they prepared about 14 m2 (140 sft) of tiles, by no means a small feat. That meant soaking sheets of tile (by color) in buckets of warm water to loosen the tiles from the paper backing, draining the buckets, and drying the tiles with hairdryers before packing them back up in boxes. All that in 2 hours! They worked in teams of 2-4 students. Next week they get to move on to the "fun" part after finishing the last of the prep work. The fun part, of course, is laying tile and actually creating something.

Today 2 teams of student reporters covering our project came to interview me and to photograph and film the teens at work. And in 2 weeks' time they'll come back to photograph and video the progress.

As for the design, right now it looks like it will be a series of colorful, abstract panels that can hang either together or apart indoors (rather than outdoors). Ultimately, the design depends upon the kids, so next week we'll all know. As a little background, the school will be moving to a new building in about a year or two, so the panels also need to be moveable. And since I don't know what the new school's layout will be, the mosaic mural design needs to be flexible. The maximum size based upon the sponsored materials is a mural measuring 40 m2 (400 sft), but that, too, is dependent upon the kids and their ambitions. It might end up much smaller. Or maybe they'll go for the full size? It's their choice. Time will tell...

So what did I learn today? To stay flexible. And to continue to have several alternate plans up my sleeve. Luckily that was part of my job in my "previous" life in the fashion world, so I'm used to it. A number of things have changed since the inception of this project, due to various factors. And this project - which I add is 100% sponsored by fantastic companies to whom I am personally grateful and indebted - will no doubt continue to evolve. I see this as a good thing because it forces all of us to continue to be flexible and to stretch and grow.

The outcome of this project will be based upon what the kids want to make of it. And upon their own aspirations. Because ultimately, they determine their own futures, and the best we can do is to give them the tools and the encouragement. They decide the rest...