UNIVERSAL CITY : Kids Put Hopes for Future Into CityWalk Mural

Eleven-year-old David Aaronson of Encino doesn’t want people to simply look at the mural he helped paint at Universal CityWalk with 19 other children from throughout Los Angeles.

“I want people to learn from it,” Aaronson said as he stood next to the whimsical “Hope for the Future” mural, painted Tuesday on a wall of plywood that wraps around a building under construction near the entrance to CityWalk in Universal City. “We have a lot of crime and pollution and if we keep this up, there is no future.”

Aaronson is a member of K. I. D. Development, a nonprofit organization formed last year by graphic designer Dawna Stromsoe in response to what she described as a bombardment of negative images in the news, including crime, pollution, a bad economy and the AIDS epidemic. “As adults, we know that life is a cycle, that things go up and down,” Stromsoe said. “But little kids don’t know that.”

She said the goal of the mural project, which is the group’s first effort, was to encourage the 20 children, ages 5 to 13, to be creative about their dreams for the future. In monthly lunch meetings, the children gathered to discuss their ideas and sketch them on oversize artist pads.

They then turned their visions--such as a “people-mover city” with electric cars on every street and underwater scenes with no pollution--into brightly colored paintings, which were transferred to the wall.

The mural project, which cost about $35,000, was funded by MCA Development Co. and private donors. Organizers estimate that 6 million people will walk by the mural before it is taken down next year. K. I. D. Development plans to seek out other prominent sites to use as canvases in the future.