Look Look六六 at 667
Look Look六六 at 667
Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco x Jean Parker Elementary × Lian Yung
Look Look六六 at 667 collaborates with 4th and 5th graders from Jean Parker Elementary to create a new mural on Grant Avenue, Chinatown!
At CCC, we believe public art is most powerful when the community shapes the art. Over four months of in-class workshops with lead artist Lian Yung, 4th and 5th graders from Jean Parker Elementary build skills in drawing, collaboration and creative expression. They explore who they are and where they come from, and then design a mural together. Their artwork and ideas will inspire a 300-square-foot mural on the facade of 667 Grant, to be unveiled in May 2027. The unveiling will celebrate youth voice, neighborhood pride and belonging across generations.
This is our second collaboration with Jean Parker Elementary, a Chinatown public school serving a diverse community of students, many of them newcomers and English learners from immigrant families. In our last project together, students visited Dragon Seed, Chinatown’s traditional qipao maker, and designed their own wearable cheongsams (長衫).
We invite you to follow along as Chinatown’s youngest artists show us how they see their neighborhood, and how they want the world to see it too.
About the name: Look Look六六 at 667 plays on 六 (luk6), Cantonese for “six,” and on 667 Grant Avenue, CCC’s home in the heart of the neighborhood.
Our Co-Creation Process
1. Building trust The project begins with a Chinatown History & Art Tour to introduce students to the neighborhood’s stories, followed by playful icebreakers and collaborative drawing sessions. These first sessions help students turn curiosity into trust, and practice sharing ideas and respecting each other’s opinions, the foundation for designing a mural together.
2. Exploring identity Students design avatars to represent themselves, drawing on the places, stories and objects that matter to them. Through guided questions, they connect their everyday lives to the bigger world around them.
3. Designing together Students move from individual work to teamwork, planning and creating a large-scale paper mural as a group.
4. Connecting with community Students meet the neighbors who make Chinatown what it is. Through a community engagement session, elders, merchants, residents, and visitors share their stories and wishes for the next generation, and students share what they’ve been creating. At Jean Parker Art Night in December 2026, students showcase their paper murals to families and the wider community. Lian then draws from the students’ work and the community’s input to develop the final mural design.
5. Bringing it to the public In spring 2027, Lian brings the design to life on the facade of 667 Grant. The project ends with a public unveiling during AAPI Heritage Month.
Meet the team
Lian Yung, Lead Artist
Lian Yung is a San Francisco-based artist who meshes machines and biology together by creating large-scale acrylic paintings about chaos, longing, and the difficulty in finding a place where one truly belongs. As a Chinese Puerto Rican woman, her work touches on the search for, and desire for, community. By creating her work, Lian creates a new world that she can exist in and that others can connect to and join. It is through her art that she has discovered serenity within ambivalence. Lian graduated from Harvey Mudd College in 2022 with a BS in Mathematical and Computational Biology, then worked at Stanford for a year in a biotech research lab before pursuing art. She is a self-taught artist but attributes her work to the help of numerous communities in San Francisco and her family. Lian is currently at CCA obtaining an MFA in Painting and will graduate in the spring of 2027.
Lily Chen, Visual Arts Teacher, Jean Parker Elementary Lily Chen has been an educator at Jean Parker School for 17 years. She taught kindergarten and 1st grade for many years, and in 2023, she switched roles and became the visual arts teacher. Lily was an art major in college but went into teaching because she was looking for a way to serve the Chinatown community. So, switching to an art teacher role felt like a full-circle moment; she is able to share her love for the arts while still utilizing her experience and skills as a classroom teacher. She feels very fortunate to stay at Jean Parker School, a community she loves and cares for so deeply.
Jean Parker Elementary Jean Parker is a Community School, and we are committed to the Community School approach: shared decision-making, rigorous real-world learning, resources to support the whole child and family, and extended learning opportunities so each child and family thrives and knows they belong. We are grounded by our Core Values: Joy, Relationships, Self-Worth, and Solidarity. We strive to live out these Core Values every day.
More from CCC’s youth and school programs
Artists in School at Jean Parker: CCC’s intergenerational, community-rooted program combining art education, cultural heritage and lived experience. In a past edition, each student designed their own wearable cheongsam (長衫).
Demons Yearbook 鬼怪教室: an art education project with San Francisco high schools that amplifies youth voices and challenges dominant narratives about power, identity and survival in the city.
Supporters
Supported by: Community Challenge Grant Martin Wong Foundation
Additional Support: Grants for the Arts CCC Contemporaries.
Questions? Email art@cccsf.us
