About 25 wooden dragonflies now on view around Grand Rapids’ Heritage Hill neighborhood were designed by students from three Grand Rapids Public Schools. Their classroom-made work is part of a much larger community installation created for ArtPrize.
School News Network reported that the dragonflies can be seen in residents’ yards and outside businesses and community organizations across Heritage Hill. The official ArtPrize FAQ says the 2026 event runs from Sept. 18 through Oct. 3, placing the student-made pieces in a neighborhood-wide art festival.
A shared canvas in the classroom
At Innovation Central Middle School, art teacher Rory Tubbs introduced the project to students in grades six through eight. Participating schools received donated wooden dragonfly shapes, each measuring about two feet from wing to wing. Tubbs let students choose how to decorate them with paint, markers and crayons, offering some guidance while leaving room for their own ideas.
Students usually worked in small groups. At each table, about four classmates worked together on one donated wooden dragonfly, with different students decorating a wing, corner or another section. Some used lines and waves to build patterns; others added stars or varied shapes. The finished pieces showed several students’ decisions together on one surface.
Tubbs suggested patterns as a place to start, but did not prescribe a single design. Eighth-grader Justice Pearson said, “She just let us be creative.” The assignment gave classmates a common starting point while allowing each group’s dragonfly to take its own form.
Seventh-grader Leni Brown took a different approach when several classmates were sick on the day her group worked. She designed a dragonfly by herself, choosing its colors and adding polka dots, zigzags and other marks. Her artwork joined the same neighborhood display as the group projects.
The project also connected with students’ interests beyond that day’s lesson. Eighth-grader Carl Murray, who told the reporter he enjoys drawing and designing, said the experience might encourage him to try writing and illustrating a comic book again. His classmates’ designs, meanwhile, moved from tables in the art room to public-facing spots around Heritage Hill.
From a new school to a neighborhood gallery
Innovation Central was one of three Grand Rapids Public Schools invited to participate, alongside City High/Middle School and Coit Creative Arts Academy. Across the schools, students designed about 25 dragonflies. Several are displayed at Stonecastle Dentistry, at 455 Cherry St. SE, and others are along College Avenue SE between Cherry and Wealthy streets, according to School News Network.
For Tubbs, accessibility was part of the project’s appeal. She said the activity let general-education students and students with special needs collaborate in the same art project. The invitation gave Innovation Central students a way to contribute to a neighborhood that was still relatively new to their school.
Innovation Central moved from Riverside Middle School to its current Heritage Hill campus in 2025 as part of a district facilities plan. Tubbs told School News Network that adjusting to the new location had been challenging in some ways. She said taking part in the dragonfly project helped the school feel more connected to the surrounding community.
A neighborhood project with room for young artists
The students’ work joins hundreds of dragonflies created by residents, families, businesses and other community members. Heritage Hill Association board member Denise Cook said the designs draw on the neighborhood’s history of growth, rejuvenation and renewal. The student pieces add their own colors and patterns to that larger project.
The official ArtPrize listing names the wider project “Heritage Hill Dragonflies: A Collective Flight” and classifies it as an installation in the Heritage Hill neighborhood. That event record places the students’ work within a larger public project, alongside the hundreds of designs described in School News Network’s reporting.
When ArtPrize ends Oct. 3, the students’ dragonflies are expected to return to them, Cook told the reporter. Until then, the pieces remain on display around the neighborhood. Students can see their work encountered by neighbors and visitors, while the community gets to include young artists in a project built from hundreds of separate ideas.
The dragonflies give students a visible role in a festival taking place around their school. One group shared each wing and corner; another student designed a piece on her own. Together, those artworks make the broader installation feel less like a collection of objects and more like a record of the people who helped create it.
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