HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) — This week is National Arts in Education Week, and News 8 is highlighting a nonprofit group bringing the arts to Hartford public schools.

It is called Hartford Performs, and the artists they use end up teaching more than just art.

A colorful mural outside McDonough Middle School was not just done by a teacher, or an artist, or by students. It was done by students working with a teaching artist. In this program, an artist is paired with a class for weeks at a time.

“The kids do self-directed projects," Rie Poirier-Campbell, executive director for Hartford Performs, said. "They decided that they wanted to do a mural. They decide what they want it to look like. They decided on the colors. They decide on how it’s going to appear.”

Hartford Performs has been bringing

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