Making the visual arts program meaningful in public education can be a challenge when one considers how little instructional time is devoted to the visual arts. A challenge for art educators is to seek opportunities outside the classroom for real-life inquiry-based projects. This form of systematic inquiry done by teachers for themselves is called action research. By using an action research model to conduct a qualitative study, students are presented with real-life problems via authentic instruction. The problems educators pose should speak about issues of social justice and human values, making the meaning of the art object something beyond itself. The observational study through qualitative action research methodology described in this article was designed to provide the opportunity to implement collegial collaboration and disabled student inclusion in the art classroom across 6th- to 8th-grade levels through participation in mural production. The study also allowed for collaboration between the public school and the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford (UPB) to broaden connections outside the confines of the school art curriculum. (Contains 2 figures.)