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GREENSBORO - A giant robot is causing trouble in downtown Greensboro, and it's up to a few wide-eyed kids to find out why. The story is told through a mural in an unusual place, the Church Street parking deck stairwell next to the main branch of the public library.

The Greensboro Library Arts Commission unveiled the project, "All City All Stars," Sunday in conjunction with the African American Atelier's celebration of the life and work of the late artist Eva Hamlin Miller. Miller was a prominent local artist and art advocate who co-founded the atelier in 1990 with state Rep. Alma Adams.

The atelier helped connect children with another local artist, Brittain Peck, to create the mural. Peck studied art at UNCG and has painted a mural for Bennett College. He drew inspiration from the lives of his young assistants, his own childhood and experiences he had while developing the mural.

"I guess that's the fun of making a story, there's definitely some messages I want to get across," Peck said. Chief among them is the idea that children can change the world and avoid the mistakes of the previous generation.

The story begins on the sublevel of the stairwell. A girl, dwarfed by the massive metallic feet she is standing on, pleads for help from her friends - the robot has stepped on her house. The story unfolds over the next four levels as the children work their way up the robot, encountering a range of evils he is responsible for, including pollution and greed.

All the while renderings of historic figures of social change sit in the background, ghosts of those who dared to challenge the status quo.

Harriet Tubman, the African American abolitionist. The Greensboro Four. The student who defied a rolling Chinese tank at Tiananmen Square.

"It gives the kids sort of a metaphor to overcome," Peck said of the robot. The robot is a metaphor for Peck's own obstacles as well, namely fighting for funding.

"It's kind of like the frustration we got going into the county commissioners last summer saying, 'Please don't cut our funding.'"

The mural touches on another social issue, diversity. The children's words are written in English and Spanish, and the children are painted several colors. Peck said he wishes the dialogue was written in 100 languages because he wanted to represent the diversity he knew growing up in Greensboro.

Kris Knight was excited to see the bright colors and Spanish in the stairwell when she took her two stepdaughters to the library.

"Any kind of education is important, especially because you wouldn't expect it in a stairwell," she said.

Knight also thinks the bright mural helps make the stairwell less scary and hopes it doesn't get vandalized.

Pat Levitin, chairwoman of the library arts commission, said the stairwell reeked of urine when they began work last summer. She and Peck kept that in mind as they selected paint and ways to protect the work.

Several video cameras are in the stairwell.

At the top of the stairwell, the children ask the robot to apologize for all he has done, to which he replies, "I can't change what I have done." Rather than feel defeated, the children float off, Peck points out, to be the change their world needs. He hopes it is a message children viewing his mural will take with them.

Contact J. Brian Ewing at 373-7351 or brian.ewing@news-record.com