The Culture of Violence – The Myers Recreation Center Mural Project

Inspired by All Join Hands and the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program's work with crime victims, inmates, and young people over the last few years, in 2006 MAP embarked on a two-year program to create satellite-site murals in Philadelphia neighborhoods with the highest rates of violence. Entitled The Culture of Violence, the first satellite mural located at Myers Recreation Center (5800 Kingsessing Avenue), uncovered the effects of drugs and guns on Philadelphia's communities and its most troubled young people. Even though the obstacles in the lives of these youth sometimes function to separate them from their peers, with their vulnerability, idealism, and indecisiveness, these youth are like anyone their age. In order to grasp the causes (and possible solutions to) crime and violence, MAP believes communities must first come to terms with the individual complexities of young people's lives.

BARJ mural: "My Life, My Past, My Destiny" located in North Philadelphia at Lehigh Ave & Tulip St. Muralist: Cesar Viveros-Herrera

MAP's recent work with young offenders in the Balanced and Restorative Justice (BARJ) program—an initiative bringing men from the mural program at the State Correctional Institute (SCI) at Graterford, St. Gabriel's youth, crime victims, and their advocates to create one quarter-mile-long mural—sought to instill a firm understanding in these young men of the broader impact of their crimes. Through discussions and mural workshops with community members, victims of crime, and men from SCI-Graterford who could speak personally on the issue, St. Gabriel's youth were able to grasp the tangible, life-altering impact of violence on their community. And through the creation of public art they were able to manifest that understanding-making it a visible reality for North Philadelphia's diverse neighborhoods.

Images of "All Join Hands: The Culture of Violence;" Mural Location: Myers Recreation Center on 58th & Kingsessing; Muralist: Eric Okdeh; Assistants: Desiree Bender, Paul Downie & Derick Taylor. Funded by: Blueprint for a Safer Philadelphia, Ford Foundation, Peggy Diggs, & DHS.

Building off the relationships created in BARJ, MAP has explored the dramatic impact drug-dealing and gun violence has had on Philadelphia's youth. While violence is most often described in broad terms, as a problem affecting entire families, communities, and cities, crime affects each of us uniquely and unmistakably. Crucial to healing the wounds wrought by violent crime on the macro level is an understanding of how it affects individuals on the micro level. In BARJ, young offenders were asked to confront the consequences of their crimes; The Culture of Violence challenges both young people and community members in some of the most violent parts of the city to breakdown the issue of violence and to discuss the singular toll drugs and guns have taken on themselves and their neighborhood.

MAP has engaged many of the same stakeholders from BARJ and All Join Hands—including the men from SCI-Graterford, youth from St. Gabriel's Hall, Glen Mills School, and those enrolled in MAP's art education programs, as well as crime victims, community members, and adults from the Department of Human Services—in honest discussions on the impact of drug-dealing and gun violence. Participants were asked to explore the effects on the community when drug dealing becomes the occupation of choice and young people find security in the use of guns. MAP staff also asked them to consider what their lives would be like without these threats.

The key stakeholders in this first mural and the focus of its work were the young men from St. Gabriel's Hall and Glen Mills School who were coming out of residential placement. MAP welcomed these historically alienated youth and engaged them in a safe and exciting project focusing on their hopes and dreams. Given the increase in the level of violence, it is critical to work with those youth who are most vulnerable. Many of them experience isolated, chaotic family lives, lack positive role models, attend under-funded schools, and suffer from high rates of substance abuse and violent habits that form when despair sets in and there is little left to lose. But by engaging these youth in a large-scale mural project in many ways for and about themselves, MAP strives to break this cycle as it teaches these young participants citizenship, community engagement, a wide range of art and mural-making skills, and most importantly, a sense of empathy and accountability for the harm they have caused to themselves and their communities.

Through community meetings and workshop, these young men shared their own stories about the impact of drugs and gun violence with those of crime victims, community members, and men from SCI-Graterford. Using these narratives as a common thread, the youth developed relationships with these groups that step across crime's divide. With a sense of shared humanity, it is MAP's wish to inspire a moral compass in these young participants that can help reverse the cycle of violent crime and offer hope for a better life after detention. MAP believes that the more a young person reveals about their own lives, the more they can take responsibility for affecting others. In so doing, these youth strengthen a crucial part of themselves that had atrophied in the grip of violent crime. Through the aegis of the mural-making process, The Culture of Violence has provided youth a space for self-realization as artists, community members, and citizens, and offers them a chance to glimpse the forces that control their lives and the means to shape those forces rather than be shaped by them.