Mural Arts on TODAY

This morning Mural Arts Philadelphia was featured in a segment on NBC’s TODAY show. Correspondent Craig Melvin and Mural Arts executive director Jane Golden visited Waring Elementary School and a handful of murals around Philadelphia to have a look at how Mural Arts Philadelphia has changed the aesthetics of the city while promoting arts education at the same time.

What always amazes me about Mural Arts Philadelphia is how many different projects are going on. Yes, there are lots of murals and those are the most visible part of the program, but in some ways they are a means to an end. Mural Arts is about so much more than simply putting up beautiful murals. There are projects that focus on arts education, restorative justice and ecology. As Jane Golden comments in the segment, “We say that murals could be a catalyst for positive social change.” I’m glad Melvin saw that and made his visit about more than just paint on walls, highlighting some of the great work that Mural Arts Philadelphia does with kids too.

Hopefully this piece shows the transformative power of public art and arts education to people in communities that might not have thought too much about it before. Mural Arts Philadelphia is the largest public art program of its kind in the country right now, but a little competition couldn’t hurt.

And on a more personal level, I’m pumped that my friends HOW and NOSM got a brief shot of their Mural Arts mural in the segment about 1 minute and 10 seconds in and had to crack a smile at Melvin’s term “spray can street artists.”