Change Ignites Art
This global pandemic amplified systemic inequities. With masks on, calls for change were shouted into megaphones and pasted on walls across our city. Art became a tool for organizing and connection, a way to encapsulate and motivate the moment.
Even in the midst of a virus, economic uncertainty, and nationwide uprising against systemic racism, our work continued in lockstep with the challenges our communities face. It turns out that what we’ve known all along—that art ignites change—isn’t the end. Change ignites art. And in a year of extreme change, art became a key component of navigating this new normal together.
This year is nearly in our rear-view, but its impacts will reverberate for many years to come. And through the fog of chaos, the moments of light that brought us together, sparked by art, burn bright and boundless.
Congratulations and thanks to all who put forward an immense effort to maintain programs and community engagement while managing the difficulties this year presented. You are incredible.
For an organization that does most of its work on the ground and in the community, working from home was a radical shift in the ways we do things. Homeschool with Mural Arts rolled out within a few days of making the transition. With so much uncertainty and anxiety caused by the pandemic, we knew that access to art and developing a regular arts practice would be essential to helping people cope.
With more than 40 videos (and counting!), Homeschool with Mural Arts features a wide range of skill sets and practices. These 10-30 minute videos offer kids and adults arts instruction to flex their creative brains and create some beauty from the comfort of their home.
With everyone stuck at home or limiting their travels in the city to the bare essentials, we knew folks would be missing their regular arts fix. Soon after the stay-at-home orders arrived, Murals on the Fly took off! Since March, 30 of our most iconic murals have been brought right to your door, narrated by our experienced tour guides and local celebrities on never-before-seen drone footage.
While we were transitioning much of our work to a digital space, we knew there was still lots of work to do on the ground. Partnering with Broad Street Ministry, we collaborated with artists to install murals along with handwashing stations throughout the city. The murals offer guidelines from the Center for Disease Control for staying safe and healthy during the pandemic, as well as resources for those who may not have a home to stay safe within, and affirmations for Philadelphians who may need an extra boost.
This project highlights the larger, ongoing issues of homelessness and public health that many Philadelphians live with every day—and offered a place to keep clean and healthy as the pandemic tore through the city.
- Nile Livingston
- Dora Cuenca
- Symone Salib
- NDA
- Broad Street Ministry
- Independence Foundation
Seeming more like an existential crisis than a physical one (why not both?), we were, and still are forced into the reality that we cannot even pass near a stranger in the grocery store without worrying for our health and the health of our loved ones. The guidelines to remain six feet apart are simple to understand, but difficult to implement.
Space Pads, temporary vinyl floor tiles set at six foot intervals were designed by local Philadelphia artists. The brightly-colored tiles, designed in sets of five or ten, are a mix of abstract patterns, affirmations like “we got this,” and some proffer health guidelines like “wash your hands” and, the very literal, “stand six feet apart.”
Mural Arts has provided over 5,000 Space Pads for grocery stores, pharmacies, small markets, mini marts, small independent grocers, food distribution sites, food pantries, emergency meal service sites, and City of Philadelphia Department of Public Health sites.
- City of Philadelphia
- Partnership for Healthy Cities
- Philadelphia Department of Public Health
Shortly after the pandemic began, community members began approaching us with ideas for how to contribute to COVID relief efforts. The Porch Light team worked with local women at the Southeast by Southeast program to make face masks for the Philadelphia community. Thanks to a partnership with the Nationalities Service Center, the project has grown to include 20 women.
With everyone still stuck at home craving new content, we set forth to launch our very own podcast. The Art Ignites Change podcast, produced by Conrad Benner of Streets Dept, takes deep dives into the stories behind the projects, programs, and people of Mural Arts.
As COVID-19 set into sharp relief the inequalities in our communities, muraLAB: Art in Action examined how socially-engaged art can help us develop better strategies for dealing with broad systemic issues. Hosted by the Mural Arts Institute, the series gave artists the space to talk about how they use their artistic practice to create art that makes an impact amid COVID-19.
As storefronts shut down and our local hot spots took on a whole new meaning, we saw yet another opportunity to parse beauty from chaos. The plywood boards that protected Center City storefronts, painted black by the Center City District, become home to 28 art pieces by 12 different artists, bringing life back to underutilized and empty streets. Working with a wide range of artists, we commissioned the Center City Storefront Artwork Initiative, creating a miniature eye-level gallery to complement Mural Arts’ larger-than-life collection of permanent works.
- Center City District
- City of Philadelphia
These show-stopping pieces by Hagopian Arts featured inspiring florals and affirmations to empower the community to keep our chins up during these trying days.
For years, Mural Arts engaged the community about the fate of this controversial mural. After the events of the summer and the rising racial tensions, we could no longer, in good conscience, be associated with the Frank Rizzo mural. The mural did not support healing, but had become a painful reminder of the former Mayor’s legacy.
We knew painting out the Frank Rizzo mural wasn’t where our work ended. We’ve been working towards racial justice for years but we knew there was more to be done. As always, we asked “where does art play a role?”
The art world, particularly the fine art world, has been historically shut off to Black artists, suffering from the same systemic racism and inequity that much of our society trades in. That meant that as our communities shut down to protect themselves from COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter uprising roared on, Black artists needed more support than ever.
The Philadelphia Fellowship for Black Artists is designed to fund, foster and elevate the important work of Black artists. Launched as a new annual initiative, the 2020 Fellowship offered twenty artists $1,000 each to support their craft—or just buy some groceries.
- Ginger Rudolph, HAHA Magazine
- Noah Smalls, Rush Arts Philadelphia
- Conrad Benner
- City of Philadelphia
The Emerge PSA campaign began as a project focused on resilience, public health, and safety during the coronavirus pandemic, and evolved along with the summer’s events to address the systemic racism plunging our country into continued uprisings. In 9 original PSAs, fellows from our Guild program explored the question “How will we emerge?”
Fostering inspiration and hope, the Emerge campaign shines a light on the innate strength and resilience of people of color as they are challenged by both pandemics: COVID-19 and police brutality.
- Various
- City of Philadelphia
- Hess Foundation
- Fill the Walls with Hope
- The Enterprise Center
- DTLR VILLA
- Tattooed Mom
- South Street Headhouse District
- WURD Radio
- iHeartMedia
Throughout the month of June, as both the pandemic and the protests were at their summer peaks, Mural Arts collected photos from people throughout the city (and the world!) for a new, entirely digital mural Philly Rising. When the global pandemic and calls for racial justice catalyzed our communities to uplift each other, Philly rose.
As the summer months stretched ahead of us with continued social distancing, stay at home orders, and closed camps and public spaces, families were in desperate need of creative at-home programming. Murals on the Move, our mobile artmaking studio, brought high quality art education and community mural-making to Playstreets across the city.
Throughout July and August, Murals on the Move is offered fun and educational art activities to keep children engaged, thinking, and expressing their creativity during stressful times. Kids got the option to choose from three different activities: Mural Mobile Kit, Activity Books, and Ground Murals, any of which could be finished onsite or brought home to complete later.
Mural Mobile Kit provided participants with everything they need to create their own small-scale mural using the same tools as Mural Arts artists. Each kit included instructions (of course), paint supplies, and a square of parachute cloth pre-printed with designs inspired by Mural Arts’ Hope Medallions.
Activity Books were more than a standard coloring book and included drawing exercises to enhance arts skills and knowledge. These books came with a set of five colored pencils.
Ground Murals were socially-distanced mini-murals. The mural outlines were installed on the pavement and each family had the opportunity to color and embellish the designs to create a trail of community-driven beauty.
- Chase
- City of Philadelphia
- Jane & Joe Goldblum
- Dr. & Mrs G.S. Peter Gross
- Philadelphia Parks & Recreation
- Knight Foundation
- The Partnership for Healthy Cities
- Philadelphia Health Department
- Resolve Philadelphia
- Vital Strategies
Stay Golden activates the community in Strawberry Mansion, harnessing the radical energy in the city and around the country by commemorating the powerful spirit of Black and Brown people. The phrase “stay golden” is reflective of the unifying usage of the color gold in African Diasporic communities.
- Gerald A Brown
- Roberto Lugo
- Isaac Scott
- City of Philadelphia
We launched our first-ever virtual tours as a way to enjoy our beautiful outdoor gallery from the comfort of your home! Video footage of our murals, artist and tour guide commentary coalesce for a seamless virtual experience. We also hit the streets again–socially distanced, of course–for our iconic walking tours of the Mural Mile in Center City.
For Mural Arts Institute’s new round of capacity-building funding, we chose three new regions that are developing community-based public art projects that tackle resilience as climate change continues to shift environment. Resilience isn’t simply about being able to “bounce back” after a challenge, but also about using adapting challenges as an opportunity to become stronger. The need for communities to adapt to the impact of climate change allows them to build on their strengths, improving their overall quality of life and creating a more sustainable future. Critical to this are social cohesion and trust, collaborative civic participation and leadership, equitable access to resources, strong formal and informal networks, cross-sector partnerships, and inclusive and diverse civic spaces. These are precisely the outcomes that Mural Arts has seen from its work with diverse communities throughout Philadelphia and is bringing to Austin, TX; Santa Fe, NM; and Kern County, CA.
In response to the ongoing protests supporting Black Lives Matter, Russell Craig reinvisioned Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix. In Craig’s version, the allegory of liberty is represented by a Black woman who is surrounded by Black Lives Matter iconography. Together, the figure of liberty supported by a crowd of masked protestors, comes together as a reminder of the plagues that still loom over us as we fight for justice.
Boat People finds space between immigration, displacement, and colonization to honor those who have migrated to Philadelphia, whether voluntarily or not. This bright, geometric mural is a testament of human’s ability to persevere and adapt, and celebrates the diversity and culture brought to Philadelphia by immigrants and refugees.
This year saw the culmination of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Artist-in-Residence program. The first partnership of its kind in the nation brought in formerly incarcerated artist James “Yaya” Hough to humanize people living and working within systems of criminal justice by cultivating relationships and connections through his artmaking.
The final series, titled Points of Connection, is as meaningful for the process as it is for the resulting work. Despite COVID distances and shutdowns, Hough built meaningful relationships with people from several overlapping circles – formerly incarcerated people, victims’ advocates, and members of the District Attorney’s office – to paint them in portraits and discuss together what justice means to them. These portraits, and the conversations that spurred them, provided a window into the larger system, person by person, to approach criminal justice from perspectives of transformation, repair, and growth.
- James “Yaya” Hough
- Art for Justice Fund
- Fair and Just Prosecution
- Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office
This year’s election may have been the most crucial turning point in our country’s history. To the Polls featured six large-scale temporary murals created by Philadelphia-based artists in LOVE Park to reinforce the importance of exercising your most basic civic duty–and right–to vote.
The installation also featured a Voting Station for the Disenfranchised, which collected ballots from those who can’t legally vote to highlight that more than 1/4 of the US population cannot vote – with the largest demographic of that population being young people. This installation amplified the voices of young people by collecting artwork from students in our Art Education classes and lifted the voices of others who are barred from voting like undocumented people, residents of US territories like Puerto Rico, and those currently and formerly incarcerated.
In the weeks leading up to the election, Pennsylvania reported record-breaking voter registration numbers, with over 9 million Pennsylvanians registered to vote ahead of the deadline.
COVID is still going strong so we teamed up with the city to turn some of our most iconic murals into public health messages by adding temporary masks to the beloved portraits.
Trash Academy, a project of Mural Arts’ Environmental Justice department, believes that those who are most impacted by environmental challenges are the ones who must be at the forefront of crafting solutions. We use art and creativity as a vehicle to change both our communities and how they are perceived, while complicating the issue of trash.
The ‘implosion’ is a unique and fascinating research method for exploring hidden connections and complexities, developing concrete, situated knowledge, and helping us to understand the world as it is rather than as it is perceived. Trash Academy’s plastic bag implosion visualizes the way in which plastic bags “live” in the world around us, and the world “lives” in plastic bags.
- Surdna Foundation
- PTS Foundation
- FAO Schwarz Family Foundation
Curated by artist Jesse Krimes, Rendering Justice is an expansive examination of mass incarceration and an unflinching depiction of contemporary America. The artworks are part of Mural Arts Philadelphia’s Reimagining Reentry program, which creates opportunities for formerly incarcerated artists to create public art. Works included feature varied responses to the displacement of bodies and revocation of autonomy entailed in incarceration. The works affirm how artists maintain a sense of identity, regain their agency, and grapple with coercive forces until—and after—they reenter society. You can interact with all of the artworks and enjoy video interviews with the artists online.
- Various
- Art for Justice Fund
- City of Philadelphia
- National Endowment for the Arts
- The African American Museum in Philadelphia
In the most important election many of us have seen in our lifetimes, we want to encourage as many people to vote as possible. These eye-catching temporary murals make that call to action hard to ignore.
- Faust & Shepard Fairey
In the most important election many of us have seen in our lifetimes, we want to encourage as many people to vote as possible. These eye-catching temporary murals make that call to action hard to ignore.
- Faust & Shepard Fairey
The result of numerous community meetings in North Philadelphia neighborhoods over 2019-2020, The Viaduct was a monumental effort and collaboration between artists and community leaders to turn three heavily-traveled underpasses into safe and vibrant spaces for all. The designs are reflective of the strength and resilience of surrounding neighborhoods and pay homage to the complexity, history and beauty of the community, portrayed in bright, abundant colors to demonstrate the power of accomplishing together what we cannot do alone.
History In The Present Moment (I AM), Procession, Portals of Progress & Play designed by artists Patrick Dougher and Josh Sarantitis calls attention to the divine nobility, royalty and spirituality of the local community.
Diamonds in the Rough designed by Andrea Legge of the design firm Legge Lewis Legge was directly inspired by themes and conversations with members of the community, in particular, two statements: “We are diamonds in the rough,” and “It takes pressure to make a diamond.”
Our Neighborhood: Growth, Unity, Abundance, and Love by Priscilla Bell and Anthony Torcasio is focused on community, abundance and growth aimed to portray the pivotal strengths that exist with the community.
Inspired by the structures of the city – the highway above it and the iconic Ben Franklin bridge, Electric Philly brings light to our darkest spaces and reminds us that we all have the power to create beauty in a harsh world.
Between the larger colorful shapes and stripes that suggest the steel structures, one sees views of the city, including the center city skyline, Northern liberties, Old City, and St Augustine’s church. Running parallel to the ground, long horizontal stripes that slowly change color suggest the blur of traffic on 6th Street.
Light of the Northeast is a design collaboration between Paul Santoleri and Abdul Karim Awad. The design, centered on the figure of the Statue of Liberty, pays tribute to the meaning of liberty: that we are free to love–each other, our ideas, ourselves, the place we live, and the place we came from.
The band of the Statue’s crown features the word “love” translated into 25 languages and painted by Awad as a frieze tribute to the Freedom Monument, a prominent and beloved piece of public art in Baghdad by Jawad Saleem.
The building where the mural is installed is formerly a Singer factory, and has a tower on the left hand side. Paul Santoleri created a glass mosaic torch for this tower.