Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia Celebrates 25 Years

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In a city struggling to overcome tension between cops and residents amid daily reports of violent-crime deaths, can some paint on a wall really make a difference?

Jane Golden, executive director of Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program, says yes. So do the thousands of Philadelphians who have taken part in creating one of the nearly 3,000 murals that color the city of brotherly love. It’s not only public art, but a visible transformation of the people and communities who’ve created them.

A group that has done just that gathered at the 22nd and 23rd District police station in North Philadelphia in late October to dedicate a new mural created with the “Kids and Cops” portion of the Mural Arts program. Patterned sunlight filtered through the trees in front of the station over the colorful mural, featuring police officers and children of various ethnic backgrounds.

“Remember one thing,” said Khayla Lowe, assistant program manager for Cops and Kids, to the crowd gathered at the dedication. “Ignorance grows in stagnant places and if we allow ourselves to remain stagnant, we become ignorant.”

The Philadelphia Anti Graffiti Network, started by Mayor W. Wilson Goode in 1984, worked with young graffiti writers to start creating murals instead of gang tags. Jane Golden joined the program, which was moved to the Department of Recreation and became the Mural Arts Program. Since then, murals have spread across the city. The Philadelphia Eagles, Al Gore, and even Prince Charles have stopped by to pick up a brush. Youth from Dublin worked with Philly teens to create a mural and Vietnamese artists have visited to learn how to replicate the program in their cities. The Mural Arts Program works with prisons, shelters, and youth who are chronically truant or in juvenile detention or residential programs.
 
The famous “Peace Wall” mural in Grays Ferry, South Philadelphia was created after violence occurred in the neighborhood against a black family by a group of whites. The tension and anger resulted in black and white residents working together at community meetings that went beyond simply planning a mural to tackling deeper neighborhood issues and building relationships. The painting, featuring hands of all skin tones, is one of Golden’s favorites.

“Art is a connector,” Golden told the group gathered in front of the precinct, dispelling the idea of some people who “think art is frivolous. We see profound impact… two groups whose paths may not have crossed, crossed and connected in peace…that’s what we want for our community, our city.”
 
Damaso explained the system they used for creating the mural. “Some of us did little sections, we used a cloth that we put on the table,” he said, with a sort of paint-by-numbers process aided by muralist Cesar Viveros.

The Cops and Kids program brought together police officers with youth for a series of workshops addressing stereotypes, racism and classism along with the creation of the mural now brightening the precinct.

“When we started, [there was] so much hostility with young people and the police,” says Officer Denise Dixon, who took part in the workshops. “Kids gave the cops an “F” rating on how they were doing in their role.”

“The problem was communication and respectability,” says Dixon. “When the ice is broken, [they] see us as human beings and not as a uniform carrying a gun. Now the kids wave and say hello, and are a lot better now when approached by police, because of the relationships and the understanding of broader public safety contexts, along with being educated on their own rights.

The police “broadened [their] horizons as well,” in having to overcome challenging topics, says Dixon.

“The question that got me,” says 20-year old Damaso Gallman, who received a one hundred dollar stipend for completing the program, “was that Officer Dixon wanted to know male teens’ mentality for their future. I thought about that, and thought ‘you know what, I gotta keep doing something,’” to plan for a future.

Gallman is attending the Community College of Philadelphia, hoping to major in business. Did his attitude toward police change since going through the workshops?
“It changed, like I come to them now, I can talk to them as one of my friends,” he says.

It’s a drop in the paint bucket for the mural arts program, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and hosting a year’s worth of tours, paint days, and events in Philadelphia.

This story is filed under: Arts & Culture