Posted on Sun, Oct. 12, 2008
Jane Golden
is executive director of Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program
Hope is believing in spite of the evidence and then watching the evidence change.
Children and police are being gunned down on our streets. The economy is pushing ordinary people to the brink. One-fifth of all juveniles in the nation serving life terms in prison with no possibility of parole are here in Pennsylvania. Trust is scarce and blame is rampant. And yet, I have hope.
I hope, not just in spite of the evidence, but because for 25 years we have engaged in changing the evidence. Programs developed and managed by the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program generate change through a collaborative creative process that has touched more than 25,000, including children and youths, community leaders and organizers, adults and youths convicted of crimes, corrections officials, victims of violent crime.
Our impact spans the city and has spread to Belfast, Paris, Hanoi and beyond.
Race, class, violence, gentrification, immigration - the conversations that consume our nation today happen daily in meetings convened by the Mural Arts Program. We turn these dialogues into tangible works of public art.
It is never easy. Yet when people shift their perspectives so that they finally understand someone else's reality, the work moves from arduous to inspiring. Those moments of profound change are really the essence of what we do.
During this, our 25th anniversary year, we at the Mural Arts Program can point to a growing body of more than 3,000 works of public art that include murals, frescoes, mosaics, sculptures, gardens and exciting new multimedia ventures. Each artwork symbolizes a journey taken by a community of people, an artist, and the collective faith that we can change things for the better.
When we challenge people to work together, we push them to think about problems from different angles. Then we create the space and the means for them to envision something new. The results are literally dreams made visible as art.
These community-driven public artworks live on in our neighborhoods - loved and protected, rarely defaced.
They say to the world: We are more than you think, stronger than we knew, more powerful together than divided.
As I look ahead to the next quarter-century, I have even greater hope.
We're finding exciting new approaches to the transformative process of public art. We're incorporating music, recorded storytelling, photo light boxes and theater. We're creating gateway projects for the city at the airport, 30th Street Station, and along the train routes that pass through North Philadelphia.
Our reach is expanding along with our media. In addition to a rigorous art-education program for 3,000 youths each year, we now offer programs in 25 schools and five prisons; inside Family Court; at the Youth Study Center; in partnerships with the Department of Human Services and the Department of Behavioral Health.
We're involving new neighborhoods and people who urgently need the validation and healing that art-making provides. Our programs promote restorative justice and address the stigma of mental illness, the blight of drug addiction, and the struggle between new immigrants and longstanding city residents.
Often, people want to judge murals like art hanging in a museum. As we continue in Mural Arts Month, let me offer you a different approach:
Recently, scientists used advanced X-ray technology to look through the surface of paintings by some of history's great artists. They found many hidden images, including the face of a woman underneath a landscape by Vincent van Gogh.
I invite you to take a new look at the community art for which Philadelphia has become famous. See underneath the surface and imagine the faces of all the people who are speaking to you, sharing their dignity and dreams, their pain and their pride.
Then, take the next step. Get involved in your neighborhood. Hold your leaders accountable. Transcend passivity and judgment. Find a way to participate in some form of healing action.
Not only will our city be a better place, but I promise that you will feel transformed as well.
E-mail Jane Golden at jane.golden@phila.gov or visit www.muralarts.org.
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