Programs

Mural Arts’ award-winning art education and youth development programs give students pride in their own capabilities as artists and activists while presenting opportunities that many young people are too frequently denied. These programs annually provide 1,600 underserved Philadelphia youth with access to quality art education and youth development experiences through mural-making. Professional artists serve as teachers and mentors and provide a positive environment where students gain art-making, community organizing, and leadership skills. Mural Arts offers three distinct art education programs: Big Picture, serving youth ages 10-14; Mural Corps, a more intensive program serving teens ages 14-21; and ArtWorks!, serving severely at-risk or underserved youth. These programs offer a sequential curriculum that enables students to build on their previous work, nurture deeper connections with their peers, mentors, and communities, and to contribute to art exhibitions and professional mural and public art projects.

The Mural Arts Program includes members of the community in every step of the mural-making process, from selecting a theme to collaborating on a design, to creating the mural and celebrating its completion. Because of this extensive community engagement process, neighborhood murals become a living part of the community long after the project is completed. Many of murals actually start as requests from communities through the mural request form.

We strive to have our mural projects represent collaboration. The mural-making process builds lasting community relationships, bringing together people whose paths might otherwise never have crossed. When diverse community members have joined together to promote the community, the finished mural celebrates their collective creative force.

Not all of the Mural Arts Program's masterpieces end up on six-story walls. Mural Arts works with muralists, art education students, and partner organizations to curate and display a series of exhibitions each year that reflect the organization's projects, programs, and mission. Utilizing a spectrum of traditional and innovative venues, media, and topics, Mural Arts' exhibitions continue the dialogue about existing projects and initiate new conversations about its core themes of art, education, community, and justice for the public to enjoy.

The Mural Arts Program incorporates the concept of justice involving victims, offenders and the community in the healing process, as an alternative to incarceration and revenge, into art instruction, mural making and community service work within the criminal justice system. Inmates, ex-offenders and juvenile delinquents are afforded the opportunity to learn new skills and make a positive contribution to their communities to repair the prior harm they may have caused. These programs emphasize re-entry, reclamation of civic spaces, and the use of art to give voice to people who have consistently felt disconnected from society.

Mural Arts mural tours bring the stories behind the murals to life for thousands of residents and visitors each year. Always focused on increasing access and connecting new audience’s to Mural Arts mission and work, the tour program hosts individuals and groups from April through November for guided trolley, walking, and bicycle tours. Private tours are also available for tour operators, schools, and affinity groups.

Mural Arts wants individuals to hear the stories behind the murals throughout Philadelphia that get at the how, the why, and the who of each mural’s creation and enable people to experience “The City of Murals.” In order to give individuals access to this information, Mural Arts has grouped murals into “collections” by geography and content. Mural Arts offers special audio tours through cell phone and podcast technology, along with guided tours, special events, educational curricula and exhibitions of each collection.