Run the Road
Mural Arts participated in the Live and Learn pilot project in Sharswood by creating the “Run the Road” mural, which was completed in June 2025. This combined wall and ground mural, part of the Live and Learn’s playful learning initiative, aims to highlight navigation and traffic safety, including I-Spy elements and sidewalk tracks of animal footprints on a newly developed affordable housing building. Donna Grace worked closely with community partners and the Live and Learn team to design and install this interactive mural for neighborhood families.
Live and Learn celebrated a full day of events on June 11, 2025. The morning featured opening speeches and site tours, including “Run the Road.”
In the afternoon, there was a block party at the building with the mural. Donna Grace led art activities with coloring pages related to the mural and handed out magnifying glasses so children could find shapes and figures in their daily surroundings. Kids enthusiastically followed the animal footprint tracks of the mural by mimicking them and enjoyed coloring at the art station.
This project is part of Mural Arts’ ongoing work in the Sharswood Community. Mural Arts has launched an innovative, multi-year partnership with the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) to invest in new public art projects in Sharswood, a neighborhood in North Central Philadelphia.
The projects, which range from new and restored murals to placemaking in public spaces to a prototype sidewalk poetry project, are being developed as a “critical community investment” supporting the transformation of the PHA’s Blumberg Apartments into a neighborhood with mixed-income housing and a variety of community improvements.
The Sharswood projects are part of an ongoing collaboration with PHA that also includes projects in North Central Philadelphia and Bartram’s Village, perhaps the broadest collaboration between an arts organization and a housing authority anywhere in the country. Mural Arts is also receiving funding from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency’s PHARE program (Housing Affordability and Rehabilitation Enhancement).
Lead Artist: Donna Grace Kroh
Assistant Artist: Russell Craig
Project Manager: Sahiti Bonam
Funder: PHARE
Partners: Live and Learn, Lower North Philadelphia CDC, Brewerytown Sharswood Community Civic Association, Brewerytown Sharswood Neighborhood Coalition
About Live and Learn: Live and Learn is a groundbreaking pilot project to build Playful Learning into the design and construction of affordable housing developments, starting with two sites in Philadelphia.
