Afromation Avenue 2026 (Kensington)
Afromation Avenue is a community street art initiative and ongoing collection of curated positive affirmation street signs, personalized by predominantly Black and African American communities throughout Philadelphia. A public art project “for the neighborhood by the neighborhood,” Afromation Avenue engages local Black artists and community members, and brings the resulting artworks into the streetscapes of historically Black communities.
Street signs are used to guide and regulate the traffic flow of people; they assist in helping others get from one familiar place to another. Afromation Avenue lends itself as a social emotional guide in hopes of cultivating spaces of reflective thought and conversation while honoring the cultural identity of each community.
The 2026 iteration of Afromation Avenue is the project’s fourth cohort since 2022, with new sign artwork from local artists Shalina Mitchell and Marrita Richardson (more information found below). Mitchell and Richardson’s artwork will be on view in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood as part of Heart of Kensington Creates, a cross-sector, community-centric and multi-project arts initiative from Mural Arts’ Porch Light program, in collaboration with Councilperson Quetcy Lozada’s Office and Impact Services, culminating in summer 2026. Afromation Avenue is one component of a series of murals, art installations, and activations along Kensington Avenue between the Huntingdon Street and Tioga Street SEPTA locations, focused on celebrating neighborhood identity and building shared Kensington pride.
The project is the brainchild of Brittni Jennings and Kristin Kelly, artists and Philadelphia public educators. From the project’s inception, Jennings and Kelly have been deliberate in their collaboration with local Black artists and Mural Arts Black Artists Fellows to authentically represent the communities they serve, and dedicated to their mission of challenging the monolithic narratives surrounding Black culture and history in America.
Afromation Avenue’s “why” honors Fanon’s position on the most valuable asset for a colonized people: “ …the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.” This street art project is a permanent fixture of a long history of Black resistance, creativity, and entrepreneurship.
Visit the Afromation Avenue website to learn more.
Top Image: Afromation Avenue 2024 Curator / Artists’ Walk Project Walk, November 14, 2024. Photo: Andrew Hoffman for Colibrà Workshop.
More About the 2026 Artists:
Brittni Jennings is a dedicated Philadelphia educator and advocate for student voice. Her work has earned her the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, the Changing Lives Award, and, most recently, the 2023 David McCullough Prize for Excellence in Public History. Jennings’ impact reaches far beyond the classroom. Through her work with the National Constitution Center, she has authored curricula and led workshops that help teachers and students navigate difficult conversations at the local and national level—including a unique program that facilitates dialogue between local youth and police officers. At Constitution High School, Jennings served as a Race and Equity lead, supporting students in designing their own learning. Her self-curated courses utilized a “futurist lens” to explore the Black American experience, empowering students to lead professional development for the school’s own staff.
With a Master’s in Urban Education, Jennings is currently extending her educational practices beyond the classroom walls through her co-curated street art project Afromation Avenue. This co-curated initiative installs positive affirmation signs in historically Black neighborhoods, celebrating the nuance in the American story. For Jennings, “person-first” learning is the only way to build both a wealth of knowledge and a wealth of character.
Kristin Kelly is an educator in Philadelphia with 14 years of experience teaching multiple grades and subjects, from early childhood education to high school English. She graduated with a degree in English from Bloomsburg University, where she encountered the writings of Frantz Fanon, a figure who remains central to Afromation Avenue’s practices and mission.
In the classroom, Kelly develops interdisciplinary units that examine culture, representation, and power. Her favorite unit to date, Black Horror Noire, explored film through a psychoanalytical lens, expanding the definition of horror to include colonial power, the erosion of identity, and racial terror embedded within domestic space. Her interest in systems and space extends beyond teaching into research. She has written papers such as “The Feminization of Poverty” and “The Human Terrain System”, as well as her graduate dissertation, “The Lack of Green Spaces in Predominantly Black Neighborhoods,” which examined environmental inequities in urban communities. This focus on representation and environment also informs her artistic practice. A photographer at heart, Kelly’s work examines the human condition, urban decay, and the “underworld” of subway systems in cities she visits. As a cofounder of Afromation Avenue, she integrates photography with drawings inspired by her surroundings. Her favorite piece to date, Black Lives, Take Up Space, depicts a cityscape with a Black child doing a wheelie, based on a child she photographed years earlier. A self-taught digital artist, Kelly continues to merge her photography with original illustrations, extending her exploration of space, visibility, and identity across mediums.
Shalina Mitchell is a multidisciplinary artist who explores identity, inclusion, and the shared human experience through portraiture, public art, and mixed media. Grounded in studies of the human form and philosophy, Mitchell investigates the dynamic relationship between people and their environments. Through her work, Mitchell aims to inspire empathy, provoke thought, and create spaces for meaningful conversation about our collective humanity.
Marrita Richardson is a Philadelphia-based visual artist whose work captures the exceptional beauty within everyday Black life. Working primarily in acrylics, she blends pop art, surrealism, and sacred iconography to explore themes of resilience, divinity, and identity. Richardson believes that Black art is mainstream art and that every community deserves access to it. Through her paintings, exhibitions, and creative initiatives, she strives to make art both reflective and reachable, inviting viewers to see beauty and belonging in themselves and the world around them.
