Keys to Change

The mural Keys to Change transpired from a collaborative project between Mural Arts and Impact Services and highlights the work of artist Phillip Adams and a group of veterans in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. Collectively designed and painted, the mural blends a floral background with camouflage and depicts a winding pathway that leads to a home. The artwork addresses the experience veterans have when reintegrating into the civilian community after service.
Impact Services, Mural Arts, and the local veterans community held six art making workshops that used a range of materials to explore veterans’ identity both in service and in their transition “home” within the civilian community. Using an iterative design process, each socially distanced workshop built on the artwork and conversations from the previous session. The final few workshops encouraged participants to translate the conversations from art making activities into a mural concept via collage. This design integrates elements from the work produced in the workshops and mural concepts into a unified design that synthesizes the dialogue from the workshops.

Artist Phillip Adams describes the process and resulting mural:

“The workshops began by exploring the camouflage pattern worn by most branches of the military and is synonymous with military service, uniformity, blending into the collective team, and literally as an effort to disguise or be unseen. During the workshops, veterans created their own take on camouflage, exploring their individuality, but syncing up the pattern with their other participants. This activity evoked dialogue about the sometimes incongruent reality of having a shared veteran experience while also have individual experiences that occurred before, during and after their respective service, and how this unique experience can lead to many different paths for transitioning ‘home’ into their civilian life within the broader community. Much of the dialogue centered around the concept of ‘home’ – related to the site of the mural. ‘Home’ elicited conversations around housing security, the role of ‘home’ as a place of refuge when returning to civilian life, and home as a broader sense of returning home to their community and the complexity of returning to the familiar after experiencing life-changing events. This concept draws on this conversation of home, the Veteran experience of being seen and unseen, and finding growth within themselves and within their community. From the known pattern of camouflage, flowers emerge symbolizing natural/organic beauty and growth. This is a gradual transition, but one that brings us closer to the path of seeking home in all of its forms. Centered in the design is the actual house the mural is projected to be on. It is owned by Esperanza Health, which is fitting, as much of our dialogue connected the concept of home to various forms of health – physical and mental health of the individual and the health of the community.”

Veteran Assistants who participated in this project are: Ayriss Aaliyah, David Allen, Lawrence Bolding, Jerome Burt, William Clack, Leonard Comer, Lynwood Cooke, Joseph Davis, Duval Diaz, Mitchell Diggs, Nicholas Gunderson, Carlos Gutierrez, Kent Hateld, Joseph Herman, Su Lin Hingley, Wayne Jackson, Gregory Johnson, Clayton Morrison, David Munford, Michael Nelson, Henry Lee Nettles, Keith Ockimey, John O’Donnell, Richard Phillips, Nelson Post, Fredrick Redditt, Terry Roberts, Mark Sanders, Paul Schneider, Sandra Smith, Kirk John Stefanski