Sample Philly

In a first for both Mural Arts and artist Kara Crombie, Sample Philly was an interactive sculpture doubling as an outdoor boombox and functioning music production studio. The project was a monument to Philadelphia’s rich musical history, with hundreds of notable songs and crowdsourced samples from local musicians, blending the sounds of past and present from Hall & Oates to the 6 Action News theme song.

Passersby in Franklin Square produced their own musical compositions from this vast public archive. Crombie saw this project as a gateway, especially for youth, to remix Philadelphia’s soundscape at a time when tools of musical expression are not uniformly available to all students. Sample Philly grew out of Crombie’s work at The Advocate Center for Culture and Education, where she holds production workshops for teens, with the larger goal of empowering youth with tools of self-expression. “It’s like an ongoing dialogue, not a lecture,” she said of this project.

Collaborators: Ric Allison (console support consultant); Tim Bieniosek (LED specialist); Delta Gate Solutions (metal fabricators); Justin Geller (music director); Frank Musarra (engineering specialist); Leon Phillpotts and Anders Uhl (kiosk fabricators and codesigners); and Schummers of Kensington.

Major support for Monument Lab projects staged in Philadelphia’s five squares provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. An expanded artist roster and projects at additional neighborhood sites made possible by the William Penn Foundation. Lead corporate support provided by Bank of America. Generous additional support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Location Note: Work is no longer on view at this location.