Common Wealth Murals (CWM) engages community members of all ages to create murals that communicate the rich cultural heritage, heroes and vision of the neighborhoods where the art lives. Directed by community input, we have created 80 murals in Springfield and over a dozen in other communities. Many of our murals celebrate BIPOC local heroes dedicated to service in their communities and leadership in advancing justice and equity.
Using the GoodSpace Method of community-mural making, thousands of neighborhood residents help to paint the murals. The murals create outdoor galleries of large-scale public art created by, for and about the people where the art lives. The residents of these neighborhoods are 60% Latinx and 25% Black.
In collaboration with leading community muralists, CWM also provides training for artists and teachers to learn techniques for community-engaged mural creation. These trainings include classroom learning, networking with established muralists, and hands-on experience creating professional community-engaged murals. CWM provides ongoing support to the graduates of our trainings, including assistance budgeting for and bidding on mural commissions, ordering materials in bulk and providing them at cost to artists, use of our studio space and more. The graduates of our trainings are a vibrant network of artists who refer each other for jobs and hire each other when they need a crew to complete a commission.
We also provide start to finish project management for municipalities and organizations commissioning a mural, including budgeting, artist curation, community engagement activities, and hands-on installation support. CWM also produces Springfield’s annual graffiti jam and temporary public art installations.
In just a few years, CWM has established itself as the leading public visual art organization in WMass, demonstrating to residents, building owners, organizations, and funders the viability and impact of centering the public in the creation of public art. We have built a trusted reputation of empowering and promoting BIPOC and women artists, and creating large-scale permanent works of public art that reflect the current and future demographics of the neighborhoods surrounding the art. In Springfield and beyond, Common Wealth Murals is shifting expectations away from public art that maintains systemic inequities, to a widely-held expectation that public art should be by, for, and about the people most impacted by the art.
