Mayor Domenic J. Sarno states, “The City and I are happy to continue to support our mural festival that began in 2019. Simply put, these murals bring a welcoming vibrancy and creativity to our downtown. I want to thank Fresh Paint Springfield for their continued partnership in making our community colorful and enhancing our city’s aesthetics and pedestrian experience, which all leads to people spending money by patronizing our business and cultural amenities.”
This year’s festival will involve members of the community in the design and painting of all ten murals, which will result in opportunities for more than 1,000 Springfield residents to actively participate in the beautification of the city. The murals will use the same technique as the 2019 painting of the mural on the Skyview Downtown parking garage on Dwight Street, turning the designs into giant paint-by-numbers canvases on special polytab mural fabric for members of the community to paint at COVID-safe outdoor paint parties during the festival.
Also new to the Festival this year is the Community Mural Apprentice program, which will pair 10 local artists with established muralists to learn how to independently engage with the community in designing and painting large, professional murals. The program will provide over 100 hours of hands-on training and opportunities for the apprentices to work closely with and learn from established muralists from across the US. After this training, these local muralists will be able to independently plan, design, and install high quality community murals.
All the details about this year’s festival can be found at www.freshpaintspringfield.com.
Those in attendance included; State Representative Bud Williams, City Councilors Malo Brown, Justin Hurst, and Tracye Whitfield, Executive Director of PBRM Patrick Sullivan, Principal Planner Scott Hanson, Andrew Cade, Rosemary Tracy Woods, Steve Cary, and a number of local artists and aspiring artists.
