A week-long arts event returns to Springfield, Massachusetts beginning this weekend.
Fresh Paint Springfield, the mural festival, which was first held in 2019 but canceled last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, is being held June 5-13th.
During the week, murals will be painted on the exterior walls of 10 buildings – five located in the downtown area and five in the Mason Square area.
The murals have been designed by professional artists who will have an assist from local residents to complete the projects, said Britt Ruhe, the organizer of Fresh Paint Springfield and director of Common Wealth Mural Collaborative.
"We will have daily paint parties where people can coult and paint, no experience necessary, stay as little as you want, as long as you want and then tours of the murals every day also on the double-decker open air bus," Ruhe said.
Also, 10 local artists are being paired with the experienced muralists in an apprentice program.
An independent evaluation following the 2019 mural festival found it had a positive impact.
"We learned that murals do improve perceptions of Springfield, they improve the sense of walkability, they increase people's interest in coming to a neighborhood to spend time to eat, to shop, for entertainment," Ruhe said.
She said the evaluation also led to the decision to locate half of the murals in this year’s event in Mason Square – a historically Black section of the city.
"Those murals are very concentrated kind of right at that central area in Mason Square because the evaluation shows that if you are in sight of a mural or when you have kind of a concentration of murals they are an even stronger kind of magnet for people to come visit and to improve perceptions of neighborhoods," Ruhe said.
One the projects at this year’s festival will be to restore the mural on the Mosque 13 building on State Street that was painted in the 1970s by Josephine Edmunds. She is credited with bringing the work of Black artists to Springfield and co-founded the Afro-Arts Alliance.
Speaking at the announcement that the mural festival would be returning, Mayor Domenic Sarno said the arts will be a major driver as the city’s economy looks to bounce back from the pandemic.
"This is like frosting on the cake for the city of Springfield," Sarno said.
State Rep. Bud Williams, whose House district includes Mason Square, said the festival can help build bridges between communities.
"I think it is social justice, it brings unity, it helps people kind of like figure things out, how are we going to go forward in terms of dealing with what we have to deal with," Williams said.
The event is funded by donations from businesses and individuals. The city put in $50,000.
