The Mural Project

The Graterford Inside-Out Think Tank is collaborating on a project with the nationally-known Mural Arts Program, a part of the Department of Recreation of the City of Philadelphia.  The city has more murals – approximately 2,500 in all – than any other city in the United States, possibly in the world.  Mural Arts produces an average of 100 murals each year, created in consultation with members of the particular communities in which the murals are to be located.  The Mural Arts Program envisions the mural process itself as a focal point and avenue for community-building, and has been instrumental in bringing diverse and sometimes adversarial parties to the table through the mural-making process.

Early in 2003, Mural Arts and Inside-Out forged a partnership with a plan to create a mural inside Graterford Prison that, once finished, would be installed on a wall in North Philadelphia.  The theme of the mural – which has now expanded to a set of three murals – is “Victims and Healing.”  The murals are painted on parachute cloth inside prison through a process by which artists inside Graterford and others work on five-foot-square portions of the mural at a time.  The plan is for at least two of the murals to be completed by October, so that they can be dedicated during what the City of Philadelphia has dubbed “Mural Arts Month.”

Specifically, the role of the Graterford Inside-Out Think Tank in the project is as a venue in which the issues pertinent to this theme are discussed.  Over the past year, the Think Tank and Mural Arts have jointly hosted residents of the neighborhood where the murals will be located - victims of crime, victims' advocates, and others involved in the process, including Ursula Rucker, a noted area poet who has put words to some of the images emerging from these discussions.  The process itself has been - and continues to be - creative, inclusive, and healing for many involved. 

Other Inside-Out Projects

• Collaboration with the Anti-Crime Summit Initiative at Graterford Prison - including Temple faculty and students, the Graterford Lifers Association, and other inside and outside groups, with the aim of countering the "Culture of Crime" through development of an alternative paradigm and a series of reform initiatives.
  
• Plans for Initiatives Addressing Transitional Issues in the Philadelphia Prison System including:
  
  • Transition Team and Mentoring for College and
    Career Exploration
    
  • Occupational Therapy Project
    
  • Potential Collaborative, Community-Based and
    Solution-Oriented Research Initiatives