Why Your Community Needs a Mural
- Bethany Diaz
- Aug 3
- 6 min read
I got into this work because someone handed me a wall at a community mural festival with a week’s notice and no warning. I’d shown up expecting to carry paint cans.
That week changed what I do with my life. So I have an obvious bias here, and you should know it going in.
But I’ve painted in a lot of places since — a deli in New Jersey, high schools, a rehabilitation center in Moca in the Dominican Republic, a tattoo shop in Orlando — and the pattern that keeps repeating has less to do with the walls than with the people standing in front of them.
What actually happens
A neglected wall stops signalling neglect. Blank, tagged, crumbling walls tell everyone who passes that nobody’s paying attention here. That message is absorbed whether or not anyone consciously reads it. Painting the wall changes what the street says about itself.
People come to look. A mural gives a neighborhood a reason to be somewhere. People walk to it, photograph it, bring visitors to it. Foot traffic that wasn’t there before now is, and the businesses nearby feel that.
It’s a landmark that belongs to everyone. Not everyone can afford the restaurant. Everyone can stand in front of the wall. Public art is one of the few genuinely non-exclusive things a place can have.
The making is half of it. This is the part people underestimate. When a mural goes up over days or weeks, in public, it becomes an event. People stop and ask questions. They bring their kids back to see the progress. Neighbours who’ve never spoken talk to each other about it. By the time it’s done, a lot of people feel some ownership of it — and that’s what makes murals last. Walls that a community feels ownership of don’t get tagged.
It shows a place what it looks like. When a mural reflects the people who actually live somewhere — their history, language, plants, faces — it does something a generic decoration can’t. It says this place is worth depicting. For a lot of communities that’s not a small statement.
Being honest about what it doesn’t do
Public art gets oversold, and overselling it makes people cynical, so let me be careful.
A mural does not fix underinvestment. It doesn’t create jobs, repair housing, or address why a neighborhood was neglected in the first place. Anyone telling you a wall will revitalize a district is selling something.
There’s also a real tension worth naming: murals are sometimes used to make a neighborhood attractive to people who don’t live there yet, and residents of many communities have watched public art arrive shortly before their rent did. That concern is legitimate and it deserves a straight answer rather than a defensive one.
The difference, mostly, is who the mural is for. Art made with a community, depicting that community, chosen by that community, is a different object from art dropped onto it to make the block photogenic. Same paint, opposite meaning.
Worth asking early and honestly: who is this for, and who decided?
Where community murals belong
Community centers, libraries, and neighborhood organizations
School buildings, gyms, and athletic facilities
Health clinics, rehabilitation centers, and hospitals
Underpasses, tunnels, and transit-adjacent walls
Parks, plazas, and gathering spaces
Repeatedly tagged walls (a mural is often the most effective anti-tagging measure available — respected work tends to be left alone)
Alleys and side streets people currently avoid
Who pays for it
This is where most community mural projects stall, so here’s the practical version.
Municipal arts funding. Many cities and counties have public art programs or percent-for-art requirements. Start with your local arts council — even where there’s no money, they usually know where it is.
Business improvement districts. BIDs and merchant associations fund neighborhood-improving projects and are often faster and less bureaucratic than city programs.
A single business owner. The most common route by far. Someone owns the wall, wants it painted, and pays for it. Simple, quick, no committee.
Nonprofit and foundation grants. Community foundations, arts foundations, and place-based funders. Slower — expect months — but this is where larger budgets live.
Sponsorship. A local business funds the wall in exchange for acknowledgment. Worth agreeing in advance exactly what that acknowledgment looks like, so the mural doesn’t quietly become an advertisement.
Crowdfunding. Works best when the community is already invested, and someone credible is organizing it. Works badly as a first step.
Combinations. Most real projects stitch together two or three of these.
How to actually make a community mural happen
Confirm who owns the wall. In writing. Not the tenant — the owner. This kills more projects than funding does, and it kills them late.
Check permits. Requirements vary enormously by city, and historic districts have their own rules. Ask before you fundraise.
Decide who decides. This is the most important thing on this list. Someone has to have final say on the design. If nine people have to approve every element, you will get a design that nine people found tolerable, and nobody will love it. Pick a small group, define their authority, and let the artist work.
Set a real budget. Materials, artist fee, equipment, permits, wall prep, and a protective coat. Understaffed budgets produce projects that stop halfway.
Hire for a point of view. Look at artists’ existing work and hire one whose way of seeing suits what you’re trying to say. Then give them room. The reason I only take projects where I design original work isn’t preciousness — it’s that the thing you’re actually buying is how someone sees your place.
Involve people in the making. Even simply: let people watch, put up a sign explaining what’s happening, hold a small unveiling. Participation is what turns a painted wall into a shared one.
Plan for maintenance. An anti-graffiti or UV coat, and someone responsible for it long-term. Murals last years — with a little care, considerably longer.
The wall in Moca
The project I think about most was at a rehabilitation center in Moca, in the Dominican Republic — my family's country, a place I'm connected to and separate from at the same time. I was staying with my aunt for a month, driving around the island, and near the end of the trip she asked if I'd paint a mural for the center she donates to. I said yes before I'd finished thinking about what that meant.
The center's logo was a person holding up two crutches, and I wanted to stay close to that image — the idea of someone overcoming an injury, a disability, whatever it is that's been asked of them. I sketched while I traveled. What I landed on was a girl with butterfly wings behind her. My cousin Jennifer, who I was close to, had died a few months earlier after spending the last decade of her life managing her own illnesses and disabilities without ever being defined by them. She loved butterflies. I feel like she visits me as one now. The wings were for her — a nod to the transformation and strength this place is built on, and to the butterfly she still comes to me as.
The center runs entirely on donations, which meant most of the people walking in for services couldn't have paid for them otherwise. I'd be painting, and someone would come through the door for an appointment, see the wall taking shape, and smile — not a big thing, just a small one, over and over, all week. I met the staff, heard donors talk about why they kept showing up for this place. It's a beautiful operation, built on nothing but people deciding to make it work for each other. I got to leave a piece of my family on that wall, and a piece of myself with it.
Those are the moments that don't show up in a photograph of a finished wall.
If you’ve got a wall
Someone in your neighborhood is already looking at it and thinking it should be something.
Usually the whole thing starts with one person deciding to ask.
I’m Beth. I paint original murals for community organizations, cultural spaces, businesses, and public walls across the US, Mexico, and the Caribbean. If your community has a wall that needs a facelift, let’s talk about it.
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