Our diversion channels are grey & ugly, lets make them colorful community assets

VIDEO

IMAGE

1

I lived in St. Louis for 4 years, and in a forgotten, semi industrial area of town, near the Mississippi they have a huge, colorful legal graffiti wall. The idea is, if graffiti artists were given a legal place to spray paint, perhaps tagging would decrease in other parts of the City. Further, without the rush of having to tag something in a hurry to avoid being caught, artists could take their time and truly create art.

Its turned out great for St Louis. Multiple music videos feature the graffiti wall, its very popular in its nearby community and while its hard to say if its actually decreased tagging in the rest of the City, it seems like its been a plus for an otherwise ugly area.

In PHX we've already seen spray paint art and murals start to become popular along Calle 16 and create a sense of individualism and community pride for that area. My thought was, lets take the grey, bleak, drab walls of some of the diversion channels that run adjacent to canals, and have a weekend to let top regional graffiti artists come in and decorate them.

Obviously this doesn't mean full time access to the channels, that would be dangerous. Just open it up for the painting and then close them back the way they are now. But when people walk/drive/jog by on surface streets or canal banks, looking down into the diversion channels will now be a bright, colorful, interesting part of the city instead of a bleak one.

The perfect place to try something like this would be along the Arizona Canal. Perhaps between the I-17 and Central, and then if the idea proves popular, the program could be expanded.

It wouldn't cost the City hardly anything. Artists would likely supply their own paint/tools, the City just provides access. If the City could also put up small plaques w/ the artists names of each mural/graffiti that would be a nice way to give the artists credit.