Commissioned by the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, City of Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services, and Hummingbird Foundation; and in partnership with Impact Services, and Esperanza Health Center  •  acrylic and polytab, 2022

The mural Keys to Change transpired from a collaborative project between Mural Arts and Impact Services and highlights the work of a group of veterans in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. Collectively designed and painted, the mural blends a floral background with camouflage and depicts a winding pathway that leads to a home. The artwork addresses the experience veterans have when reintegrating into the civilian community after service. Impact Services, Mural Arts, and the local veterans community held six art making workshops that used a range of materials to explore veterans’ identity both in service and in their transition “home” within the civilian community. Using an iterative design process, each socially distanced workshop built on the artwork and conversations from the previous session. The final few workshops encouraged participants to translate the conversations from art making activities into a mural concept. This design integrates elements from the work produced in the workshops and mural concepts into a unified design that synthesizes the dialogue from the workshops 

Veteran Assistants who participated in this project are: Ayriss Aaliyah, David Allen, Lawrence Bolding, Jerome Burt, William Clack, Leonard Comer, Lynwood Cooke, Joseph Davis, Duval Diaz, Mitchell Diggs, Nicholas Gunderson, Carlos Gutierrez, Kent Hateld, Joseph Herman, Su Lin Hingley, Wayne Jackson, Gregory Johnson, Clayton Morrison, David Munford, Michael Nelson, Henry Lee Nettles, Keith Ockimey, John O’Donnell, Richard Phillips, Nelson Post, Fredrick Redditt, Terry Roberts, Mark Sanders, Paul Schneider, Sandra Smith, Kirk John Stefanski