Initiatives

A Wall for Community
Amina Tawasil, PhD

In the spring of 2021, I attended the 50th anniversary of Graffiti in Kensington, Philadelphia in honor of the Imperial Casanova Persuaders (ICP), the first known graffiti writers in the city. The event brought together over 50 graffiti writers and artists from New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia to paint graffiti murals on two sides of a building. The following weekend, when a friend and I returned to take photos, a local property owner approached us to ask if we could possibly get murals on his property as well.

With the help of one of my students, I read up on the recent history of Kensington and learned that it is the epicenter of the opioid crisis on the East Coast. Casually called the “Walmart of heroin,” Kensington and its drug problems have become the subject of numerous exposés. The local government’s solution to this crisis was to develop infrastructure and industry in the area, which has led to the displacement of the long-time Kensington residents mainly composed of Blacks and Puerto Ricans. Today, Kensington’s demographic profile is rapidly changing without making much of a dent on the opioid crisis. 

With this in mind, I aimed to organize an event that could potentially have a lasting positive impact on the neighborhood. I saw the power of graffiti as a relatable art form to local communities, and I considered the potential of graffiti events to become a catalyst for community engagement.

I organized two trial runs for a larger legal mural event in July and August 2021. By September, neighboring property owners had given me permission to organize legal mural events on their walls as well—a total of 500 feet of wall space. I set a date for the event: October 23, 2021.

In the first week of that October, I met with the families that lived in the row of houses across the street from the wall to see if they wanted to join us. They taught me about the three generations of Puerto Ricans that had been living on this street since the early 1970s. The matriarch of the family died tragically in a car crash the previous year, and her daughter requested that one of the artists paint a lighthouse in her mother’s memory. 

I submitted a request to Philadelphia’s sanitation department to clear the debris from illegal dumping on the wall, but they were unable to respond in time for the event. This meant that I would have to clear the area and prepare the wall myself. Luckily, one of my adult children volunteered to commute from New York City to help. We cleaned the walkways and prepped 400 feet of the wall with a roller brush. That weekend, more than 21 graffiti writers and artists from Philadelphia, New York and New Jersey arrived and participated in painting Halloween-themed murals. One of them painted a lighthouse for the family’s matriarch, whose grandson I eventually named the wall after. 

Fast-forward one year to October 2022, I used a paint sprayer machine to prepare the full 500 feet of wall space with the help of a friend. I collaborated with Moka213, the director of a local non-profit, to hold the event that weekend. Jazz Digao, our Development Manager, also traveled to Philadelphia to lend a hand. Out of the 24 invited participating artists, 10 were from Philadelphia. We were able to support a family-owned local food vendor from Puerto Rico for catering. A week later I named the annual event “Motion in Motion,” a phrase from Rammellzee’s treatise on wild style graffiti. For the upcoming Motion in Motion, we hope to increase capacity, attendance, and community organizing.