Business of Mural Arts Workshop

When we started Living Walls over 10 years ago, the majority of artists occupying the street art world were white, cis-gendered, heterosexual men. The more we invested in this industry, the more we unlearned and learned new ways to create access and visibility for the people and stories that have been historically silenced.

In a step toward empowering those voices, Living Walls holds a free annual workshop for BIPOC, women, queer & trans artists to share our lived experience of how we go about commissions, drafting contracts, and budgeting for public artwork. We value sharing knowledge as a way to collectively protect our creative community.

The Workshop

In 2021, a pre-workshop survey showed us that our workshop attendees were a diverse group of BIPOC, women, femmes, gender non-conforming artists. With a team of all women of color leading the workshop, we created a safe space for the empowerment of womxn and people of color alike.

Our guest speaker Lauren Jackson Harris, the co-founder of Black Women in Visual Art, joined us in facilitating a virtual lecture on owning your power as an artist with tools for budgeting, contracts, and marketing with time at the end of the session for questions and discussion.

The Feedback

Immediately following the workshop, we shared a feedback form with the attendees to get an idea of how the workshop influenced them and whether or not they would be interested in attending more of our workshops in the future.

We were pleased to discover that everyone who attended was interested in participating in future workshops, and many were willing to pay to support this initiative.

We asked questions regarding which topics discussed in the workshop stood out to them the most and what they would like to learn more about in the future. The answers revealed that those who participated gained a lot from the business resources we provided such as budget and contract templates, and they wanted to dive deeper into those elements in the future.

Others were more interested in learning how to market themselves as an artist, and they wanted more guidance on how to pitch themselves to clients in the form of proposals, pitches, and applications. Many participants also expressed interest in learning from each other, and hope for future workshops that focus on collaboration and networking.

As we continue to build out programming for our future workshops, we want to hear from you! If you are a current or aspiring mural artist (especially those who identify as BIPOC, women, queer or trans) and are interested in attending one of our workshops, please fill out this survey so that we can design a curriculum that best fits your needs.