Downtown South Bend’s Mural Mania kicks off this week for the fifth straight year.
This year’s Mural Mania, again organized by muralist Alex Ann Allen, will bring new murals to the Trigon Building, City Hall Garage, a former Studebaker building on South Main Street, the Leighton Garage, and a commercial building-turned-church on Lincoln Way West.
The artists will work from Wednesday through Sunday. They’re coming from South Korea, New York, California, Memphis and Chicago. They’re being paid with money from the city, The Community Foundation of St. Joseph County, some downtown businesses, and the University of Notre Dame.
Downtown South Bend Inc. president Willow Wetherall says the event beautifies the city but it’s also big for marketing. Over 400,000 people combined follow the artists on social media.
“When you have people from around the country and around the world coming to work in South Bend and then sharing that work outwards to that audience, I think it’s just incredibly powerful to help a much, much broader community understand the transformation that’s happening in our city.”
Wetherall says this year's program will add just over 6,000 square feet of murals, about half of the 12,000 square feet covered over the prior four years combined. She doesn't see it ending anytime soon.
"We don't want to pump the brakes," Wetherall says. "Part of where you see the real value when you are investing in this type of public art strategy is when you reach a critical mass or concentration of the murals. We are starting to see over this five-year investment kind of like a concentration where the murals themselves give sort of new identity to the city. They're easily walkable. People can go from mural to mural. So there may be a time in the distant future where we say, OK, we've done our job when it comes to public art and the large-scale murals but right now we're just starting to get the kind of traction from a year-over-year investment in this strategy."
