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CRP’s “Warriors” Mural: A Collaborative Effort

Recently, CRP got a call from Oakland’s District 6 Councilmember, Loren Taylor, about a new anti-blight mural opportunity in East Oakland. To avoid fines by the City for unsightly tagging at a vacant site, the property owner wanted to commission some public art. The only catch? The mural had to be completed within 48 hours. As CRP Executive Director Desi Mundo explained, “Loren [Taylor] had been in a conversation around painting in this area for a long time. We had…

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Legacies of Respect: Culture, Politics, Art, and the Community Mural Tradition (Part Two)

Part One of this series traced the history and impact of Chicago’s famous community mural, the Wall of Respect—a timeline which connects the Black Renaissance, the Great Migration of African Americans, the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Arts Movements, protests against the Vietnam war, the contemporary mural tradition, the emergence of modern graffiti and street art, and public art policy. In Part Two, CRP Executive Director Desi Mundo further embellishes the legacy of the Wall of Respect, linking a…

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Abatement Alternatives: Why Oakland Needs a Mural Program (Part One)

Perhaps the highest level of praise a mural organization could receive is from a city abatement worker, who by his own estimation has been covering up graffiti for “eight hours a day, five days a week” for 28 years. Indeed, during the Community Rejuvenation Project’s recent Alice Street Symposium , an abatement worker known as Erase, revealed that he’s been “promoting murals” for eight years. Erase spoke highly of murals in general, and singled out CRP for praise: “I’ve been…

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Oakland Tribune Reports: City Council Has Only Spent a Fraction of Abatement Mural Allotment

  As CRP previously reported , Councilmember Desley Brooks (D6) is on record as telling KPFA’s Davey D, “Neighborhoods in West Oakland and East Oakland need to have public art.” Yet in an Oakland Tribune article published on Sunday, April 26, it was revealed that Brooks and her fellow Councilmembers have dragged their feet in allocating funds set aside in 2013 for abatement murals. As reporter Mike Blasky noted, “Of the $400,000 the council approved, only $14,100 has been formally allocated,…

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Alice Street Mural Project A Big Hit With Local Media Outlets

  Recently, CRP pulled off a pretty cool feat: within the course of ten days, the Alice Street Mural Project received media hits from the Mercury News , Oakland Tribune, KQED, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s newsletter, Oakland Tribune  (again), and the Contra Costa Times. That’s easily the most attention from local media CRP has ever gotten for any of the 150 mural projects the organization has done in the past four years. Even more impressive was what the media had to…

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Alice Street Mural Project Report-Back

  After a little more than a week of painting the wall at 14th and Alice, CRP is pleased to report the wall is nearing completion. This project has been a real eye-opener; the level of interaction we’ve had with the community has been unprecedented. It’s not an exaggeration to say the mural has started to become a magnet for community-building, even before it’s completed. The project started with covering the entire wall—covered with unsightly and highly unartistic graffiti tags–with…

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CRP’s Desi Mundo Returns to Chicago for Two-Week Residency at Hyde Park Art Center

It’s been said you can’t go back home again. For Community Rejuvenation Project founder and Executive Director Desi Mundo, however, that wasn’t exactly the case. After 14 years of living in Oakland, where he founded CRP — which has become the city’s most prolific producers of public murals — Mundo returned to Chicago, the city he first learned the aerosol arts in, for a two-week residency at Hyde Park Art Center, which happened to be celebrating its 75th anniversary. In…

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CRP x StopWaste.org x Melrose Leadership Academy mural raises awareness about composting

Did you know composting food waste is one of the easiest and most effective ways of recycling? According to Stopwaste.org, food scraps and food-soiled paper – paper plates, pizza boxes, and paper napkins – comprise the largest portion of the waste stream. Such scraps represent 35% of all waste in Alameda County. While removing harmful toxic waste and hazardous household waste is more complicated and may require safety precautions, recycling food scraps by sending them to a composting facility allows…

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The Living Walls Controversy and the Build-Up of Bureaucracy

CRP has been following the Living Walls controversy in Atlanta’s Pittsburgh neighborhood closely. The article below illustrates the lasting impact that this melee is going to leave. One of the areas that Living Walls excelled at was navigating the city’s bureaucratic red tape. At least three city agencies signed off on the project. Nonetheless, as we reported earlier, Atlanta city officials are still considering removing the mural because additional hazy, permissions may have been legally required. These legal requirements have…

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