In conversation with Kali Silverman & Mark Strandquist of Mural Arts

Pursuing Justice

Kali Silverman is Senior Project Manager of Mural Arts. She visits the men's maximum prison once a month coordinating the Mural Arts program with the full support of the Department of Corrections. Kali's beliefs stem from "tikkun olam" based on the Jewish philosophy meaning to repair the world. Growing up near Philadelphia, she always felt public art could give people agency. "It's accessible to everyone."

Mark Strandquist (he/him) has spent over a decade using art to amplify, celebrate, and power social justice movements.

The immersive exhibitions, interactive photo-based public art, and multimedia projects he directs have helped advocates close a youth prison, pass laws, train police officers, and connect the dreams and demands of communities impacted by the criminal justice system with tens of thousands of people.

His work has been exhibited in museums, galleries, and universities, as well as through parades, church-basement legal clinics, and illegal wheatpaste installations.

He has received multiple awards, fellowships, national residencies, and reached wide audiences through the NY Times, BBC, the Guardian, NPR, the Washington Post, PBS, VICE, and many others.

He founded, and currently co-directs the Performing Statistics project, and, through fellowships from A Blade of Grass and Open Societies, co-directs the People’s Paper Co-op and Reentry Think Tank with his partner Courtney Bowles.

In response to the Covid19 public health crisis, he founded Fill the Walls With Hope, Rage, Resources and Dreams, which installed thousands of posters on boarded up buildings across Philadelphia, and co-directed the People's Paper Co-op's campaign to use art to bail out and free Black mothers and caregivers (raising over $2250,000 in art sales).

View some of Mark's work:

• https://www.performingstatistics.org
• https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/philadelphia-based-artists-fill-walls-with-hope-and-public-safety-know-how
• https://www.nokidsinprison.org/experience/

And a little more about Mural Arts' work at SCI Graterford/Phoenix:

https://www.muralarts.org/blog/through-my-i-art-from-sci-phoenix/

No Kids In Prison web experience:

https://www.nokidsinprison.org/experience/

USA TODAY Names Philadelphia “Best City for Street Art”

https://www.visitphilly.com/media-center/press-releases/usa-today-names-philadelphia-best-city-for-street-art/#:~:text=With%20thousands%20of%20public%20art,1%20spot.

To learn more about Mural Arts, visit muralarts.org

This podcast is proudly sponsored by the Innocence Project of Florida. Visit www.floridainnocence.org for more information.