Over the next week, artists from across Canada and the United States will work to finish a series of murals that will change the graffiti-covered walls of a neighbourhood in Halifax’s north end.
The new pieces of artwork, created as part of the Paint The Park event, will complement the existing murals in Mulgrave Park.
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Those include a piece that sparked the now-annual festival, a tribute to Tyler Richards, 29, a former St. FX Basketball star who grew up in the area.
Richards was shot and killed in April 2016. Friends of Richards, including Ziad Lawen and Jeremy Williams, came together to help design and organize the painting of the mural.
Michael Burt, one of the 14 artists who have been brought in to create new works of art, says the festival is meant to help a neighbourhood that is dominated by public housing units.
“It’s a mural festival to bring awareness to some of the conditions to Mulgrave and to make it brighter and better,” said Burt.
Burt is working on a colourful tribute to Viola Desmond.
Desmond was a Nova Scotia civil rights pioneer and businesswoman.
On Nov. 8, 1946, Desmond was arrested after refusing to leave a whites-only section of the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, N.S., in an incident that has since become one of the most high-profile cases of racial discrimination in Canadian history.
It would take 63 years for Nova Scotia to issue Desmond a posthumous apology and pardon.
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Her face features prominently on the $10 bill that was released last year and by the end of the week her likeness will grace a wall in Mulgrave Park.
“I’ve been talking to a lot of the people and they really admire her and some of her relatives actually live in the community that I know so I just thought it was time to put her up,” said Burt.
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