Community shows up to paint mural for Old City intersection
Ten year old Miriam said she is going to be excited to walk past the mural every day on the way to school knowing she helped work on it. (Lauryn Mackenzie / CHLY 101.7FM)
An intersection in Nanaimo’s Old City neighbourhood got a makeover this weekend.
Community members came together to paint a new street mural at the intersection of Campbell and Machleary streets. The painting was supported by The City of Nanaimo in collaboration with the Old City Business Association.
Local artist Sebastian Abboud and his team spent the early weekend preparing the mural outline. Then on Sunday July 5, the community was invited to help bring it to life.
Ten year old Miriam, five year old Evan and their mom Julia were among the first families to show up and help paint part of the mural.
While Miriam never thought she would ever take part in an art project like this, she said helping with the mural was a good time.
“I think it's really fun and good, because it's gonna slow down the cars on this road,” Miriam said. “Every day of the school year I walk on this road to school, so it's gonna be really nice.”
Miriam said she is going to be excited to walk past the mural every day on the way to school knowing she helped work on it.
“I'm gonna be really proud and really happy that we could do this,” Miriam said.
Evan said he has been having a lot of fun painting with his favourite colour blue.
He said he’s going to be excited to see the mural when it’s done.
“Super excited!” Evan said.
Living nearby, Julia said she was happy to hear about the mural coming to the intersection.
“Slowing down traffic and safety, especially during the school year with the kids walking to school,” Julia said. “But I think it just also showcases this vibrant community that we live in. It's awesome.”
Julia said the intersection at Campbell and Machleary streets has always been a problem so she is happy to see this change.
“We were lucky in that our walk, we can walk across sidewalks, but we have many friends that we would see walk across the road right here without a sidewalk,” she said. “It definitely was a concern.”
She said the Old City neighbourhood is a beautiful and wonderful community.
“You don't really know until you are in the Old City how amazing it is, but this doesn't surprise me that we're having such an amazing community event, because when you live here and meet the neighbours, there's things like this that happen all the time,” she said.
With the community working to add bright pinks, blues, and yellows to the street, CHLY spoke with Madeleine Koch, Active Transportation Project Specialist for the City of Nanaimo.
She said this idea for the mural came after the Nanaimo Old City Association went to council to request better speed management for the intersection.
“There's a lot of concerns about speeding in the area. It's also a route for children going to the school down the street, so safety was really important,” Koch said. “They were interested in some creative solutions here to speed management, and some artwork was something that they had kind of envisioned along the way.”
She explains having artwork along the intersection catches the attention of drivers and can remind them to slow down.
“It kind of gives drivers a message that, ‘oh, this isn't just a place for cars to speed through, this looks like somewhere that might be more for people walking,’” Koch said. “It just sends a different message than, say, a wide open road that really invites people to just speed as fast as they please.”
She said working on a project like this has been a dream come true.
“I've seen these kinds of projects just throughout my career, even before I was at the City, unfolding in communities like Portland, Oregon, is somewhere where this kind of thing really started up, and something that I've been really inspired by for many, many years,” she said. “So to see this happening today. Honestly, I just can't stop smiling. It's so cool.”
Jaime-Brett Sine, cultural services coordinator for the City, said adding street murals to intersections has been a popular trend in cities around the world.
“It really is about the beautification of local neighbourhoods, the beautification of the places you live. It really generates a lot of pride and love about where you live and why you live there,” Sine said. “Then, from a practicality standpoint, it's been shown to increase safety in intersections. People sort of slow down, they pay a little bit more attention, so that's obviously a huge bonus to putting in artwork somewhere.”
She said she wants the mural to be a reflection of the community and something they can be proud of.
“It's really special when you get the community involved, because then you have this buy-in to the artwork. It's theirs,” she said. “It's this partial ownership of the artwork, where they care just as much about it, because it is a reflection of them, and it is a reflection of their neighbourhood.”
She said they worked with the neighbourhood association and surveyed the community to help create this mural.
Sebastian Abboud is the local artist behind the mural. He worked with the Old City Business Association to shape the artwork. He also ran a workshop earlier this year to get feedback from the community on the mural.
“We did a workshop at the Bowen Clubhouse, there to engage with the community and see what kind of characteristics and colour and things we could incorporate into the artwork,” Abboud said. “We heard resoundingly that the community wanted a lot of colour, and so that was the big deciding factor for how bright it is, and how, and how kind of fun it is.”
He said the design was also informed by the timeline for the mural, and how they could include the community in the painting.
“Just having the community, things are really fluid, and shapes could move, they could scale if they had it to,” he said. “It was very forgiving of a design, because we knew again there was going to be community involvement, and we had a fairly tight timeline to pull it off. We only have about four days to do this.”
He said he is impressed to see the amount of interest from the community to help get involved.
“I think it's going great. I think it exceeded my expectations. The colour has worked out really well,” he said. “The City has been really supportive, and the community seems to be having fun, and everyone's doing great. So, it's a great success”
Finishing touches are complete with the mural now on display at the intersection of Campbell and Machleary Streets.
Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.