Color Carlisle: Community Murals

Painting has begun! We are still in need of $1,975 to finish out our first project. If you love the idea of public art and want to see more of it Carlisle please help support it through whatever small way you can. It's not just supporting the artist but it is funding work that grows our youth into engaged community members who see that art can make an impact.


The Carlisle Area High School art students had their first class with Ophelia Chambliss on Tuesday, September 12. They officially kicked off the mural project by learning the foundation of creating a large scale public art piece and will be working on sketches and drafts of the final design. Check out some of the pictures from the first day of class!



Check out our featured story in the Carlisle Sentinel
Learn about the artist in residency program and how the CASD students are contributing back to their community!

A Collaborative Art Project Focusing on Community
Carlisle, PA is a thriving community that is also home to an affluent liberal arts college, world renowned youth ballet program, and Army War college. The diversity of people’s cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds makes our community unique, but also presents numerous challenges.

To help unify the vast difference in socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, we as community members and educators seek to strengthen Carlisle, and its residents, by providing an ongoing initiative that ties students, children, families, and individuals together to support the development, creation, and upkeep of public art.

Our goal, through a community art initiative, is to create sustainable living spaces by updating blighted spaces with public art. We can create spaces that are welcoming while also improving upon neglected property. Through the creation of public art, we can further enhance the community’s presence while also enhancing an individual’s personal health and positive mindset about their community.


How Public Art Benefits The Community Around You
In a program studied by Professor Stern , “researchers looked at data from the city health department on the well-being of children 15 years of age and under. They found a strong relationship between the presence of cultural resources in neighborhoods and a much lower level of social stress in the children, even controlling for income. Another study used data from Philadelphia’s Human Relations Commission to establish that there are lower incidents of racial and ethnic harassment in neighborhoods that have a significant number of cultural resources.”

With the implementation of a community mural program, we are striving to generate an ongoing proactive approach to maintaining a positive and connected community that focuses on healthy, sustainable, and safe living spaces that celebrate the diversity in our population, both racially and socioeconomically. Additionally, it is our mission to drive awareness to the community on a global scale, bringing positive attention to Carlisle, potentially increasing tourism to the community, and positively affecting new business development and economical growth.


As documented by the Borough of Carlisle in a recent Census study, the community residents feel that there is need for focused attention on safety and building maintenance/upkeep as well as providing targeted measures for increased safety and awareness in various neighborhoods. Our goal, through a community art initiative, is to create sustainable living spaces by updating blighted property with public art. With the implementation of our program, we can tackle both objectives set forth by Borough, creating spaces that are welcoming while also improving upon neglected property. Through the creation of public art, we can further enhance the community’s presence while also enhancing an individual’s personal health and positive mindset about their surrounding community.

We believe that our initial project is simply the beginning of our vision to “canvas the city of Carlisle” with inspiring and community driven works of art. The students within the Carlisle Area are our future and through each project, we allow them to grow into leaders, taking pride and ownership of their community and the public works of art they are creating. We hope through the development and creation of mural works and other various public art projects, we are able to create safe and welcoming environments for families and children for current and future generations.


How You Can Help

Funds for each mural will be directly provided to the artist chosen for the project and all the materials needed to produce the piece.  Each project will commence at the high school and will be worked on through a series of community workshops hosted by the high school art department. Cost per project is estimated at:

Payment for Artist: $2500
Supplies: $2500
Installation: $1000
Equipment: $1000
Maintenance: $500

We are hoping to begin our first project in August 2017.

We greatly appreciate your interest and help with this project and look forward to celebrating the culture and diversity of our community with you. 

Learn More about the Color Carlisle Project!

Check out our Block Party Mural Popup led by the CASD high school art teachers and students!