Mayor’s Mural Initiative

Mayor's Mural Initiative

Every wall begins with a story.

Santa Fe has always told its stories in public.

The Mayor's Mural Initiative is a new City of Santa Fe effort bringing artists and communities together to create murals rooted in the people, histories, experiences, and places that make Santa Fe what it is today.

But the mural isn't where the process begins. It begins by listening.

What stories deserve to be seen? What places have shaped us? What do we want future generations to understand about Santa Fe today?

Through artist-led workshops, community conversations, public art projects, and the Mural Lab, the initiative creates new ways for people to participate in the art that becomes part of our shared city.

This is not simply a program to put paintings on walls. It is an invitation to make our stories visible.

What Is the Mayor's Mural Initiative?

The Mayor's Mural Initiative is a City of Santa Fe public art initiative supporting the creation of murals through community participation, artist development, and creative experimentation.

Santa Fe is a place shaped by many peoples, generations, migrations, traditions, and cultural exchanges. Its public spaces carry those histories while continuing to change.

The initiative asks what it means to create public art within that living story.

Instead of beginning with a predetermined image, projects can begin with questions, conversations, research, and exchange. Artists bring their own voices and practices to the process while listening to the communities and places surrounding their work.

The result is public art that speaks to Santa Fe as it exists now while contributing something meaningful to what comes next.

Mural Lab

Where stories become public art.

Mural Lab is the creative engine of the Mayor's Mural Initiative.

Part workshop, part conversation, and part public art laboratory, Mural Lab brings artists and community members together to explore how stories become murals.

Programs may include artist workshops, community conversations, demonstrations, collaborative projects, professional development, and opportunities to experiment with mural-making techniques.

Some conversations may lead to murals. Others may introduce an artist, uncover a story, build a skill, or change the way we think about a place.

All of them are part of the work.

Mural Lab also creates opportunities for established artists to share knowledge with emerging and local artists, strengthening Santa Fe's mural ecosystem while opening new pathways into public art.

Start With a Question

Every mural can begin with a question.

• What story deserves a wall?
• What place changed your life?
• What is the latest chisme?
• What should Santa Fe remember?
• What should we carry forward?
• What does belonging here mean to you?

Throughout the initiative, we will invite residents to respond to questions like these through formal and informal ways.

Together, these responses can become a growing record of how people experience the city and a source of inspiration for artists working in public space.

For Artists

Murals are one of the most visible forms of public art, but creating work in public space requires more than a strong image. Mural Lab will create opportunities for artists to learn, experiment, exchange knowledge, and better understand the process of developing public artwork.

Workshops and opportunities may explore mural techniques, working at scale, community engagement, developing concepts from research and conversation, public art processes, project planning, installation, documentation, and maintaining work over time.

The initiative will also create opportunities for artists to participate in future City-supported mural projects.

Artist calls, workshops, and other opportunities will be posted here as they become available.

Why Murals? Why Now?

Santa Fe is internationally known as an art city, but a living arts community cannot rely only on what previous generations created. It must continue making room for new voices, new artists, and new ways of seeing the city.

Murals can do something especially powerful. They bring art into everyday life. They can transform an overlooked surface into a place of encounter. They can hold memory, raise questions, celebrate people, challenge assumptions, and make visible stories that might otherwise remain unseen.

They also create an opportunity to ask a larger civic question:

What stories are we choosing to make visible now?

The Mayor's Mural Initiative is one way Santa Fe can answer that question together.

The Mayor's Mural Initiative is led by the City of Santa Fe Mayor's Office and Arts & Culture Department through the City's Art in Public Places Program.