The Philadelphia Mural Arts Program is the nation’s largest mural program. Since 1984, the Mural Arts Program has created nearly 3,000 murals and works of public art in Philadelphia, which are now part of Philadelphia’s civic landscape and a source of inspiration to the thousands of residents and visitors who encounter them, earning Philadelphia international recognition as the “City of Murals.” The Mural Arts Program also engages over 100 communities each year in the transformation of neighborhoods through the mural-making process, and their free art education programs annually serve over 3,000 youth at sites throughout the city and at-risk teens through education outreach programs.

Some of the thousands of murals in the city of Philadelphia.

While the Mural Arts Program has evolved from an anti-graffiti program into a city-wide public art organization, it has become increasingly important for it to manage the myriad of information about each of the murals and the communities they serve. The Mural Arts Program needed to track and publish information about a whole range of details, including artists, assistants, sponsors, affiliated organizations, start, completion and dedication dates, maintenance activities, renovation and demolition details and (of course) the location of each mural. Organizing this type of information is not a unique concern for Mural Arts. Hundreds of organizations throughout the U.S. are managing public art programs and face similar issues. Emails about various pieces of art go back and forth within the organization, some data is stored in Excel, other data in Filemaker, photos in other systems, some of it is on the organization’s web site while much of it is not. And in the end, staff members have a hard time carrying out the mission of their organization efficiently while also effectively showcasing the full extent of their collection to the public, funders, and potential sponsors.

Sajara-powered mural search page on Muralfarm.org.

When the Mural Arts Program approached Azavea, they had a good sense of what they were looking for. And, after building PhillyHistory.org for the Philadelphia Department of Records to assist them with the management and showcasing of 100,000′s of historic photos of the city, we thought that a geographic collection like that of the Mural Arts Program would be a good fit for Sajara, our geographic digital asset management solution…And so Muralfarm.org was born.

Muralfarm.org enables the public to search for murals by artist, theme, date, keywords and of course by location and neighborhood. Visitors to Muralfarm.org can tag favorite murals, save searches, be notified when new murals are added thanks to GeoRSS feeds, and enjoy special features like viewing the murals in Google Earth and Google Maps – StreetView. At the same time, the Mural Arts Program staff can easily manage information pertaining to each mural through Sajara’s digital asset management tools. And because the whole system is web-based, artists, neighborhood residents, community groups, and Mural Arts Program staff members can leave comments, send messages, and make corrections online, thereby improving the database over time. By pairing both public access search capabilites with collection management tools, Mural Arts is able to use the Sajara platform to store critical information about its projects in a single place.

The Mural Arts Program has essentially created a huge outdoor, geographically distributed museum with the entire city as its canvas. Muralfarm.org brings more than 1,000 murals under one roof, enables the public to see them all, and creates a foundation for the program to more effectively manage information about each work of art. It’s a living, changing feast for the eyes!

By the way, have you seen our newly launched Sajara website? We think it’s quite slick, how about you? Send us your comments.