Blkout Walls Fest to bring fresh art to North End

Expect vibrant North End murals from artists raised on construction lifts starting next week for the Blkout Walls Festival.

Details: The festival runs Sept. 7-17, with featured artists using buildings as their canvas while the public drops in to watch. Events include a "future of street art" talk Sept. 12 at 7pm and a block party Sept. 16 from 11am-5pm, both at Chroma.

• Schedule and full details

Flashback: The event was created by local artist Sydney James alongside two others in Denver and Chicago. The goal was to reverse the lack of pay, underrepresentation and tokenization of Black artists at other similar festivals.

• It kicked off in 2021 with 24 artists who made more than 40 murals alongside other drop-in artists, James tells Axios.

The latest: This year, 25 artists will be working along Woodward Avenue from Midtown to Highland Park.

• They get lodging, meals and transportation, plus a fee per mural.
• The artists are about half local and half travelers, including two internationals from Ghana and Jamaica.

What they're saying: "Oftentimes when the artists don't reflect the population of the city, neither does the work," James says.

• "So … you might have a mural up in whatever area you live, however, you don't care about it because you feel like it don't have nothing to do with you — which is why I often say it's a two-way conversation."

Worthy of your time: Local filmmaker Lamar Landers has a new mini-doc out about Blkout Walls, "The Foundation."