Our Story

Introduction

Wall-to-Wall Mural & Culture Festival started as a collective dream and mission to bring accessible art into peoples’ everyday lives. The community-focused festival highlights equal parts mural, music, and mentorship and culminates with a finalé celebration, bringing together communities around art, music, dance, and more.

As the festival continues to grow, so does our team, our values, and the needs our community. It's important that our team, curators, committees, artists, and partners reflect our community. 

Wall-to-Wall commits to curation that uplifts artists, mentors, musicians, and performers belonging to under-supported communities, particularly those who identify as Black, Indigenous, Afro-Indigenous, People of Colour, 2SLGBTQIA+, artists with disabilities, and any and all people who fall within these intersections.

 Timeline

🗓 2014 ✧ It Begins

Before Wall-to-Wall became a reality, it was first a dream.

  • A dream to create a contemporary, grass-roots street art movement in our city.
  • A dream to employee more artists outside of institutional spaces.
  • A dream to engage communities with accessible public art.
  • A dream to mentor, train, and uplift local artists that could then one day use their skills to build their portfolios, continue their practice, and even travel the world through their art.

As we continue the work, we continue to dream. With an even bigger team, more artists, and creative partners.

Since the festival's inauguration in 2014, Wall-to-Wall has doubled its success, artist involvement, audience participation and community outreach each year. The festival has grown from one week to an entire month and started with small-scale interior murals to entire facades of five-story buildings.

From day one to today, there continues to be a genuine desire from the public that our city needs and supports more public art and art-related events integrated into their everyday lives.

2015 ✧ Raising Community

Introduction to Mentorship Graffiti Art Programming - Coming Soon

2019 ✧ Reaching Rural

As Wall-to-Wall has grown, rural communities and towns across Manitoba have reached out to our team to bring new, contemporary-art murals that show the changing histories and growing values of their communities. In 2019, Wall-to-Wall travelled to Brandon and Boissevain to begin a new chapter – Wall-to-Wall's Rural Mural Tour.

During this program, we were also able to bring our core pillars into the community by offering hands-on art workshops with the community, mentorship opportunities, and music / community celebrations to celebrate the creation of the new mural.

2020 ✧ Pandemic Pivot

As the pandemic hit the entire world, Wall-to-Wall and its creators knew it was now,more than ever,important to stay connected through accessible public art. And new limitations&us to consider alternative ways to structure our mural and culture festival, in order to deliver responsible and safe, yet still engaging public art outcomes.

Through our trusted partnerships and with the freedom to dream – the inaugural Panel Mural Program was created!

Wall-to-Wall’s first formal Call for Submissions was sent around world-wide and welcomed international, national and local artists and creatives to apply for the panel mural program. In its first year, we received over 300 submissions from around the world.

Through this program, we have been able to include artists that would not have otherwise been able to create or access mural making in less than a year, Wall-to-Wall was able to strategize, create, and implement a new program that impacted communities, employ artists, and supported local businesses and organizations.

 Murals

Using Format