if you've ever been to downtown Manchester's Pearl Street parking lot, you might have noticed *** lot of this construction noise asphalt and lots of nondescript buildings. But thanks to *** community effort and some talented artists, the brick is no longer so boring. These three artists were brought in for the first ever arts build community Manchester mural festival. They didn't come with plans or sketches of what they wanted to create. They came with blank canvases and open minds. It was really hard at first to get people to buy in to say, let us put *** mural on your wall, but we can't tell you exactly what it's gonna look like, right, we can show you the artist's work. But since the work is being done on the ground and those conversations are unfolding live, um that was really tough and to get three separate business owners to agree to let us use their wall for this conversation for the first year has been amazing. James Chase is the founder of Arts build community and *** working artist himself grew up here. Central Grad went to school in texas, but always had new Hampshire in my heart. So I came back here because I feel like there's so much potential in so many stories that aren't told. He recently completed *** mural on the stairs at Arms Park Public art is important because it's *** way of sparking conversation, right? Not provide answers, but to to really make someone pause and think and it can instill pride representation. If you, if you feel like you're not represented, it's *** way of getting that voice heard and listened to in order to accomplish that mission. Each artist of the Manchester mural festival met with different community organizations. They learned about them and their neighborhood before beginning their murals. How do you like so far? I told you that you guys would help me to make the mural's right, That literally happened because the day I talked to you guys, I had nothing sketch nothing. So I came out of the our workshop, went back to the hotel, placed all the drawings on the floor and started sketching Alex fairer works with the boys and girls club in Manchester. I think everything starts for the name, right? I mean it's it's exactly this like how the power of arts and bringing community together and in increasing and boosting the self esteem of entire neighborhoods and improve people's days. I mean if you're not having *** good day and then you cross by *** mural and then that makes you happy. It's different than when you choose to go somewhere like *** museum or *** gallery. Your I mean our street are just pops up in your in your way. Also what's been really exciting is the artist engaging with the youth and the youth from what I hear in those workshops being really engaged and really excited about this and I think really feeling um valued and feeling her just like that. Someone wants to talk to them about just themselves in their neighborhood and who they are and are actually interested in memorializing that in *** work of art publicly in their community. Like I think that's huge scissor lifts armed and ready with cans and buckets. The artists spent long hours painting the town red and brown and blue and every other color of the rainbow. Right now I am painting the hair of this woman. The design was inspired by *** group of kids at my turn which is *** local nonprofit and what I did was *** workshop with all the kids and I asked them, it's almost like *** sophisticated show and tell. Um and I asked them to all bring in an object that represented Their connection to community. For example, we talked *** lot about cooking and meals and how that brings people together, friends and family. So we have *** woman cooking in the design for Amanda Hill time was her biggest challenge. She had just over 11 days to cover 700 square feet of space. It's *** short time span, but I'm lucky enough to have some great volunteers. The volunteers were emerging artists looking to learn from the pros and create some of their own color along the way. Joseph deacon is *** printmaking major at New England College but was excited to pick up *** can of spray paints and learn more about the art of making murals. I think murals bring people together and I just, we've never had *** festival like this, so I was really excited to go and be *** part of it and next year hopefully I'm going to be one of the main artists in it and then I can help people like me move up and do it again. It's about sending that back down. And so that way they're the next wave and that they'll be in that position to know how to operate *** lift, how to execute *** mural from start to finish and then continue to pay that forward. The mural festival definitely created *** buzz, I think just the energy around it, like the way that folks were so excited and like it kind of just start to smell about like, oh, I happened to hear about this. Like I love to be involved. I love to support, I think just seeing it grow, you could see like in the beginning there very not skeptical, but trying to understand what's going on and now they're all talking about it, you know, like people talk to us when we were talking, oh, thanks for what you're doing. And I mean the feedback has been amazing. The art that was created is now part of the permanent landscape of Manchester's Ward three and the community couldn't be prouder. I hope that they get some positivity that they feel represented and they just have *** moment of pause of relief from their day to day life and pride Arts build community Yeah