There is already a wall in St. Thomas built just for practicing murals. It went up in April next to the Railway City Skate Park downtown, put there by the city’s Parks and Recreation Department with local partners Andrew Gunn Consulting and Young & Free Press. Now it is about to get a lot more use.
This September, Fanshawe is launching a new Urban Arts micro-credential at the St. Thomas campus, a four week course that teaches people how to plan, paint, and manage a large outdoor mural from start to finish. The course runs about 120 hours and costs $2,500. Along with hands-on painting, students work through safety certification, project planning, and business and marketing basics, the kind of skills that turn a hobby painter into someone who can land paid mural work. Seats for this first, September intake are limited, so instead of a regular sign-up, Fanshawe is asking anyone interested to join a waiting list, and staff will follow up to confirm a spot.
It is a local effort. Fanshawe built the program with St. Thomas-based Andrew Gunn Consulting and Young & Free Press, along with the St. Thomas Economic Development Corporation and Railway City Tourism. Heather Carey, senior manager of Fanshawe’s Corporate Training Solutions, says the goal reaches past the classroom. “Urban art is creating new opportunities for artists, communities and local economies across the region,” she said. Andrew Gunn, who runs the consulting firm, put it simply: “St. Thomas is the perfect setting. Over the past six years, the city has transformed into a community bursting with artwork.”
Students will not just practice on that wall by the skate park. Their first real job is a few blocks over, at Hepburn Parkette. As LocVox reported earlier this month, city council backed a $1.6 million plan to rebuild the small parkette on Talbot Street, and the plan included a mural by “an internationally renowned artist” with an education piece built in. Young & Free Press has since named that artist as Ola Volo, a Kazakh-Canadian muralist based in Vancouver and Montreal whose past clients include Louis Vuitton and Volkswagen. She is set to paint the Hepburn Parkette mural in September, the same month the Urban Arts program starts, with students learning at her side.
One thing has not changed since July: the Hepburn Parkette project still needs a federal Build Communities Strong Fund grant before any of this becomes permanent. Council has endorsed the vision. The money is not in hand yet. If the grant comes through, St. Thomas gets a new mural downtown, and a fresh group of local artists trained to help paint the next one.
Sources: Fanshawe Urban Arts program page, Young & Free Press: New Fanshawe College Urban Arts Program in St. Thomas, Young & Free Press: Hepburn Parkette mural project
By Anthony Zruna · About the LocVox Newsroom