By Rebecca Froehlich for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Kathleen Shannon for Greater Dakota News Service reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

Murals are fast becoming a staple of Midwestern towns, and the Mural On The Wall (Mural OTW) team approaches this familiar cultural touchstone with a surprising twist. 

Most muralists are commissioned to portray a certain theme, in a specific place, using the artist’s signature style. Although the people who live and work in a space may walk by the mural every day once it’s finished, they have little say in the design. Mural OTW’s Amber Hansen, painting professor at the University of South Dakota and Reyna Hernandez, painter and muralist, create community-based murals that flip this model on its head. 

When Mural OTW’s in town, you’re invited to take part in every step of the process. 

“The murals we create are being imagined and designed with the people who utilize the space and have invited us to be there,” Hansen explains. “We don’t show up with a design ready to go. It unfolds as we meet with members of the community.”

Once a mural location is secured, the Mural OTW team invites the community to take part in design workshops. Rather than asking residents to sketch, the ideation sessions are usually filled with conversations, poetry, and storytelling which serve as fuel for the design team. “Each design workshop is tailored for that group of people, in that time, and that place,” Hansen elaborates. Through creative design approaches, the question of what represents a town is raised, and the answers go beyond naming iconic landmarks or sports mascots. 

“Sharing stories helps people think about the place they live creatively. It’s not just the water tower or the railroad tracks. It’s a matter of pushing the way we see our communities. When we’re painting on the wall, and people see their ideas come together, they see the story of who they are as a community come together too,” says Hernandez.

There’s only so much square footage on each mural, and no way to represent every suggestion. Just as important as facilitating conversations is the art of editing. 

“It’s like writing poetry, where you take large and complex feelings or attitudes and whittle them down just to what needs to be said,” Hernandez explains. “We take all the information we’ve gathered from our meetings and synthesize the ideas, being as intentional and careful as a poet is about the words they choose.”

A glance at Mural OTW’s portfolio reveals a wide array of mural projects, united by a monumental visual style that marries striking color combinations with detailed, skillfully rendered compositions. 

Vermillion — South Dakota’s first community-based mural, according to the team, placed next to the nonprofit movie theater — highlights the town’s culture through lighthearted riffs on famous movie posters. A mural just a block away portrays two horses bursting above a detailed star quilt while another celebrates female role models and mothers. From Centerville to Sioux City, each mural is as unique as the community that helped bring it to life. 

Community members can pitch in for the painting process, although Hernandez, Hansen, and local team members lead major aspects like projecting the image, outlining, and rendering details. They engage curious onlookers, prompting a collective sense of ownership over the design. 

“This work is challenging, from the funding to the weather to organizing the meetings… and sometimes wasps,” Hansen laughs. “Yet it consistently feels like the most rewarding work. The artists we work with give generously to make this happen, and in response, the community meets that generosity in any way they can, whether it’s donating supplies or food or labor. The idea that it’s not just for us, but for everyone is inspiring.”

That spark of inspiration has spread to the wider community. Vermillion, Mural OTW’s homebase, has a wide range of current and finished mural projects, and past participants have gone on to organize projects of their own. If reading this made you curious, too, Hansen has this advice for you: 

“I learned this process by working with other artists. You can start small. You can make a mural with just three people in the place where you live. It doesn’t even have to be on a wall. What does a collaborative painting look like with four of your friends? Painting can be a very solitary practice, but seeing something you helped make happen, from the first stages to finishing touches, can make other things feel more possible.”


Rebecca Froehlich wrote this story for Arts Midwest.


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By Frankie (Amy) Felegy for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Iowa News Service reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

Chuy Renteria started dancing-specifically breaking-at the age of 14. A magazine editor and writer these days, Renteria still uses breaking to express his identity-and defiance, rebellion, and frustration with the other dancers.

"We're in conversation. We're having the equivalent of a heated argument on the dance floor," he says. The improvisational street dance is rooted in African American and Latino culture. It originated in New York City in 1980s, alongside a growing hip-hop scene.

Renteria dances to engage with the labels pasted onto him, both accurate and biased.

"When people see me walking down the street, they can't help but think A, B, C, right? So when I go to sleep and I wake up, I can't take that away," he says.

'This is Me'

Renteria grew up in West Liberty, Iowa, in the 80s and 90s-a time and place that has shaped who he is and where his art leads him.

The city is less than two square miles in size; inside is a historically majority Hispanic population.

"Growing up in West Liberty, I felt too Mexican for the white people and too white for the Mexican people. And that was always this constant [existence] between those spaces," Renteria says.

As young as nine years old, the first-generation Mexican-American remembers racial slurs being flung at him. People would say they hated him.

"And when I found dance, it transcended all of that," he says. "It's like, this is me."

Finding Meaning

Renteria shares: "Just by nature of my own identity, in the context of the social constructs around us, me existing becomes this political conversation point to folks."

But that politicization isn't as direct a translation in dance as, say, artforms that use words or visuals. The dialogue is more subtle.

"Dance and movement, and that sort of expression, is just as valid, and it's just as politically cognizant of the world. It just does it in this kind of abstraction. It doesn't have to be hitting you over the head," he says.

Renteria's 2021 memoir We Heard It When We Were Young, along with his more recent blog posts in Of Spanglish and Maximalism, grapple with his past, the now, and beyond.

What is identity? How does intergenerational trauma and racism impact who we are? The list goes on: "Did I have a good childhood? Am I a good person because-or in spite of-my upbringing? ... Is my town a good town? The town that I grew up in, the town as of now, is it a good place?" Renteria asks.

"I'm really interested in the questions that I don't know the answer to."


Frankie (Amy) Felegy wrote this story for Arts Midwest.


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By Anya Slepyan for The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration

As the 2024 election approached, news channels and commentators once again revived a familiar narrative: the urban-rural divide. 

But Laura Zabel, executive director of Minnesota-based arts non-profit Springboard for the Arts, was more interested in urban-rural solidarity. 

“Going into an election year, we knew that there was going to be a lot of narrative that focused on ways we might be different, or ways that people assume we’re different,” Zabel said. “And we wanted to do something to not only counter that narrative, but to help people build real relationships and real solidarity across urban and rural places.” 

Stoking resentment between urban and rural communities serves to divide largely working-class constituencies that could gain more political power if they work together, Zabel said. Emphasizing what these communities have in common, across different geographies and demographics, can help counter that divide. But it’s not easy to overcome a narrative that is so deeply ingrained that many Americans take it for granted.

So Springboard for the Arts launched a new initiative, consisting of over 35 artists working on projects across Minnesota, Michigan, Kentucky, and Colorado that connect urban and rural communities. The installations include phone booths that connect communities in rural Northfield, Minnesota and Minneapolis, a culinary project that celebrates the fusion of a chef’s Southeast Asian roots and rural midwestern upbringing, and a Kentucky poetry slam honoring the renowned theorist and professor bell hooks.

The results, Zabel said, demonstrate “all of the different ways that we’re connected, and all of the different creative ways that we might reach out to one another and build that kind of understanding.” 

Using art projects to foster connection and understanding is effective, according to Zabel, because they leave room for nuance and complexity that is often flattened by media narratives. Creative projects can also help people approach new ideas with a more open mind, she said. 

“Art has a tremendous ability to build shared experience in ways that takes people outside of their comfort zone, or makes people more open to thinking of things in a different way,” Zabel said.

A project installed in two Minnesota elementary schools demonstrates the principles behind the projects. Artist David Hamlow worked with 2nd and 3rd graders in rural St. James and urban Minneapolis to design wall sculptures made of recycled materials. Each student was also given a yearbook photo of a participating student from the other school, and asked to incorporate that picture into the sculpture. The resulting walls of faces serve a purpose similar to pen pals, according to Zabel.

The youth-focused project also hopes to reach urban and rural children before they’ve internalized the harmful stereotypes these communities can apply to one another. 

Project installations by the initial class of 35 artists are ongoing, but Zabel hopes to expand the initiative further in coming years.

“I think that if we are able to build greater understanding and connection, and help people see a more complete picture of what it looks like to live in different contexts, we end up finding out that there is a lot of shared interest and shared hope for our future and our children,” Zabel said.


Anya Slepyan wrote this article for The Daily Yonder.


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Sixty years ago this weekend, young activists marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, demanding their right to vote and changing history in the process. Today, another group of young people is using art to make their voices heard in Georgia.

A Boston-based arts group, beheard.world, has teamed up with Selma-area teens for "Selma Again," a production that blends dance, spoken word and music to shed light on the struggles the city still faces today.

Director and choreographer Anna Myer said the performance is about pushing forward, as well as looking back.

"The piece talks about real things that are happening and things that go to the heart," she said, "and it also talks about love and the only way forward is love and the only way to keep moving forward is if we do this together."

Myer said she first visited Selma years ago and was struck by how poverty and crime persist despite its historic significance. She and her husband, filmmaker Jay Paris, along with Selma natives, helped create a nonprofit initiative to blend nonviolence education, performing arts and storytelling for local youth.

It's part of the Selma Cross-Cultural Nonviolence and Performing Arts Academy, which was co-founded by Dallas County natives and civil rights veterans Charles Bonner and Viola Douglas, along with the Rev. Gary Crum of Elwood Christian Church. Through poetry and dance, teens confront modern challenges and honor past civil rights leaders.

Myer said this year's production highlights how today's youth can step into the legacy of activism left by the "foot soldiers" of the 1960s.

"In the performance in Atlanta, we're honoring civil rights veterans who are still alive - Andrew Young, and Charles Steele, and Faya Rose Sanders, and Lynda Blackmon Lowery," she added. "We're honoring them and we'll be also speaking their names in the piece."

"Selma Again" will be performed today (Fri., March 7) at Morehouse College's Ray Charles Performing Arts Center in Atlanta, and Sat., March 8, at Ellwood Christian Academy in Selma, as part of the annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee.

Myer emphasized the show's ultimate goal is to spark meaningful conversations, promote understanding and inspire action for lasting change.