At the Summerhill Fall Fest

Last Saturday morning I spent a couple of hours working at the Living Walls table at the 2nd Annual Summerhill Fall Fest in the Summerhill neighborhood.  Summerhill is a neighborhood adjacent to Turner Field, south of downtown.  Early settlers in the area were freed slaves and Jewish immigrants.  Leo Frank, convicted of the murder of Mary Phagan in 1913 and lynched in 1915, had spent time in Summerhill.  The opening and closing ceremonies of the 1996 Olympics were there, in the stadium that later was converted to Turner Field.

There's a small commercial area on Georgia Avenue near Turner Field.  Most of the buildings seem to not have been occupied for a long time, although there are seems to be lots of relatively new housing nearby.  It's the sort of area that should have a neighborhood bar and a pizza place and a convenience store that neighborhood kids can walk to.  This is the area where Living Walls worked last summer, putting 10 murals up in August.  They are amazing.

(Better photos than mine are on line, especially for Nanook's mural that I cut off most of the portrait on the left inadvertently - check out posts like this one or the Living Walls website.)

I was there, with several Living Walls staff members, for the first shift, including the beginning of the festival.  It was a slow start, with more festival volunteers on the street than festival attendees.  Jasmine, who handles media for Living Walls, reviewed with us the mission of Living Walls -- Living Walls seeks to activate and engage communities through street art.  That sounds right to me.  And I don't know if the incredible work that Living Walls artists, volunteers, and staff did on Georgia Avenue last summer will help activate the street or not, but we heard that one of the vacant store fronts would re-open soon as a convenience store.  It was clear that developers and homeowners have invested in the neighborhood, and there was a neighborhood group that was organized enough to present the 2nd Annual Summerhill Fall Fest.  So it seems to me it is just a matter of time until something happens on Georgia Avenue.

Jasmine told us about a conversation she had had with someone who ended up donating to Living Walls.  He asked her about overhead costs of the organization.  None, she told him.  He was incredulous and asked her how much Living Walls paid her.  Nothing, she said.  No one gets paid.  They have no office space.  I told her that this response didn't surprise me at all, that from the outside it is hard to believe that all this happens with no deep pockets behind it, no paid staff, just passionate people who really believe in what they do who leverage a small budget into an amazing event.  Living Walls does get really valuable support -- mostly in-kind, as I understand it -- from a number of sponsors, but it's a huge commitment from a small group of unpaid staff that make all this work. 

And as long as we are on the subject of Living Walls' sponsors, I always assumed that Delta Airlines was a sponsor, since every year Living Walls brings international artists to Atlanta for the event, but note their absence from the list of sponsors.  This is their home town, and they should be supporting it.  I think I'll send them a note and tell them that.