Cleveland Walls! Brings Stunning (and Visitors) Murals to the MidTown Neighborhood

This note was featured in our September 2021 Newsletter. If you are interested in receiving this newsletter, please sign up here: https://cresco.vmshares.com/contact/ 

Cities nationwide often struggle with sameness. Blocks of commercial and residential properties are undifferentiated from one city to the next. Neighborhood boundaries are blurred. There’s very little that a particular area can claim as unique. 

Cleveland has been making a concerted effort to combat sameness through visual stimulation. As part of their efforts to grow and distinguish the MidTown neighborhood, our friends at MidTown Cleveland and LAND Studio brought 19 murals featuring the work of 23 local and national artists to MidTown. They debuted their collaboration, Cleveland Walls!, with Pow! Wow! Worldwide in September 2021, engulfing the district in color, seemingly overnight.  

Pow! Wow! Worldwide has an international repertoire and draw; the competition for artists to be featured in MidTown attracted hundreds of submissions, and will attract thousands of visitors that may never have considered MidTown as a visitor destination.  

Public art, and urban murals in particular, have an outsized impact on neighborhood identity. Significant architecture and historic preservation are inherited signs that a place matters. But public art, especially in the form of murals, personalizes and energizes the built environment. Cleveland Walls! Is a spectacular collection of murals throughout the district.  

Even though it took years to assemble, the payoff will last generations. MidTown is already a growing location for employers, makers and innovators, perhaps more so than other Cleveland neighborhoods. The impact from Cleveland Walls! will help accelerate that rise in vitality and bring more attention to a distinct Cleveland locale.