HOW WE FISH MURAL
Creative Brief Update:
Design Direction
4/19/12

Our artist team for “How We Fish” spends time updating the cornerstone Living Creative Brief to capture the ideas and spirit of community meetings and forums across the city.  The brief helps keep the story flowing  from neighborhood to neighborhood and connects to the visual ideas that have been in development for the last few months.

Here are some narrative highlights that they shared at a recent Design Direction Review. You can catch a glimpse of some of the visuals that go with this narrative throughout the story – and see how the mural is starting to come together!

The team will continue to refine the design with special attention being paid to the present and future state of work in our city, region and world. What do you think the future of work LOOKS like? Share your ideas at: howwefish@muralarts.org

Narrative Highlights:

• Based on our many community meetings and the physical nature of the viewable area of the wall, we wanted to highlight a central image to depict one person’s direct experience with work.

• We also wanted to place that experience in the context of the larger social and communal need for work – to serve human needs and advance society.

• It is important that the mural carries a unifying message and highlights common values and goals associated with work.

• To capture the rich history of work in Philadelphia, but put it in a living context, we feature 4 “economies” in the design. We try to highlight their place in history as well as universal quality that make them relevant today:
  • Agricultural
  • Industrial
  • Merchant/Main Street
  • Knowledge-Based

• Within each “economy,” we feature the following narrative and visual elements:
  • A large “value” word that we heard at community meetings (note: the design shows everything in English, but we plan to have some items in Spanish and in Chinese)
  • Quote from our community meetings that relates to that value
  • Mosaic glass design element

• The central industry highlighted is the Philadelphia garment industry. There are several reasons for that:
• The wall naturally has a “woven” feel to it. Philadelphia has historically produced textiles and sewn products since it’s founding. We saw an opportunity to connect the two.

• We heard a lot about what works means to individuals, which we will capture in images, text and quotes. From a perspective of providing a hopeful and aspirational larger message, we want to show how interconnected people are through work – and how much we must rely on that to function as a pluralistic, diverse society. The symbol of fabric is a good fit for that part of our story. You’ll see it in the wall design as a printed piece of “working class” fabric (broadcloth denim) that tells an illustrated story of that interconnectivity.

• Many participants in the Congresso session were retired garment workers and talked about a time when that industry was thriving in north Philadelphia.

• We discovered that Children’s Village – the childcare center in the building that will house the mural – was created in 1976 for the children of the workers of the Amalgamated Men’s Clothing Union the International Ladies Garment Workers Union to care for the children of parents in their workforce development center and factory across the street.

• Today, the garment industry is a bedrock industry for Chinese workers in the area – often serving as their first “stepping stone” job when they immigrate here and giving them a foundation on which to further their professional development in other areas.

• The overall theme of the mural is that “Work Unites Us” – as people, as a society, we come together at work in ways that we don’t in our personal lives. From the highest common denominator of shared goals and social values to the task of getting practical work done, we want to acknowledge and celebrate this interconnected aspect of work.

We think it is important to present a snapshot of experience, but also represent the “higher quality” of what work does for us as individuals and society. We think that one of the most important messages we can get across is that work unites us in society and keep things running. We are interdependent on each other. Working together brings us in contact with all sorts of folks we might not otherwise know.  Work is a unifier and binds us together as a society. We also want to create a clear message that is aspirational for workers, employers, and educators alike – and we want it to be spelled out, literally to be seen from the highway and above the treeline. We think the phrase “Work Unites Us” captures that sentiment. We would like to treat that text in the way old signs were painted right onto buildings so it feels timeless and part of the wall.

When we acknowledge how much we rely on each other and honor everyone’s special contribution through work we take the first step. When we value quality of life as an equal if not more important partner to financial gain, we will truly be more sustainable and fulfilled. It’s an age-old perspective, but it is so important that we are talking about these issues now, during these times.