Abstract
The community mural movement serves an important educational role by articulating, clarifying, and expanding community values. Through examining the community mural movement as democratic art and education, I argue that murals can be aesthetically challenging and ask profound questions at the same time. I explore the history of the modern mural movement and discuss murals that serve to educate artists and community alike.
I show that community murals are expressive as well as didactic, that they stimulate community pride and commitment to justice while teaching outsiders about the struggles of traditionally oppressed people. Murals have immense capacity to expand multicultural understanding at a time when multiculturalism is central to the educational process.
The community mural movement in the last thirty years has moved in a democratic direction by involving artists and neighborhood residents in collaborative public endeavors. I conclude that if the muralists and scholars examined in this article are taken seriously, it is difficult to deny that community murals are a democratic art form and that community murals have great educational potential.
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