Ten artists will leave their mark on the growing collection of community murals in Minnesota’s Creative Enterprise Zone (CEZ) during the return of the Chroma Zone Mural and Art Festival for 2022. Chroma Zone is Minnesota’s largest art and mural festival, produced and located within the CEZ, a city-recognized district of Saint Paul and non-profit dedicated to attracting and supporting creative people and businesses. Begun in 2019, the annual mural festival celebrates artistry and adds to the neighborhood’s long-term beauty, economic viability, safety, and walkability while supporting artists and entrepreneurs, and sparking creative economic activity. Forecast’s team is proud to continue facilitating the festival artist selection. Located right in the heart of the CEZ neighborhood for over 25 years, Forecast brings deep knowledge of the area to our mission to advocate for public art that advances justice, health and human dignity. 

FORECAST’S ROLE + CONTINUING TO EMPHASIZE RACIAL AND GENDER EQUITY TO DISRUPT THE MURAL FESTIVAL STATUS QUO

We are a proud founding partner on the creation of this festival in 2019 and are happy to now serve as an ongoing Creative Consultant to the Creative Enterprise Zone as they move forward with this incredible event. As a facilitator of the artist selection, Forecast provided the CEZ with a list of pre-qualified artists for the festival’s third year.

A part of our role with Chroma Zone is to disrupt the mural festival status quo. In line with our values, we thoughtfully select and recommend artists for walls through the lenses of racial and gender equity. To ensure that resources and talent are cultivated right here locally, we always aim to recommend and select at least 80% local Minnesota artists. We are proud to continue to elevate and promote local artists from our rich community of muralists. Along with the CEZ, we also promote and ensure that creatives and artists always be paid fairly for their work. All selected artists in this festival are compensated for their work.

Jen Krava, Forecast Director of Programming, explains: “As a national organization that works with cities around the country, we helped start this festival with a concern that many mural festivals are more focused on priming capital markets than on building social capital among and between people, and that they continue to lag behind in ensuring full representation of BIPOC, women and non-binary artists.”

Many of the selected artists have previously received support from Forecast through grants and other programming, through our ongoing work supporting public artists with funding, training and opportunities to create partnerships and advance their public art careers.

SELECTED ARTISTS

The final selection includes ten artists. Most are Minnesota-based; half are women or non-binary artists, and the majority identify as BIPOC artists.