Vibrance Festival

Quite often clients seeking a mural ask that the artist work with or consult their community to inform their design. We have found that applicants often trip up when trying to communicate their experience in this area. In general, when explaining your experience, we suggest:

• Keep it short. Choose 3-5 examples which are all different in some way.
• Avoid overly descriptive language, just to explain what you did, who with and how it was incorporated into the end result.
• Where possible, use recent examples. But if your best experience is 10 years ago then include that too.
• Consider using dot points to make it simpler to write. We aren't assessing your writing abilities!

Below is a fictional question and response which is adequate for most purposes. Of course, your own experiences will have more unique qualities than this fake one.

Application Question:

Do you have experience consulting with communities to inform your design?

Application Response:

Yes, I have worked with communities across several projects to directly guide my design concepts:

- Youth Hub Mural (2023): Ran stencil workshops with local youth (ages 12-18) and integrated their original sketches into the final design composition.

- Community Garden Wall (2022): Conducted informal 1-on-1 interviews with garden members to select a color palette and flora reflecting local neighborhood history.

- Emergency Relief Hub (2021): Hosted drop-in sessions with service users to gather shared stories of resilience, translating elements of them into key visual motifs.

- Primary School Entrance (2020): Led interactive drawing sessions with students and staff, using their submitted artwork to shape the central narrative.