Nevertheless.
Many young people, regardless of where they live or attend school, are rarely exposed to art or art making these days. Even more scarce are meaningful creative jobs that engage more of a teenager's full being. [Side note: Statistics show that jobs across all creative disciplines contributed a little over 4 Billion dollars to Ohio's economy in 2017. Let that sink in...] Yet and still, many still see the creative and/or performing arts as non-viable career pathways. Despite experiencing a market place practically driven by creatives, many adults still insist that their children prepare for a "real job," so, it's an even rarer experience for a young person to be able to use the creativity that he/she may well have relegated to classroom doodling, for actually changing the face of a city. But every summer young people from across Cincinnati do exactly that and what they create is truly impactful, no doubt for them, certainly for the city, but also for many of us less jaded old-heads who get to witness the transformation of the city by kids that we instinctively know will use their creativity to solve this city's most complex problems.
And those problems are real.
Its no understatement to statement that the very walls on which these inspiring murals are painted used to represent blight, or exclusion or served as lines of demarcation separating one neighborhood from another. It's also not lost on me that much of what made Cincinnati a difficult place to live in 30 years ago, still exist, they've just evolved with the times.
But what's undeniably hopeful and even invigorating is that the power of the creative mind and the hope of a new generation is repurposing all of those lines and bricks and walls that separate us and using them to give an entire city something significant to embrace and to leverage for greater connections. Which is at least addressing the problem.
