Documentary | Mending Walls: Educators Workshop

The public art project, Mending Walls RVA, aims to establish empathy and connection through art. Created by Hamilton Glass in Spring 2020, in response to the community unrest following the death of George Floyd. Inspired by an eye-opening conversation he had with a friend and frequent artistic collaborator Matt Lively, the project paired together 30 artists from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and perspectives to have conversations about their lived experiences and to create 16 murals across the city with the hope their art would ultimately spark deeper conversations within our community and promote healing.

Using real-time footage and testimonial, Mending Walls: The Documentary shows this healing journey through art. It shows how the artists got to know each other through uncomfortable conversations about race, status, and their personal experiences, how they created their mural concepts to reflect those conversations, and how working together ultimately opened their eyes and their hearts to the differences, as well as commonalities among all of us. It also shows how our community responded to their efforts by engaging with the spaces the murals provided, volunteering to be a part of this community-wide effort, and inspiring others to put aside their discomfort and fear to talk to each other about often difficult topics.

It’s a story of recognizing our collective frustration and confusion, of understanding our different experiences, of practicing empathy, and of healing a community through art. We need to talk, and we need to listen, to move our community forward.