By Jonathan Oppenheimer, Midway Murals

The Midway Murals project is off and running in 2015. The Hamline Midway neighborhood in Saint Paul, where the project is taking place, is buzzing with excitement. The four muralists are revved up and ready to embrace the community with open arms. Hamline University, which sits just up the road from where the murals will sprout up this summer, has made a generous contribution, as have numerous small donors, in order to get the ball rolling on the matching funds.

A local resident with an array of really cool pop-up public art projects under his belt has generously committed himself to helping with the project — his first major contribution being the completion of a phenomenal video that’s set to be released upon our crowd-funding launch in February. Community partners, such as African Economic Development Solutions, are putting countless hours into ensuring that the project does what it has set out to do: engage immigrant business owners and immigrant communities in a way that makes them feel more rooted in our neighborhood, more visible, and more connected to the non-immigrants all around them. To feel such love and support from the business owners, local non-profits, neighbors, and friends is simply tremendous.

To wake up each day and watch this one-of-a-kind mural project come together has exceeded my expectations, and with community listening sessions in the works and the formation of the a local public art workgroup just about complete, I can see, hear, and feel the heartbeat of the project racing. On we go…and it sure feels good.