The Free City Mural festival is back and better than ever, with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Community Foundation of Greater Flint, the C.S, Mott Foundation, and the Genesee County Share Arts Grant. Free City celebrates art, urban beautification, creativity, and culture by enriching our community through the arts. As part of our campaign to change the image of the City of Flint from water crisis to a city of creative hope, FPAP will be hosting the city’s first mural festival since the pandemic. The festival will take place on June 25th to July 2nd, 2022, at various locations on and along Saginaw Street, from Carpenter Road to 12th street.

In October of 2018, Flint Public Art Project retooled the Free City Festival into an international mural festival to help change the narrative of the City of Flint. We assembled a team of 9 local, regional, and international artists to change the landscape of one corner of the city. In 2019 our campaign grew, adding 104 new murals throughout the City of Flint changing the narrative of the city from water crisis to public art. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, FPAP was unable to hold the 2020 and 2021 festival, but still managed to install 110 new murals during those two years. In 2022 we have partnered with the Flint Leverage Points Project, who is finishing their four year study of the Flint food system, and the Flint and Genesee Food Policy Council to use art as a tool to address inadequacies in the Flint food system that were highlighted during Covid and the water crisis. After several community and partner meetings we came up with the theme: “Imagining Flint’s Ideal Food System.”