Underpass Mural - Volunteers Needed
Closing Date of Opportunity: September 17, 2024
Name or Organization: Dark Dingy Underpass
Contact Email: darkdingyunderpass@gmail.com
Website: www.ramsaycalgary.ca/underpass-mural
Post Content: Hello Neighbours!
We are Caitlind Brown & Monica Ila, and we’re Ramsay-based artists. For the past 2.5 years, we’ve been working on an immersive mural for the dark and dingy underpass beneath the train lines on 11th-12th Street SE. This underpass is an important pedestrian corridor and the primary connector between Ramsay, our neighbours in Inglewood, and the Bow River. As you may have noticed, it’s currently a terrible place to walk – grey, narrow, under-lit, over-graffitied, and kind of scary. Someday in the future, the Green Line LRT will improve the underpass as part of their redevelopment area – but this is unlikely to happen until 2027 or later. In the meantime, we’ve been planning a way to make the underpass more welcoming to the neighbourhood as soon as possible. Ramsay deserves an iconic entryway!
Together with our collaborator, RCA President Kolja Vainstein, we’ve gained permission from the property owners at the City of Calgary and CPKC (formerly CP Rail) to animate the underpass with a bright & colourful mural – coming in Fall 2024!
The mural design is inspired by hyper-local histories, stories, and myths from the neighbourhood. We asked the community two questions:
What brings you joy about living in Ramsay?
What are the secret stories of our neighbourhood?
These questions were open to present and former Ramsay dwellers, as well as our neighbours in Inglewood, and the broader Calgary community. The design of the mural will reflect the responses we received online and by postcard.
Want to contribute? We are still collecting secret stories here. You can add to our online archive of neighbourhood secrets any time throughout our process!
If you want to volunteer or donate to the project, don’t hesitate to get in touch. We need all the help we can get.