Police Chief Rick Bourassa is celebrating a partnership that the police service has fostered for years with art-minded high school students and is promoting the youths’ two new anti-graffiti projects.
Since 2014, the Moose Jaw Police Service (MJPS) has worked with Project 104 High School Arts Collective, comprised of students from Prairie South School Division and Holy Trinity Catholic School Division. The youths create large mural projects that city crews then install in parks and on buildings that see regular graffiti vandalism.
“We would really like to reduce the amount of graffiti because what we do know is this: the physical environment signals what behaviours are acceptable,” Bourassa said during the recent Board of Police Commissioners’ meeting.
“When you have the physical environment deteriorate, it sends a signal that it doesn’t need to be respected, so it will generate more of that behaviour.”
These highly talented students wanted to create and express positive principles through artwork, he continued. The partnership was born because they lacked a venue to display their creations and the police service needed graffiti removed or covered.
The group has created 15 large murals since 2014, with all the pieces finding a home throughout the city. The students spend a year or more developing, creating and completing the projects while an anti-spray paint coating is applied to protect the murals from damage.
Of the 15 murals erected over the years, it was only this past April when someone vandalized — or tagged — one for the first time, said Bourassa. Contractors peeled off the coating and re-applied it easily.
The provincial government provides the MJPS with money from the proceeds of crime fund so the agency can purchase the materials for the students. The MJPS plans to pursue more funding so it can purchase extra supplies.
Meanwhile, the labour is free since the students make the pieces, while the city installs the artwork without charge.
The three partners plan to install two new anti-graffiti murals within the next month, including a 150-foot mural on a private building that will wrap around the structure’s sides, said Bourassa. The second project will see the city install seven murals on the former Public Comfort Station building in Crescent Park.
“It’s been just wonderful to watch students have the ability to express themselves,” he continued. “The group that was there in 2014 when we started … (are) all long gone and graduated and off to careers. This is the fourth or fifth generation of artists.”
The police service will let the students use space in the organization’s new building on Fairford Street West to finish their murals, Bourassa added.
The next Board of Police Commissioners meeting is Thursday, June 8, at 7 p.m. in the Moose Jaw Public Library’s south meeting room. The public is welcome to attend.
