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The walls of Syracuse will come alive this summer, as the Syracuse-based organization Tomorrow’s Neighborhoods Today is planning to unveil their newest project, City as Canvas, which the 20-year-old organization has been planning for years.

“We are in hopes that this initial funding is just the beginning of a program that can live in perpetuity and spread the civic pride that comes with (the) presence of art across our beautiful city,” said Jimmy Monto, the president of TNT’s board of directors.

City as Canvas is a neighborhood beautification project with an educational aspect that allows residents and students to work side by side with the artist. The vision includes eight murals spread out across TNT’s eight sectors of Syracuse, all created by local artists, who will paint murals on the sides of buildings or walls to create a unique representation for each of the sectors. Monto said it’s the largest project TNT has done to date, and it’s being completed in partnership with the Syracuse Public Art Commission.

“I am looking forward to building a stronger relationship between the community, local artists and local businesses,” said Tina Zagyva, the operations manager for City as Canvas. “It is very exciting to finally launch this program after several years in the making.”

TNT’s board of directors is composed of 16 members, with two individuals from each of the eight sectors — Downtown, Westside, Southside, Valley, Eastside, Eastwood, Northside and Lakefront. The board has meetings every month where the group decides how the year’s funding will be spent.

It is also in charge of selecting artists for City as Canvas and approving the artist’s plan. The discussions involving the plans for each sector are planned to take place in April and May, as the call for artists is currently ongoing, and the murals will be created during the summer.

Every City as Canvas mural will also feature an educational and collaborative aspect. This could be very broad, like youth from the Syracuse City School district watching the mural artists paint and asking questions during the process, Monto said. Each sector’s educational aspect will be different, depending on the specific sector, the mural’s artist and its content.

As a nonprofit, funding for the organization is limited. TNT applies for grants from the Central New York Community Foundation and gets around $5,000 every year from the city to host small projects.

“We have everything from park benches, to clean up projects, to community gardens, to fall festivals,” Monto said about the projects. “Or we partner with other groups, neighborhood associations, et cetera, to have events.”

TNT is also working on creating greener spaces within the community. One example of this is a Northside sector project for the 2021-22 season: a community garden and free food pantry. An outline of the project states that TNT will collaborate with the Syracuse Refugee Agricultural Program — a program run by local organization Refugee and Immigrant Self-Empowerment — to combat food insecurity in the area.

Zagyva describes these smaller projects as “stepping stones to building the experience necessary to efficiently handle an endeavor of (City as Canvas’) magnitude.”

As the proposals for City as Canvas began, groups were intrigued and understood the importance of a project like this for communities and offered their own donations, the project outline said.

“At this point, it is an economic stimulus package for local artists who have suffered through the pandemic,” Monto said.

Sheena Solomon, the executive director of the Gifford Foundation — one of the donors for City as Canvas — said that projects like this one, which have an emphasis on supporting the arts, are an important part of the community.

“The arts are a powerful resource for revitalization and provide physical, emotional, social, cultural and economic benefits,” Solomon said.

Published on March 7, 2022 at 11:57 pm