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Art

The long retaining wall behind Rideaucrest in Douglas R. Fluhrer Park had been crying out for some sort of uptake for years. In 2014, the Friends of Kingston Inner Harbour took up the gauntlet and organized Kingston’s first ever juried street are festival. It won the Kingstonist award for the most exciting new arts event of the year! We modeled the festival on the MURAL festival in Montreal which draws millions of tourists annually. Council voted unanimously to waive the graffiti by-law for a week to allow the artists a full week without fear of arrest by the police. For many artists it was a dream come true. The festival was repeated again in 2017, although this time artists simply registered on a first-come-first-served basis. It is our intent that the wall become a legal street art wall, like the Berlin wall or Ottawa’s Tech Wall. City staff is currently working on this. In addition a couple of spin-offs have occurred or are in planning stages. Brian Melody created a street art wall on his back fence in the west end. And a group of Kingston Mills residents is currently working on having an artist paint on the retaining wall along the road at Kingston Mills.  Work will proceed on this front when the city has completed its Public Art Policy.