🔒The formerly named POW! WOW! Worcester is skipping its 2022 street art festival, as its volunteers regroup and eye a smaller future

Since 2016, POW! WOW! Worcester has put up murals around the city for the public to interact with. After five August festivals, including a 2021 return after a 2020 break with the coronavirus pandemic, the community organization is looking to its longevity.

A new name and a shifted platform are at the forefront of the future plan.

The newly named Worcester Walls intends to use 2022 to figure out how to maintain its 200 murals, including finding the funding necessary for the less glitzy aspect of public art. There will be no summer festival as in past years.

“We've done five festivals and almost 200 murals, and that's a lot,” said co-director Jessica Walsh, who owns the Worcester Wares retail stores.

Its committee volunteers for the 10-day festival each summer, and to Walsh, during the year, participation is akin to a full-time job.

“I want to see paint everywhere,” said Walsh. “But people got married, moved away, had babies, endured divorces, had family die or get sick with COVID.”

The future of Worcester Walls

Though some members shifted, Worcester Walls is seizing the awkwardness tied to change and asking questions.

“This was a good year to take a step back and figure out, ‘How do we want to change?’” said Walsh.

More specific propositions include how to adapt to the booming business of art festivals. When POW! WOW! came into being six years ago, mural festivals were not a common outing. Now, they are, said Walsh. A thriving art industry is exciting, but naturally it ignites competition. Worcester Walls must innovate, she said.

Worcester Walls could organize small events, with new artists and fun entertainment such as food trucks to energize the city for stints scattered through the year.

Mark Borenstein, an attorney with Worcester law firm Bowditch & Dewey, joined the POW! WOW! committee in 2017 because the organization needed help with legal affairs. For future years, Borenstein said more discrete projects are the way to go. Worcester Walls shouldn’t simply continue with an annual, large festival simply because it always has. Smaller, targeted art events could have a greater impact for specific communities and are easier to achieve in a post-COVID world.

“Worcester is morphing before our very eyes, so it's nice to have Worcester Walls as a tool to activate unutilized areas in the city,” said Borenstein.

The difficulties of maintenance

A harder question is, does Worcester Walls want to start covering up murals one by one?

Borenstein framed it in a sense of reorganizing past POW! WOW! assets. Worcester only allows murals if they are owned by the city, producing jurisdictional issues related to nuances within property ownership.

“Folks don't realize how much back of the house stuff goes along with POW! WOW!” said Borenstein.

Thus, it’s extremely difficult to determine whether it’s the responsibility of businesses tied to murals or of Worcester Walls to reassess the past POW! WOW! mural footprint.

“It’s cause and effect,” said Walsh. “You get money, a mural goes up. But fundraising for maintenance isn't sexy.”

POW! WOW! used to rely on other nonprofits for fundraising, but Borenstein helped POW! WOW! form its own nonprofit organization. The Worcester Historical Museum serves as a fiscal sponsor.

“When Worcester knows we’re operating in the confines of the law, we get more latitude,” said Borenstein.

Artist Omar Garcia was set to join the 2017 POW! WOW! festival to paint a mural for Elm Park Elementary School. First, his passport was ruined. Then, his trip was delayed further due to a hurricane.

Garcia came weeks later, at the start of school, to paint a portrait of a woman done up with hair curlers, a reflection of a childhood carried out in his mother’s salon.

The kids would come and watch him paint, and he made friends with one girl. Her family was displaced by the same storm that delayed his arrival to the U.S..

“I don't think anything else would have been as impactful for the little girl her first week of school to see an artist from her town painting on a wall of her new school,” Walsh said.

The magic of this meeting, though, reinforces the need and the ignorance related to all the picky things behind the scenes.

“Nobody wants to see how the sausage is made or stored or refrigerated,” said Walsh. “We're coming up on six years for some of these murals. We need to do some work on them, which takes effort, time, supplies, and money.”

The impact of public art

For the Worcester Walls committee, explaining the quantifiable community and economic benefits of the murals is tricky. There’s no numbering machine tracking individuals supporting smaller businesses because of their attachment to art.

“When we’re fundraising, we can’t provide a shiny package outlining how the murals specifically bring in money,” said Walsh.

Even with the association to international brand POW! WOW! Worldwide, and Worcester’s success within the network, it’s tricky.

In 2016, POW! WOW! Worcester was a simple idea. Walsh, co-founder Ché Anderson, and others in the first iteration of the committee knew of the international POW! WOW! festivals. They flew to Hawaii to pitch the industrial Worcester with all its brick to paint on.

The first Worcester festival was an interview of sorts, and a visit from creator Jasper Wong solidified competency for further business.

“When you say brand, it sounds corporate, but it's not. It's homegrown, grassroots. Each POW! WOW! has a different feel,” said Walsh.

A new name

POW! WOW! Worldwide was named for the emotional response carried after art, and its capitalization, punctuation, and style for comic book caricatures.

“The first look at art you feel ‘Pow,’ then feelings wash over, and you're like, ‘Wow, that makes sense,’” said Walsh.

As the brand developed, Worcester’s committee brought up problems with it multiple times, as a pow wow is a sacred ceremony in Native American cultures.

So, the POW! WOW! name is changing. Every city will rebrand like Worcester Walls: Hawaii Walls, Hong Kong Walls, etc.

“We are excited about the name change because we don't want to confuse or hurt anyone,” said Walsh. “We are Worcester Walls, now. And I always love some alliteration.”

Searching for answers

“We’re at this inflection point,” said Borenstein. “Walsh and (former co-director) Lisa Drexhage put their heart and soul into the organization. They lived and breathed POW! WOW! for six years. It's really their labor of love.”

There’s an argument among the Worcester Walls committee suggesting that still the public shouldn’t know about all the pipes, leaks, and plans. The art should stay as its final product.

“The emphasis on public arts is crucial to the ongoing vitality of the city. We don't want to lose that,” said Borenstein. “That's all part of the discussion about future reorganization.”