Revisa la información sobre este reto de arte en español.
The 2024 Where Art Lives Challenge is live!
Submit your art!
Ideas and inspiration
In art, it’s okay to copy ideas from other artists — you just need to add something new to make the idea your own.
Here are some galleries with past submissions to our art challenge and examples from the streets of San Francisco.
Make art to uplift your community
markers, pen, pencil on paper, 04/22/2022, 8" x 5.5"
TO: YOU
by Alexi Aspen Z., Buena Vista Horace Mann Middle School
”I was thinking of what message to send with this art and then it came to me: Be yourself, be who you are, not what people think of you. I feel that most people end up feeling like they are just their grades, or their intelligence, or their skill, but that's not true. So I made this to try and remind people that they are a person and to be what they are.”
Art can benefit community in so many ways. Let’s use graffiti art as inspiration and make some art that will uplift our communities.
Choose a word
Consider how you can use art to improve your community. What message do you want to share?Draw the word
Make creative choices to put the meaning of the word into your art. Let your feelings about the message shine through.Show us your art
There are three ways to submit your entry for our art challenge and many ways to share your art with your community.Take a picture of your art and upload it on this form to enter the Where Art Lives challenge.
Enter by emailing a picture of your art to
walartchallenge@gmail.com with answers to all of the questions on this worksheet.Or your teacher can collect art and information from your whole class and submit them as a batch. Teachers can contact us to figure out how to share the files.
Don’t forget to also share your art with your community. Maybe that means hanging it up in your classroom or adding it to our online gallery. You can use this worksheet to create a label for your art.
Choose a word.
What message do you want to put out into your community?
One class at James Lick Middle School decided that they wanted their school to feel more fun and less boring, so they chose to paint the word “Alive” on their schoolyard wall.
First, think about what communities you are a part of. Your school is a community. Every neighborhood you spend time in is a community. Your family and people who share your cultural background is a community. People who are fans of the same musician can be a community.
Then think about how your community can be improved. How would you finish a sentence that starts, “I wish my school felt more _______”? Or, “I would like it if my neighborhood was more ________.”?
What word would best convey that feeling that you want to bring to people in your community?
Let’s think about all the ways that people have used art to uplift their community.
Make people smile. Joyful art can make people feel good and spread warm feelings. Your word can be something cheerful, or a value that you want to promote.
Express pride. Art can express a shared pride in the community, like when art celebrates a local sports team. Your word can be the name of your school or the community you love.
Make you think. Sometimes art is a little mysterious, so it makes people think. You can make up a word, or draw a word in a way that’s difficult to read.
Be visible. Art can be about the artist, and help show who is in a community and what they care about. Your word can be your name or a code name you give yourself or it can be an expression of your heritage or some piece of culture that you love.
Pay tribute. Some people use art to pay tribute to a hero or a loved one who has died. You can write the name of someone you want your community to remember. Using your art to write “RIP” (which stands for “Rest In Peace” or “Rest In Power”) is a meaningful way to express your grief and love.
Call for change. Art can be a call to action. What word can you draw to move your community to become more just and fair?
Street artists also make pieces to promote a value, tell a story from history, provide inspiration, share from their culture, transform a space, or just decorate a neighborhood by “putting paint where it ain’t.”
See examples of all of these strategies in the street art gallery below.
Why use words?
Graffiti art is the visual arts element of the Hip Hop art and justice movement which, so we shouldn’t be surprised to notice that graffiti artists love painting words and drawing letters in really interesting ways. Marlon Richardson tells us why words are so important to him.
“So in a sense words actually create the reality that you live in. Not only the words that you give out but the words that you choose to receive and accept.”
- Marlon Richardson, aka Unlearn the World, education director at Hip Hop For Change, LLC.
Marlon Richardson, also known as Unlearn the World, rhapsodizes about the profound power of words.
2. Draw your word.
Think about what effect you want your art to have on the people who see it.
Make choices about your art.
Should your word have hard edges or soft? Should the colors be warm or cool? Dark or bright? What shapes can you add to your word to help the viewers feel the meaning more?
Every artist has their own process. You can brainstorm lots of ideas and then work on a sketch with lots of drawing and erasing until you get it right. You can do a lot of quick drawings and then decide which one feels right. You can choose an art by a master to copy and make your own.
We have art lessons on this website to help you.
The “Scribble Your Feelings” lesson will help you make your art more expressive.
Try “Practice your fills” practice adding color and patterns to graffiti art.
“How to draw Graffiti style lettering” will give you step-by-step instructions for using shapes to make a letter look funky.
Follow along with the “How to draw a Graffiti style word” to draw your own masterpiece.
When you’re done, make sure to sign the art. Write your name and the year in the bottom right corner.
3. Show us your art
You’ve created art that will be good for your community, but that only works if you share it with your community.
Use this worksheet to create a label for your art.
Now it’s time to share your art with your community. This could mean hanging it in your classroom or in the hallway of your school.
Be ready to write about your work by completing the sentences, “You will appreciate this art more if you understand that…” and “This artwork and message will benefit the community because…”
Share your art with your community. Maybe that means hanging it up in your classroom or posting it on social media with the hash tag #ArtForSF.
We want to know what message you want to share. We want to see what you believe in.
Take a picture of your art and upload it on our form to enter the Art For Community challenge for a chance to win a 💲50 gift card.
There are three ways to submit your entry for our art challenge and many ways to share your art with your community.
Take a picture of your art and upload it on this form to enter the Where Art Lives challenge.
Enter by emailing a picture of your art to
walartchallenge@gmail.com with answers to all of the questions on this worksheet.Or your teacher can collect art and information from your whole class and submit them as a batch. Teachers can contact us to figure out how to share the files.
Don’t forget to also share your art with your community. Maybe that means hanging it up in your classroom or adding it to our online gallery. You can use this worksheet to create a label for your art.
Inspiring street art
Inspiring student art
Over on hundred young artists submitted their drawings and paintings to our 2022 and 2023 community art challenges. You can see many of these pieces in the online gallery below. Notice all of the messages that young people shared and the wide variety of artistic styles they used!
Do you have art to share? Add it to the gallery!
From all of the 2022 submissions, we randomly chose 4 artists to each receive $50 gift cards for participation.
End White Supremacy Mural, 21st St. and Shotwell. Created by Joe Colmenares and the community for Hip Hop for Change and ODC.
Nate Tan talks about how he designed his “Respect the Culture” mural to uplift his community of artists.