@PLAY Akron

In 2017, Art x Love was awarded a $240,000 Knight Cities grant for @PLAY Akron, an 18-month, 24-neighborhood, interactive art project designed to bring diverse people together and encourage deeper community connections. Our team walked and biked every street in the city, conducted thousands of street intercept interviews with residents and stakeholders, and produced more than 100 murals and 50 placemaking transformations across the city.

@PLAY Akron has inspired millions of dollars of new investment and systemic change across the City of Akron, and fundamentally changed the way local organizations and non-profits approach neighborhood research, community engagement, and creative collaboration.

Signal Tree

To kick off our @PLAY project in 2017, we developed a massive 8 ft. x 20 ft. collaborative mural for the Signal Tree Festival. More than 300 people made their mark on the AKRON mural, which was later finished by Mac Love and Alan Lunda.

The following year, we returned to Signal Tree with the first Destination Akron sculpture and the a public performance of Rebranding the City: A Humanizing Tour of Akron, both of which were produced for our @PLAY project.

In 2019 the AKRON mural was installed in the atrium of Canton Akron Airport (CAK), where it has welcomed travelers ever since.