The Celebrate Community Mural is the fruit of the Black Feminist Eco Lab, a collective of scholars, change agents, artists, learners, and practitioners who have come together to build a new paradigm of what a thriving, inclusive ecosystem operating on the evolving theoretical frameworks embodied by Black feminism. The Lab centers an ethics of care as it works to generate scholarship, best practices, ideas, and community-building strategies that embrace and advocate for the well-being of all living beings.

The Celebrate Community Mural is part of a multiphase public engagement arts project aimed at centering aliveness within our communities. The mural was painted by the community on November 2nd, 2024, at the Tracy Aviary Pia Okwai Center. Artist Shaandiin Powell, an alumnus of the University of Utah, was commissioned to design a participatory, movable mural that will travel across the Wasatch Valley. Our goal for this piece is to share the Lab's vision for an "aliveness" ecological model centered on community. To this end, the mural incorporates various bodies, elements, and reminders of the complexities of being alive, including breathing and resisting alongside nature.

This community mural project was generously supported by the School for Cultural & Social Transformation, the TRIC Mellon grant, Tracy Aviary Pia Okwai Center, Black Lives Matter Salt Lake City chapter, the Black Birth Workers Collective, and Planted Healing. We would like to thank our videographer, Mark Giles, for supporting the lab and archiving our events.