Candidate: Mark Mendez, Candidate for District 5
- Website: https://mendezforseattle.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/MendezSeattleCityCouncilDistrict5/
- Other sites:
ARTS PLATFORM
Seattle Arts Voter Guide: Describe a meaningful arts experience that has stayed with you over time.
Mendez: The most meaningful art experience that I’ve had was creating the Lake City Mural project. I created the Lake City Youth Mural project 3 years ago with local youth, artists, and partners to empower youth with leadership and arts skills, while deterring graffiti, and improving and beautifying the neighborhood. I never thought that I would be leading a community mural project, I still cannot write or draw very well, but as my father tells me I’m a community artist. Working with local artists, youth, and local partners has been an invaluable positive experience in my life. I have had the honor and pleasure of bringing public art to the neighborhood, making the neighborhood safer, bringing more business to local businesses, empowering youth, and making people feel proud about their neighborhood.
Leading the Lake City mural project has brought so much richness and happiness to my life. In addition, the murals have been a way to bring attention to very important issues in the neighborhood and have brought people together in ways I could not have predicted. As a result of these new relationships, other new very important community projects have been created to help the neighborhood. I learned there’s so much good that can happen from just a little bit of paint!
SAVG: How do the arts reflect the voices and perspectives in your own neighborhood?
Mendez: Lake City is one of the most diverse, invisible, and underserved neighborhoods in Seattle. In recent years, as many parts of Seattle have gentrified and become less diverse; Lake City has ushered in a new wave of cultural and ethnic diversity; 13.5 percent of residents live below the federal poverty line, nearly 43 percent of residents are people of color, and over 20 languages spoken in the neighborhood.
Art is a way to bring people together from many different backgrounds. Art transcends our differences and is a kind of universal language. I created the Lake City Youth Mural project 3 years ago with local youth, artists, and partners to empower youth with leadership and arts skills, while deterring graffiti, and improving and beautifying the neighborhood.
Since 2016 we have painted and created over 20 murals in the Lake City neighborhood. By covering the neighborhood’s bland concrete walls with bright, vibrant murals, the youth murals have created a sense of pride of place and have showed the youth that they can make a positive immediate and long-term difference, which gives them a self of pride in themselves and improves their sense of self-worth. It also builds the youth’s resumes when they apply for a job or for college. And the youth feel appreciated by adults and leaders in the Lake City neighborhood.
Youth are involved in the planning process of creating public art, from scouting a wall, applying for permits, communicating to businesses and organizations, ordering supplies, and conceptualizing and executing the mural.
Seattle Arts Voter Guide: How do you envision the arts as part of Seattle, especially as part of education, equity, housing, transportation, culture, economy, and/or community?
Mendez: The arts should be the last thing that’s cut in our public schools, but unfortunately it’s the first to be cut. The arts should be at the center of our public school education. Engaging in the arts teaches different ways of thinking, encouraging new creative ways to solve problems. With the pace of technology and society, we need the arts more than ever to create young creative minds.
I’ve seen the power of public art to bring attention to important social issues like education, equity, housing, transportation, culture, economy, and community.
Public art is a great way to bring attention to social issues and challenges that we need to work together to address. I envision public art across the city as a part of every major initiative and challenge that we face as a city. Including the issue of people experiencing homelessness. Let’s create public art that makes people think and talk about the most important issues of our time.
SAVG: How do you plan to work with or combat developers who are eyeing the colorfully muraled buildings that contribute to Lake City’s diversity and culture?
Mendez: I and several community partners have been working with forming relationships with developers to encourage them to support our culture of diverse murals in Lake City. Some developers we have worked with have funded the community murals on their buildings. We are currently working with the owners of Value Village to complete a series of murals in their parking lot. In our neighborhood plans, we include murals which tells developers that when they build in Lake City they should add murals to their project. As a City of Seattle Council Member, I would encourage developers to add public art to their buildings with tax breaks and other incentives. I would also encourage them to work with local diverse artists and artists from marginalized communities. In addition, I would support funding more grant opportunities to support local artists.
SAVG: In what ways will you preserve that culture and diversity of the arts with murals and beyond?
Mendez: It’s very important that we work with a diverse group of artists that represent many different backgrounds, ethnicities, beliefs, etc. Many times it’s easier for established artists to navigate the system of grants to have their art funded. In Lake City we’ve made a great effort to make sure we support artists from marginalized communities to have a chance to shine and show the art they want to create.
For example, our Lake City Fish Store mural was created by local artist Lynn DeBeal. Lynn uses a wheelchair for mobility and was unable to complete the higher portions of the mural. Local artist, Stephanie Morales, painted the higher portions of the mural to help Lynn’s vision of a fish aquarium mural on the back of the Lake City Fish Store. This is a great example of how we can support artists from marginalized communities that face multiple barriers to creating their art and showing it to the city. It’s essential that their artist is supported and shown to the City, their perspectives are invaluable.
In addition, I and several community partners have been working with forming relationships with developers to encourage them to support our culture of diverse murals in Lake City. Some developers we have worked with have funded the community murals on their buildings. We are currently working with the owners of Value Village to complete a series of murals in their parking lot. In our neighborhood plans, we include murals/public art which tells developers that when they build in Lake City they should add murals to their project. As a City of Seattle Council Member, I would encourage developers to add public art to their buildings with tax breaks and other incentives. I would also encourage them to work with diverse artists and artists from marginalized communities. In addition, I would support funding more grant opportunities to support local artists.
SAVG: Through policy, how can you engage all audiences (beyond teens/youth) in district 5 with the arts?
Mendez: Public/private partnerships to encourage people and give them opportunities to engage with the arts in our existing and new public space opportunities in D5 and across the City is invaluable! I have seen the value and have had the opportunity to work with nonprofits, businesses, and community groups to bring many fun community events activating our most underutilized and ignored parks in District 5, especially in the Lake City neighborhood. I have seen the power these events have to bring the community together and positively activate our parks. I have helped bring together hundreds of people from many different backgrounds with our free neighborhood community events.
For example, I have worked with community groups to bring diverse community events that represent the diversity of our neighborhood and the City like Lucha Libre, World Dance Parties and Potlucks, Music in the Park, Shakespeare in the Park, Salsa Night in the Park, free dance lessons, African Dance, public art, and many more.
I also worked with community partners, businesses, and nonprofits to create the Lake City Mural project to transform the neighborhood with public art, empower youth, support local business, improve public safety, and build community. I would work for and support more of these types of public-private partnerships and I have the experience to help make it happen. Fun builds community!
Seattle Arts Voter Guide 