Murals add life and color to a downtown and are highly visible even to people driving through. The activity that goes into creating them generates more attention for downtown. Traditional wall painted murals usually cost a lot of money and take a long time to get approvals. The good news is that you can create cheap instant murals. You have or can scrounge everything you need to start now.

Make sheet murals.

Get cheap torn or stained sheets from the thrift shops, paint right on them, or sew them up into something decorative.

Hang them up downtown, maybe inside the windows of a building, outside hung over a railing or fence. Use magnets to stick them to any building with metal siding.

Find free wood to paint.

Paint on old boards you scrounge up from neighbors.

Paint on pallets that businesses can donate for free.

Pallets can usually be scrounged up at no cost, then painted for quick inexpensive art. Photo by Harmon County Forward, used by permission.

Display the painted wood inside the windows of empty buildings. Mount them on fences or railings downtown. Plant them in empty lots or vacant spaces.

Collect campaign signs.

After an election, collect the old campaign signs. Call the former candidates, and ask if they have extras they’d give you. Turn the paper signs inside out and paint on them. Take the colorful plastic coroplast ones and cut them up and re-assemble into fun mosaic designs.

Hang them from railings and fences downtown.

Use empty windows as a free canvas.

Use shoe polish on glass doors or windows, inside or outside. Start with the empty buildings.

Try a vine design on empty windows or glass doors. Photo by Becky McCray.

Make a chalk mural.

Any space you might paint a mural, you can make a chalk mural. It’s just temporary. Photo by Elaina Turpin, used by permission.

Check the thrift stores for cheap used sidewalk chalk. Ask around to see who has some they can donate.

Treat any smooth concrete surface as a possible chalk mural site. Yes, it will wash away in the next rains, but placemaking doesn’t have to be permanent. It’s the activity and visible change that matter. You can always replace it with a new chalk design next time.

Temporary art can be beautiful placemaking.

Instant murals make your downtown a more vibrant place right away without spending a fortune. After awhile, take down your fabric or wood murals, cut them into frame-able chunks and sell them off to raise money for the next project. 

Thinking that the solution has to be big and permanent is what keeps you from doing cool little things that only last a while.

The goal isn’t the mural itself or the artwork. The goal is to show life and activity right away so you can bring shoppers back downtown. 

Cheap Downtown Placemaking Ideas

Deb Brown and I found 39 practical placemaking ideas like this that you do for $100 or less right away. We put them in a video that you can buy and watch immediately. The video clip about sheet murals (above) is a sample from it. The full 30 minute video costs only $5, and you can find it here: Cheap Downtown Placemaking Ideas.

More cheap ideas

Castle Rock, Washington, takes beautification seriously. This storage lot sits smack dab in the middle of their beautiful downtown. This is how it looked before they turned it into an art gallery. Photo by Nancy Chennault.

You’ve seen it before: a chain link fence right in the middle of a downtown. Usually there’s barbed wire at the top. Let’s face it, barbed wire is not the friendliest look for a downtown. We can do better.

Why chain link in the first place?

When a business ends up with an empty lot they can use for storage downtown, there’s a strong drive to fence it off and protect their goods. Chain link topped with barbed wire is cheap and easy.

Businesses still need to store things. No one wants to spend a lot of money to replace the fence with something friendlier. Heck, we don’t even want to spend money at all if we can avoid it.

How could you make it look better?

A whole group of us brainstormed some ideas for you:

• Add colorful slats in rainbow patterns, waves, words or logos
• Frame art and hang it from the chain link, inside or outside
• Hang twinkle lights from the fence and barbed wire
• Twist wire foil tinsel garland around the barbed wire
• Hang whirly gigs or streamers to dance in the wind
• Set up a sculpture display in front of the fence (most fences are usually set back from the property line) or just behind the fence
• Create cut-out art to hang on the fence
• Hang some wayfinding signs to direct people to cool things around town

The Boise, Idaho, water reclamation plant features this chain link fence mural. The colors are little cups designed to pop right into the chain link spaces. Photo by Becky McCray.

The Stream of Dreams “mural” made up of individual painted fish shapes dresses up the fence alongside the school buildings in Castle Rock, Washington. Learn more about Stream of Dreams. Photo by Nancy Chennault.

How Castle Rock, Washington, made chain link fences into art galleries

When I visited Castle Rock, I pointed out the storage lot next the hardware store that in the photo at the top of this story. It’s not going to go away, so why not use it to hang art? Turns out they already had some kids’ art hanging on chain link fences, just around the corner in a less-visible place. So they moved it and added a big way-finding arrow to point out nearby attractions.

Originally, the art squares were hanging in a hard-to-find location. See those slats in the fence? You could easily use slats to be more artistic with rainbow patterns or logos. Photo by Becky McCray.

The students helped move their artwork to the highly-visible location downtown. Photo by Nancy Chennault.

The art now includes a big arrow to point folks to the nearby wildlife pond and the old jail park. You hardly notice the fence or wire at all now. Photo by Nancy Chennault.

Have you seen any good chain link art?

I’d love to see photos of dressed-up chain link fences you’ve seen anywhere. Share the ideas so we can inspire even more small towns to more beautiful fences.

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