Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network

A precursor is The Philadelphia Museum of Art's urban outreach project in the seventies. The program helped to create murals around Philadelphia to cover up the graffiti-covered buildings. The museum's program ended in 1983, a year prior to the beginning of the PAGN, which like its predecessor attempted to use murals to curb the rising graffiti problem. While closely related to the Philadelphia Museum of Art's urban outreach project, the PAGN encompassed a larger goal with similar priorities. The program was originally created during a citywide crackdown on graffiti and accompanied other antigraffiti regulations and increases in penalties. Selling of spray paints to minors was prohibited as well as displaying unlocked cans of paint in stores, the latter to curb the common practice of shoplifting paints. Included with the increased penalties also came alternative forms of punishment such as forcing graffiti writers to clean graffiti as a form of community service and an amnesty program for identified "taggers" who signed pledges promising not to vandalize property anymore. The amnesty program accumulated over a thousand signatures between 1984 and 1991. While 1996 marked a greater position for MAP-it also was the year the PAGN founder, Tim Spencer, died. The roots of MAP was in a meeting with Jane Golden and Spencer in 1984 in which she asked to run a program within PAGN. Spencer originally envisioned a program that would move kids more towards other arts and crafts, however, Golden envisioned what is now the MAP program. ==Divisions==

Graffiti Abatement Team The Graffiti Abatement Team provides businesses, homeowners and community organizations with free painting and power-washing services in an effort to combat vandalism. Graffiti vandals who are apprehended and convicted are often given community service in the form of cleaning up graffiti around the city. Since its inception, over 3,000 graffiti artists have gone through the community service program under the supervision of the Graffiti Abatement Team. During the years of 2001-2004 under Mayor John F. Street's, Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, the Graffiti Abatement Team cleaned over 385,000 walls. Paint Voucher Program The Paint Voucher Program allows businesses, community groups and homeowners to request free paint for the purpose of cleaning up graffiti on their own properties. The program is funded from the same $1.125 million anti-graffiti budget. Mural Arts Program The Mural Arts Program was founded in 1984 by Jane Golden. Golden had met the then head of the PAGN in hopes of creating a program under the umbrella project, however, Spencer had originally envisioned a program that would take those caught away from graffiti and into other arts and crafts. Golden’s vision won out and the Mural Arts Program was created. The Mural Arts Program works with community groups to educate and involve children in arts and in creation of murals throughout the city. The MAP also takes in prosecuted graffiti vandals at the rate of over 100 a year and involves them in the creation of many of the murals around Philadelphia. During the 2001–2004 Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, MAP had painted over 600 murals around Philadelphia. ==Awards and recognition==

It was in 1991 when the program received a milestone; not only in breaking the 1,000 mark for obtained amnesty pledges, but for also earning the 1991 Innovations in American Government Award for the city of Philadelphia for the manner in which PAGN is run. The Mural Arts Program is responsible for the largest mural painted in Philadelphia at in length, titled "History of Immigration", the mural displays settlers of different races who have settled in Philadelphia over time. The average mural painted by MAP is about the height of three-story row house and wide, the approximate cost is 10–15 thousand dollars, which includes artist commission and supplies. ==See also==