After months of planning for this, we kicked off the 2010 Kansas Community Mural Project. Dave Loewenstein gave a fantastic presentation to a very interested group of over 40 residents–he did a particularly good job of emphasizing, through words and images of past murals, that this is not about him coming here and painting something for us, but rather about him coming here to help facilitate us as we plan and design this mural together. Two nights later, we had a design team meeting. Frankly, I wasn’t sure what to expect for turnout (we were hoping for 7-10), but 22 people showed up, of which at least 1/3 hadn’t even been at Monday night’s meeting. We broke into groups and worked on word-pictures, generating ideas for themes and imagery in the mural project. There is such positive energy and excitement happening already.