Trash Corral Art Project Fosters Community Engagement and Ownership

# Trash Corral Art Project Fosters Community Engagement and Ownership

A collaborative art initiative transforming downtown Salina's trash corrals has completed six of 16 planned installations, with two more scheduled for completion in 2025.

The project began after one trash corral was decorated as part of an artwork alley pre-festival event, inspiring Leslie Bishop, executive director at Salina Downtown, Inc. (SDI), to expand the concept throughout downtown.

"Leslie approached me and said, how can we get this project done?" a project coordinator explained. The initiative developed into a partnership between SDI, which provides funding for artist fees and materials, Salina Arts and Humanities, and the City of Salina Parks and Recreation Department.

Parks and Recreation handles the deinstallation of old materials and prepares the panels for artists by priming them, creating clean surfaces for painting. Artist selection occurs through an open call, with proposals reviewed by the Community Art and Design Committee.

"We're actually using a community group of folks to represent and review things, as opposed to just putting that on the backs of a small staff at SDI to make those decisions," noted a project representative.

The initiative aims to complete two corrals annually, with plans for the 2026 installations already underway. Organizers hope one of the 2026 corrals can be painted on-site during a festival.

Downtown business owner Julie Cates has participated in the project, completing a corral in 2024 and currently working on another for 2025. For her current project, Cates is collaborating with a young artist.

"This is the second of our trash corral murals that we're doing with Salina Downtown and Salina Arts and Humanities," Cates said. "This one is all going to be ocean animals."

Her young collaborator, an 11-year-old fifth-grader named Jake, assists with the painting. "I really like coloring in. So that's like my big job right now is I do a lot of the painting in," Jake explained. "Like just being able to walk around downtown and seeing my name that I've wrote on murals is just a really good feeling."

Project organizers believe the initiative creates a "rich and vibrant scene" downtown while engaging local and regional artists. They also note that youth involvement fosters community ownership.

"When kids get involved and area high school students can get involved, there's ownership. And then parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents want to come down and see what their kids have done," a representative stated.

The ultimate goal, according to organizers, is to make downtown Salina a destination for everyone, with the trash corral art project contributing to that vision through creative collaboration.