Martin Luther King Jr. Park Community Center

Painted Basketball Court Unites Neighbors through Play – On a Budget
To help create a sense of (comm)unity through public art at Martin Luther King Jr. Park, Group Creative collaborated with local artist Jordan Weber. Weber implemented his vision to paint the word “United” in five languages on the park’s popular basketball court to represent unity through play. The five languages – English, Spanish, Croatian, Arabic, and French – are those spoken by members of the local neighborhood. To commemorate the newly painted court, project sponsors Viva East Bank and the local neighborhood association hosted a free barbecue for neighborhood residents.

While larger organizations may have public-art budgets in the hundreds of thousands, this project had a relatively small budget of just a few thousand dollars. For the cost of the artist’s time and a few dozen gallons of paint, this painted court has created a significant, meaningful, lasting impact for the community.