The Artist-Visionary

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  • MICHELLE LOUGHERY
  • Strategy Social Partnership Builder
  • 2013 Okanagan Art Educator Award
  • 2014 Nesika Award Nomination
  • 2005 BC Achievement Award
  • Public and Community Art Developer-Over 50 million raised
  • Large Scale Community Art Artist
  • Community Art Educator /Economic and Social Change Developer
  • Youth Skills – Trades  Bridging and Training through the Arts

Michelle Loughery Murals- Wayfinder Project is a dynamic and innovative team-based community art consultancy with over 25 years of experience specializing in community art development, arts and cultural planning and long term community economic diversification development through public art, tourism and youth/employment training initiatives. Consultancy services also include financial sourcing, grant writing and sponsorship attainment and long term sustainability planning. Michelle Loughery has been involved in the planning and management of large and small scale community art development initiatives in both rural and urban communities for the public and private sectors. Moreover, the company has developed a crucial network of contacts with government and corporate funding sources which are crucial to securing the funding and support required by communities to operate successful community/public art projects.

Michelle Loughery Murals operational structure is a flexible one that can be tailored to the individual needs of each project or community.  Our core team of artists, grant writers, business development and community art development experts can expand to take on sub-consultants or become part of a project team according to project requirements..

Our young people are our most precious resource, and a driving force for our societies. We must strive to bring the young generations closer, so they know and understand each other better, and put their weight behind good international relations.
But young people are also seriously concerned by global challenges, such as economic disparities, climate change, the environment, human values. Youth involvement can make the difference!
Living and being active citizens in today’s society also means being open to the world, receptive to other cultures, people, and mindsets. We cannot live in isolation or confined within our borders; we must look beyond our own reality.
A key objective of my work is the empowerment of community or group members, bringing them together to create something that they can all be proud of.

Michelle Loughery-An artist, organizer, and educator, Michelle Loughery has worked in the field of community public art for 25 years and has created over 200 large-scale murals over 20 community Mural Projects, including Route 66 Mural City, Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame Mural Project, Downtown Vernon BC Mural Project, to name but a few. Working with intergenerational groups, teens, elders, and children, Loughery draws on her rich experiences in rural Canada to portray a wide variety of historic and contemporary scenes in her murals. She carries the name of the small coalmining town of Michel, B.C., in which she was born and raised. Her rare talent in creating large-scale art is an enduring public reminder of Canada’s diverse peoples, heroes and rich cultural heritage. In addition to accepting commissions for public, corporate and private murals, Michelle offers a unique community art program in conjunction with public art mural assignments. This totally original program enlists young artist and art students in the community as apprentices, and trains them in the techniques of large format art.

“Community Art enhances the quality of life of a community by helping to define and formulate responses to social, economic, cultural and political issues faced by a community. Community Art contributes to cross cultural understanding, and a sense of ownership and responsibility towards ones community. In its broadest definition, community art inspires community understanding, pride and creativity, and benefits the health and the development of individual and community life. At its best, Community Art is more than simply art integrated, installed or performed in a public place: rather it is a community-based process of dialogue, involvement, participation and healing. Communities are more than roads and sewers, we are art and culture and people and the threads that tie us to our souls”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Michelle Loughery

““Like a song, a painting is an emotion. The content of the mural can be as imaginative as the mind can”
“dream. The context of a mural holds power and action. When involving a youth voice in the art you connect with the youth and change the context into a learning experience. You push the context of the mural by letting the youth pull the context into future ideas; to use as vehicle to reach out to their communities, their world and to their peers, thus leading us into a more socially, environmentally and”
“economically responsible future.” Michelle Loughery, 2010”