For over 30 years, Michelle Loughery has carried the torch of a movement born not in boardrooms, but in the coal-streaked valleys of Michel-Natal, BC. Hers is a legacy built not just with paint, but with the hands of many who came before—immigrant tradespeople, artisans, and blue-collar visionaries who saw the blank walls of this country as spaces for stories, identity, and nation-building.

From these humble roots, Loughery forged a revolutionary path—one that intertwines art with infrastructure, community development with cultural preservation, and economic innovation with public storytelling. Her Wayfinder Mural Model is not just a method. It is a modern blueprint of the master builder tradition, where the artist stands alongside the engineer, the youth apprentice beside the journeyman, all contributing to the civic soul.

Art is Infrastructure. Art is Labour.

Public art is too often romanticized as decoration. But murals, mosaics, carvings, textile installations—they are economic engines. They bring tourism, foot traffic, revitalization, and pride. They shape place identity. They reflect truth. Yet the artists who build this public value are rarely afforded the same rights and protections as others in infrastructure planning.

Creative labour is labour. When public art is planned, commissioned, or preserved, artists deserve:

• Resale and reproduction rights
• Attribution and integrity rights
• Fair compensation
• Long-term maintenance protection
• Recognition as essential infrastructure contributors

Stripping these rights is not just unjust—it is unsustainable. You cannot build a cultural economy on the unpaid backs of those who create its value.

A Provincial Arts Policy Is Urgently Needed

To move forward, British Columbia and other provinces must adopt a provincial cultural labour rights policy that includes:

• Transparent municipal asset management for cultural works
• Guidelines for mural maintenance, artist contact, and heritage attribution
• Legal frameworks protecting artists’ IP, moral rights, and ability to receive resale royalties
• Integration of artists and cultural workers into public infrastructure development and economic planning

We need a registry of protected public artworks, and we need a cultural labour charter that values creation as much as construction.

Transparency in the Creative Economy

Municipalities must treat public art as a civic asset—one that requires budgeted maintenance, clear accountability, and artist inclusion in decision-making. The creative economy needs transparency: Who owns public art? Who profits from its image? Who decides when it’s destroyed or moved?

Loughery’s work reveals a painful truth: when infrastructure fails—when murals are damaged, erased, or politically co-opted—we lose more than beauty. We lose identity. We lose trust. We lose the very innovation we need to rise again.

“If you take the resale and property rights out of the architecture of mural art and social programs, you remove the very roots that allow people to rise.” — Michelle Loughery

Rise of the Builders: A Call to Artists, Historians, and Tradespeople

It’s time for a new movement—a coalition of cultural builders:

• Artists, rise. Demand your rightful seat at the planning table.
• Historians, rise. Protect the living archives painted on our streets.
• Tradespeople, rise. Stand in solidarity with your creative counterparts—your fellow master builders.
• Municipal leaders, act. Enshrine creative labour into your economic strategies and public works.

Every wall tells a story. Every neglected mural is a voice silenced. Every unpaid artist is a legacy forgotten.

We must protect those who tell our stories with their hands, their brushes, their cameras, their chisels, and their craft.

Because we are not a country that forgets its builders.

Join the Movement

We call for:

• A Creative Labour Rights Charter for BC and beyond
• A provincial registry of public artworks and mural assets
• The formation of an independent Public Art & Artist Protection Commission
• Full integration of art and trades in civic infrastructure planning

Let us rise with the master builders. Let us honour our immigrant roots. Let us ensure that public art remains truly public—and that those who create it are not left behind.

#CreativeLabourIsEssential#MasterBuildersUnite#PreserveThePaint#OurWallsOurStories