A city funding cut is threatening an innovative strategy to combat graffiti. Supported by the City of Vancouver since 2004, Restart takes at-risk youth convicted for things like tagging, gives them spray paint and a public canvas, and lets them spend a day painting a mural.

But many of Restart’s murals have been funded by Vancouver’s graffiti management program, which was eliminated in a round of service cuts approved by city council on December 15.

Eileen Mosca, a partner at the Arts Off Main collective and a long-time supporter of Restart, told the Straight the initiative will take a huge hit with the elimination of the graffiti management program. “The City provided all of the materials and their staff would work overtime, free, just to help out. So Restart is going to have to look somewhere else for funding to keep it going.”

According to Neal Carley, an assistant engineer with the City of Vancouver, eliminating the graffiti management program will save more than $300,000 a year.

Carley said that throughout North America, public murals have proven to be effective graffiti deterrents. He explained that under Vancouver’s graffiti management program, artists were given honorariums in exchange for working with communities to paint murals on frequently vandalized walls. The city was funding approximately 30 such works a year.

The graffiti management program also supplied paint and equipment to community groups and private businesses acting to remove graffiti.

Mosca argued that the lack of a publicly funded mural program will result in a significant increase in illegal tagging around the city.

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