Murals across Philadelphia are raising awareness about global sustainability goals

When the United Nations released its sustainable development goals in 2015, addressing universal issues such as poverty and climate change, Zabeth Teelucksingh asked herself how she could bring those goals to Philadelphia.

President of the Global Philadelphia Association, a nonprofit that brings together various international organizations across the city, Teelucksingh and her team decided on the most Philly way to raise awareness about the goals: murals.

Since 2019, Global Philadelphia Association has commissioned 13 murals in partnership with Mural Arts, with the latest unveiled Tuesday — and there are four more that have yet to be completed. Each mural explores a different goal, such as zero hunger, clean water and sanitation, and sustainable cities and communities.

“We have a map that shows where all these different works are, and we’re trying to be as spread out in Philadelphia as possible,” Teelucksingh said.

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On Tuesday, 17-year-old Faysal Adger’s depiction of the eighth sustainable goal — decent work and economic growth — was unveiled at the School of the Future in West Philadelphia. The mural has different scenes of community members harvesting and planting an apple orchard, with the help of drones and robots. To Adger, it was important show people and technology working together toward a better future.

“[To me], economic growth means sustainability and having your community help you with your wealth in a natural way to help the world today,” Adger said. “And going forward, how can we help our community move forward with something like technology?”

Barbara Smolen, who was commissioned to create a mural for the fifth goal, gender equality, moved away from images for her artwork.

“It was a quandary, because what is gender? How do you even show that these days? [Gender] is not binary,” Smolen said. “So I decided I was going to handle it in a typographical way.”

Smolen’s mural, which was unveiled in 2020 at the Friends Select School, has the words “Gender Equality” overlapping each other in numerous Roman letters, which she says are reminiscent of the Declaration of Independence and the “foundation of democracy.”

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“The Declaration of Independence says, ‘All men are created equal.’ It really should have been, ‘All people are created equal,’” Smolen said. “So in my mind, I’m juxtaposing the words ‘gender equality’ in a style of people signing the Declaration of Independence, that echo the concept of equality and democracy.”

Smolen also used a variety of colors for the phrase, and said yellow was a particularly intentional choice to showcase the transparency and illumination that stems from equality. To Smolen, the yellow feels like it’s radiating through the rest of the colors.

Each mural has a plaque next to it that explains the artwork and the sustainable development goal that it represents. Global Philadelphia Association has started partnering with schools across all ages and grades to teach students about the goals. Once all the murals are unveiled, Teelucksingh said, Global Philadelphia Association will move them all to a single location.

“We intend for all 17 works to be in one location, collectively, so that Philadelphians can go back and visit and better understand why the SDGs are important to the city,” she said.