The Cotton Belt Mural Project aims to paint a mural along a 750-foot rail depot to beautify the area and welcome visitors to St. Louis. It was funded by local organizations and through crowd-sourcing to revitalize the north riverfront community. The project will use local artists and volunteers and serves as an example of developing the community through infrastructure improvements and capitalizing on existing resources.

1. Models of Macro Practice
502
Carissa, Mike, and Kelly Wrigley
June 3, 2015

2. Locality Development Example:
The Cotton Belt Mural

3. The Cotton Belt Mural Project
 The project’s goal was to paint a giant
mural across the 750-foot-long face of
the Cotton Belt Rail Depot, located
along the St. Louis north riverfront.
Project developers hope that the mural
will help contribute to recent efforts to
revitalize the north riverfront
community and serve as a sort of
“welcome sign” to visitors traveling to
St. Louis across the new Stan Musial
Veterans Memorial Bridge. The project
was funded by the Convention and
Visitors Commission, the St. Louis
Regional Chamber, and money raised
through Rally St. Louis, a crowdsourcing
and crowdfunding program targeting
civic improvement projects. Organizers
plan to use volunteers and contract with
local artists to complete the project.
 The Cotton Belt mural project serves
as a good example of locality
development because it is aimed at
changing the infrastructure of a single
building with the purpose of improving
the surrounding community and city
as a whole. Consistent with
community capacity building, the
project organizers are using the
existing physical capital (i.e., the
Cotton Belt building), financial capital
(i.e., Rally St. Louis & CVC
contributions), and human capital
(i.e., skills of local artists and
volunteers) to complete the project
and increase the community’s overall
capital.

4. Logan, T. (2013, April 11). Cotton Belt
mural, Food Roof reach full funding
through Rally St. Louis. St. Louis Post-
Dispatch. Retrieved from
http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/
cotton-belt-mural-food-roof-reach-full-
funding-through-rally/article_ce4ab216-
28b6-5930-971b-809b8845c25e.html
Schwartzman, J. (2012, September 27).
Cotton Belt mural could be welcome sign
for new Mississippi River Bridge. St. Louis
Beacon. Retrieved from
https://www.stlbeacon.org/#!/content/2
7163/cotton_belt_mural_092112

5. Social Action against Gun Violence
 Hadiya Pendleton was a 15
year old girl shot in the
back and killed on January
29, 2013. She was a
student at King College
Prep school n Chicago,Il.
She was killed one week
after President Obama’s
second inauguration. First
lady Michelle Obama
attended the funeral.
 Nation wears orange on
June 2, 2015, in memory of
Hadiya Pendleton,
highlighting gun violence.
(WGN TV)
 Chicago Tribune/WGN TV
 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct
-video-nation-orang-memory-hadiya-
pendleton-20150602-
embeddedvideo.html
 Chicago Tribune/WGN News Video. (June, 2015).
Nation wears orange in memory of Hadiya
Pendleton. www.chicagotribune.com/news.

6. Social Planning: Murphy Plan to Combat Heroin
Senator Terrence Murphy of Valhalla, New York proposed a
plan to end the heroin epidemic. After countless youth and
adults overdosing from this drug, Senator Murphy decided
it was time to make a change. His 7 step plan focuses on
making treatment more accessible, increasing funding for
law enforcement, and having first responders better
equipped to handle overdose situations and able to save
lives. He also plans to intensify laws towards drug
traffickers in order to lower the amount of Heroin coming
in. Locally elected officials and other drug experts are
included in the plan to end heroin deaths.

7. 7 Step Plan
• Murphy, T. (2015). Experts discuss Murphy
plan to combat heroin crisis. New York
Senate.http://www.nyse Retrieved from
http://www.nysenate.gov/press-
release/experts-discuss-murphy-plan-combat-
heroin-crisis
1. Sponsoring legislation to require insurance companies to
cover drug treatment and rehab up to ninety days;
2. Using drug seizure proceeds to provide funding for NARCAN,
a potentially life-saving overdose treatment, to all first
responders;
3. To help with prevention, state funding for school resource
officers (Police SROs) and Drug Abuse Resistance Education
(DARE) in all area schools by restoring the Gap Elimination
Adjustment school aid cuts made by Senate Democrats in
2010;
4. Forming an federal-interstate-local joint, inter-agency law
enforcement counter-narcotics proliferation task force and
removing legal barriers to data sharing, aspects of which are
already underway;
5. A state grant program for a local narcotics units to provide
stepped up enforcement against drug distributors;
6. Increasing penalties for major narcotics traffickers; and
7. Restoring funding cuts enacted by Senate Democrats to the
NYS Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services
(OASAS) to fund peer recovery advocate, addiction services
and treatment programs. (Murphy, 2015)