REQUEST FOR QUALIFICATIONS

Public Art Project: Open Call for Muralists

Budget: Minimum $25,000.00 USD per mural location (all costs included)

Eligibility: Artists or Artist Teams residing in the United States

DEADLINE: Monday, November 30, 2026, 11:59 P.M. MST

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis beginning November 30, 2026, so we encourage you to apply early. The final deadline is January 29, 2027.

Apply on CAFE here!

Introduction

Denver Arts & Venues seeks to commission an artist or artist team to create new interior and exterior murals in various public locations around Denver such as libraries, parks, recreation centers, and a police station. The murals will be painted across the city between June and September 2027. Specific anticipated locations for the future murals are called out below, but more locations and more murals may be added in the future. Applicants will be considered for all 7+ locations listed, with a unique artist or artist team awarded for each location.

Several selection panels made up of community representatives, arts and culture professionals and civic leaders have been assembled to select and recommend an artist or artist team for these projects. Each project location has its own selection panel. The panel is seeking artists who work in the mural medium and are interested in painting a mural at the sites listed below.

Land Acknowledgement

We acknowledge that the land Denver’s Public Art Collection occupies – land where we stand, live, work and learn – is the traditional territory of the Ute, Cheyenne and Arapaho Peoples. We also recognize the 48 contemporary tribal nations that are historically tied to the lands that make up the state of Colorado. Our nation was founded upon and continues to enact exclusions and erasures of Indigenous Peoples. May this acknowledgement demonstrate a commitment to dismantling ongoing legacies of oppression and inequities as we intentionally honor and celebrate the Indigenous communities in our city and express our gratitude for their ongoing and significant contributions. Let’s not forget that this land was theirs long before we made it ours.

About This Call

Denver is adding new murals to libraries, parks, recreation centers and a police station in neighborhoods across the city, and we are looking for muralists to paint them!

These are walls people see every day — at libraries, recreation centers, parks, and in other public spaces around the city. Your work would become part of those everyday routines, seen by kids, neighbors and people passing through.

We have kept the process simple on purpose. You apply once, and you’ll be considered for 7+ mural opportunities. We are looking for artists who can complete the murals between June and September 2027.

We want these walls to reflect the people who live around them. We especially welcome emerging muralists, artists who are new to public work and artists whose perspective is underrepresented in Denver’s public art collection. If that sounds like you, please apply.

The murals are funded through Denver’s Public Art Program, which sets aside 1% of eligible capital project budgets.

Goals, Site, Media & Materials

Each project has its own selection panel, which will set the goals and vision for each individual project. Artists will then work with Denver Arts & Venues to create a site-specific concept that reflects those goals, with the hope of creating unique, seamlessly integrated artwork for the people who visit these sites.

Locations: Murals will be focused on the following locations. Additional locations may be added. If you have a connection to a specific place or neighborhood listed, please tell us in your artist statement.

Police District 6 Station Expansion and Renovation, 1566 Washington St. Denver, CO, District 10

Eugene Field Library, 810 S. University Blvd., University Park and Bonnie Brae, District 6

Hampden Library, 9755 E. Girard Ave., Hampden South, District 4

Stanford and Balsam Park (shown on Google Maps as “Marston Park”), Marston, District 2

Harvey Park Recreation Center, Harvey Park, District 2

Sloan’s Lake, Sloan’s Lake neighborhood, District 1

Washington Park, Washington Park neighborhood, District 6

To be determined locations in the following areas:

Congress Park and Cherry Creek, District 5

Westwood Neighborhood, District 3

Berkeley Neighborhood, District 1

Additional potential citywide locations

Materials & Media

We are looking for murals painted directly on the wall. Brush, roller and spray or aerosol paint are the best fit, and mixed media is welcome if it is applied directly to the wall. Murals of different forms (i.e., mosaics, tile) will be considered but must meet the completion date of June to September 2027. Murals must use durable materials, an anti-graffiti coating and proper wall preparation to ensure longevity.

Maintenance, Durability & Accessibility

This artwork will become a permanent addition to the Denver Public Art collection. All applicants must consider the issues of long-term conservation and maintenance of public art, along with time and budget. These projects are in the public realm and will be exposed to physical stresses as well as being subject to vandalism. Murals should be painted with highly durable, low-maintenance materials. Finalists are encouraged to consult with a professional conservator prior to the submission of a final proposal. Awarded contracts will be reviewed by the City of Denver’s Public Art Committee to ensure conformity with city standards of maintenance and durability, as well as Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) standards. All finalists are expected to stay on budget and to complete work in an approved timeframe.

Who May Apply

This project is open to artists residing in the United States. Denver Arts & Venues is committed to building a public art collection that represents a broad diversity of artists and encourages applicants from historically marginalized and underrepresented communities, including artists who identify as Black, Indigenous, Latino/x, People of Color (BILPOC), people with disabilities and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersexual, asexual and Two-Spirit+ (LGBTQIA2S+) communities. Denver Arts & Venues also encourages applicants at various stages in their careers and applicants that practice a variety of artistic disciplines. You do not need a prior public commission or a long list of mural experience to apply.

Artist Teams: Applicants may apply as a single artist or multi-person collaborative group. If applying as a team, please submit one application for the team.

Applying for these Opportunities

In response to this RFQ, applicants will be asked to submit the following items via www.CallForEntry.org (CaFÉ™).

Up to six digital images of past work

Statement of interest (no longer than 1,000 characters)

Answers to a short set of application questions about your availability, typical price per square foot, mural sizes and primary mural approach (see Materials to be Submitted)

Budget

The budget for each mural commission is minimum $25,000.00 USD per location, which will be allocated to the artist/team selected. This contract amount is inclusive of all costs associated with the art project including, but not limited to:

the artist’s design fee

other consultation fees such as structural engineering consultation, (if applicable)

insurance (including Colorado Workers Compensation)

tools

materials

wall preparation

anti-graffiti UV coating

transportation

installation

any building or site modification required

travel to and from the site

per diem expenses

project documentation

contingency to cover unexpected expenses

any other associated costs

For all work done on city property, prevailing wage requirements will be applied.

What to Expext If You Are Selected

Scale: Walls vary in size, and finalists will design a mural that fits the budget for that wall. Depending on the square footage, covering the entire wall may not be possible. We want a balance between the budget and a realistic scale for each artist and location.

Artwork plaque: Denver Arts & Venues project managers fabricate and install the plaque for each mural from a separate budget. It does not come out of your commission.

Site and permits: Denver Arts & Venues will help coordinate site access and permits.

Timeline

Except for the online application deadline, the timeline below is subject to adjustments. The September 30, 2027, completion date will not change. Projects are matched on a rolling basis, so we encourage you to apply early.

November 11, 2026 Call opens (via CaFÉ™ system)
November 30, 2026 First review date (rolling review begins)
January 29, 2027, 11:59 P.M. MST Deadline for entry (via CaFÉ™ system)  
December 2026 to February 2027     Finalist Selection  
By end of February 2027 Artist Selection and Notification 
March to May 2027 Approvals and purchase orders
June to September 2027 Murals are painted
September 30, 2027 All work complete

Project Selection Process

According to Denver’s Public Art policy, the project selection panel plays an active role in the acquisition of public art for the City and County of Denver. The selection panel for each project is comprised of a minimum of eight voting members. The selection panel is responsible for reviewing applications and selecting finalists based on a rubric and goals set forth by the panelists.

How the call works: Applicants apply once. Each application goes into one shared pool and can be considered for any project listed above. The final recommendation of the selection panel will be presented to the Public Art Committee, the Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs and the Executive Director of Denver Arts & Venues for final approval.

All decisions of the City and County of Denver are final.

Materials to be Submitted

Please read this section carefully. Incomplete applications will NOT be considered and will be disqualified. The applicant’s name must appear on all materials submitted.

All materials must be submitted online, via the CaFÉ™ website (www.CallForEntry.org). There is no application fee to apply or to use the CaFÉ™ online application system.

Digital Images – To be considered for this project, the applicant must electronically submit six digital images of previously completed artworks through the online CaFÉ™ system. For each image, give the title, year, medium, size and location.

IMPORTANT: If submitting audio or video files, do not use them as your very first image. They must be submitted last in your image sequence.

Instructions on how to format images to CaFÉ™ specifications can be found at https://www.callforentry.org/uploading-images-audio-and-video-files/. Assistance in using the CaFÉ™ system is available here: https://www.callforentry.org/artist-help-cafe/.

If an artist does not have access to a computer, s/he/they may call (720) 515-5768 to make arrangements to use a computer at Denver Arts & Venues.

To request this RFQ in an alternate format (such as Braille, large print or accessible electronic format) please contact DisabilityAccess@denvergov.org.

Statement of Interest – Please submit a statement (1,000 characters maximum) outlining the following:

Why painting murals in Denver neighborhoods is of particular interest to you.

Your design approach and experience working on public art projects (prior public art experience is not required).

Information on your experience working with diverse communities and stakeholders. One short paragraph is plenty.

Application Questions – In addition to the items above, the CaFÉ™ application will ask the following. Your answers help us match you to the right wall.

Contact information: name, email, phone, city and state and website or social media (optional).

Primary mural approach (choose one): brush or roller painted; spray or aerosol; mixed media applied directly to the wall; other, painted or applied directly to the wall.

Availability: Can you complete a mural within 2 to 3 months of your agreement (yes, no or it depends, with a short explanation)? Can you fully complete your work by September 30, 2027 (yes or no)? Are you available to paint between June and September 2027 (select all that apply: June, July, August, September)?

Price per square foot: What is your typical price per square foot for an exterior mural, including materials, labor and equipment?

Mural sizes: Which sizes are you comfortable taking on? (select all that apply: under 200 sq ft; 200 to 500; 500 to 1,000; 1,000 to 2,500 and/or over 2,500)

Neighborhood connections (optional): Do you have close ties to any of the neighborhoods listed above? Select all that apply, then tell us about your connection in a sentence or two. This helps us match artists to the places they know.

Largest mural you have completed (optional): size in square feet, if you have completed one.

Please direct all questions about the project to:

Valeria Serrano Vélez, Public Art Project Manager, valeria.serrano@denvergov.org.

Answers to frequently asked questions will be posted with this call.

Denver Arts & Venues complies with applicable Federal civil rights laws and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, gender or language. It is your right to request oral or written language assistance services in your primary language, sign language interpretation, real-time captioning via CART or disability-related accommodations if needed. Please contact Denver Arts & Venues at DAVLanguageAccess@denvergov.org and these services will be provided to you free of charge.

Denver Arts & Venues የሚመለከታቸውን የፌዴራል ሲቪል መብቶች ሕጎችን የሚያከብር ሲሆን ቋንቋን ለማካተት በዘር፥ በቀለም፥ በብሔረሰብ፥ በዕድሜ፥ በአካል ስንኩልነት ወይም በጾታ ልዩነት አያደርግም። ካስፈለገ፥ በአፍ መፍቻ ቋንቋዎ የቃል ወይም የጽሑፍ የቋንቋ ድጋፍ አገልግሎቶችን መጠየቅ መብትዎ ነው። እባክዎን Denver Arts & Venues ን በ DAVLanguageAccess@denvergov.org ይገናኙና እነዚህ አገልግሎቶች በነጻ ይቀርቡልዎታል።

لقوانین الحقوق المدنیة الفدرالیة المنطبقة ولا تمارس التمییز على أساس Denver Arts & Venues تمتث ل
العرق أو اللون أو الأصل القومي أو العمر أو الإعاقة أو النوع لإدراج لغة. من حقك طلب خدمات المساعدة اللغویة
على البرید الإلكتروني Denver Arts & Venues الشفھیة أو المكتوبة بلغتك الأساسیة، إذا لزم الأمر. یرجى التواصل مع
وسیتم توفیر ھذه الخدمات لك مجاناً. DAVLanguageAccess@denvergov.org

Denver Arts & Venues သည် ဗဟိုအစိုးရ၏ အများြပည်သူရပိုင်ခွင့်များဆိုင်ရာ ဥပေဒများကို လိုက်နာ􀆱ပီး၊ လူမျိုး၊ အသားေရာင်၊ မူရင်း􀇳ိုင်ငံ၊ အသက်အရွယ်၊ မသန်စွမ်းမ􀋪၊ ဘာသာစကားအပါအဝင်၊ အမျိုးသားအမျိုးသမီးအြဖစ်ခံယူမ􀋪တို့ကို အေြခခံ􀆱ပီး ခွဲြခားဆက်ဆံြခင်း မြပုပါ။ လိုအပ်ပါက၊ ေြပာစကားအတွက်ြဖစ်ေစ ေရးသားထားသည့် စကားအတွက်ြဖစ်ေစ အကူအညီဝန်ေဆာင်မ􀋪များကို သင်အဓိကေြပာဆိုေသာ ဘာသာစကားြဖင့် ေတာင်းဆိုပိုင်ခွင့် သင်၌􀇹ှိပါသည်။ Denver Arts & Venues ကို DAVLanguageAccess@denvergov.org တို့တွင် ဆက်သွယ်ပါ၊ ထိုအခါ ဤဝန်ေဆာင်မ􀋪များကို သင့်အား အခမဲ့ေပးပါမည်။

Denver Arts & Venues 遵守适用的联邦民权法律，并且不会因为种族、肤色、民族、年龄、残疾或性别（包括语言）而歧视任何人。如有需要，您有权申请您的首选语言的口头或书面语言援助服务。请联系 Denver Arts & Venues DAVLanguageAccess@denvergov.org，将免费为您提供此等服务。

تابع قوانین حقوق مدنی فدرال است و بر اساس نژاد، رنگ پوست، تبار ملی،Denver Arts & Venues

سن، معلولی ت یا جنسیت و زبان افراد را مورد تبعیض قرار نمیدھد. این حق شماست کھ در صورت نیاز، خدمات

وDAVLanguageAccess@denvergov.org بھ نشانی ایمیل Denver Arts & Venues کمکزبانی شفاھی یا کتبی بھ زبان اصلی خود درخواست کنید. لطفا با
تماس بگیرید و این خدمات بھ صورت رایگان بھ شما ارائھ میشود شماره تلفن

Denver Arts & Venues respecte les lois fédérales applicables en matière de droits civiques et n’exerce aucune discrimination fondée sur la race, la couleur, l’origine nationale, l’âge, la situation de handicap ou le sexe, y compris la langue. Vous avez le droit de demander des services d’assistance linguistique orale ou écrite dans votre langue principale en cas de besoin. Veuillez contacter Denver Arts & Venues à DAVLanguageAccess@denvergov.org, et ces services vous seront offerts gratuitement.

Denver Arts & Venues လူၤပိာ်မၤထွဲ၀ဲဒၣ်
ကီၢ်စၢဖှိၣ်ကမျၢၢ်ခွဲးယာ်ဂ့ၢ်၀ီသဲစးတၢ်သိၣ်တၢ်သီတဖၣ်ဒီး တပဲာ်ထံနီၤဖးတၢ် ဒိးသန့ၤသးလၢ ကလုာ်

ဖံးဘ့ၣ်လွဲၢ် ကလုာ်ဂံၢ်ထံး သးနံၣ် တၢ်နီၢ်ခိက့ၢ်ဂီၤတလၢပှဲၤ မ့တမ့ၢ် တၢ်ကဲမုၣ်ခွါ

လၢကပာ်ဃုာ်ကျိာ်အဂီၢ်ဘၣ်လီၤႋ မ့ၢ်နတၢ်ခွဲးတၢ်ယာ်လၢကဃ့ထီၣ်ကျိာ်တၢ်တိစၢၤမၤစၢၤ

လၢတၢ်စံးကတိၤလၢထးခိၣ် မ့တမ့ၢ် တၢ်ကွဲးလံာ်ကွဲးလဲၢ် လၢအမ့ၢ်နဂံၢ်ခီၣ်ထံးကျိာ်အဂီၢ်

ဖဲအလီၢ်အိၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤႋ ၀ံသးစူၤဆဲးကျၢ Denver Arts & Venues ဖဲ DAVLanguageAccess@denvergov.org

ဒီးတၢ်ဖံးတၢ်မၤတဖၣ်အံၤ ကမၤစၢၤနၤလၢနတဘၣ်လၢာ်ဒီး တၢ်ဘူးတၢ်လဲဘၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤႋ

Denver Arts & Venues ले भाषा सामेल गन􀅊का लािग लागूयो􀆶 फेडेरल नाग􀄯रक अिधकार

कानुनह􀅝को पालना गद􀅊छ तथा जात, वण􀅊, उ􀈋ि􀈅 रा􀊼􀅌, उमेर, अस􀆅ता, वा िल􀇀का आधारमा

िवभेद गद􀅔न। यिद आव􀊴क भए, आफ्नो प्राथिमक भाषामा मौ􀄰खक वा िल􀄰खत भाषा सहयोग

सेवाह􀅝का लािग अनुरोध गनु􀅊 तपाईँको अिधकार हो। कृपया Denver Arts & Venues लाई DAVLanguageAccess@denvergov.org

मा स􀉼क􀅊 गनु􀅊होस् र यी सेवाह􀅝 तपाईँका लािग िनशु􀊋 प्रदान ग􀄯रनेछन्।

Denver Arts & Venues соблюдает действующие федеральные законы о гражданских правах и не допускает дискриминации по признаку расы, цвета кожи, национального происхождения, возраста, инвалидности или пола, а также языку. Вы имеете право, если необходимо, запросить помощь в виде устного или письменного перевода на свой основной язык. Пожалуйста, обратитесь к следующему лицу: Denver Arts & Venues по DAVLanguageAccess@denvergov.org, и эти услуги будут предоставлены вам бесплатно.

Denver Arts & Venues waxay addeecdaa sharciyada xuquuqda madaniga ee Dowladda dhexe oo ma sameeyaan wax takoor ah oo sal looga dhigo jinsi, middab, asal qaran, da’, naafonimo, ama lab ama diddig oo lagu daro luqad. Xaq baad u leedahay inaad codsatid adeegyo caawimaad oo af ah ama mid qoraal ah oo aad ku soo codsan karto luqaddaada koowaad in aad ku soo codsato, haddii loo baahdo. Fadlan kala xiriir Denver Arts & Venues kala soo xiriir DAVLanguageAccess@denvergov.org oo adeegyadan ayaa lagu siin doonaa si bilaash ah oo wax lacag ah aan lagugu soo dalacayn.

Denver Arts & Venues cumple con las leyes federales vigentes en materia de derechos civiles y no discrimina por motivos de raza, color, nacionalidad, edad, discapacidad o sexo, ni tampoco por el idioma. Usted tiene derecho a solicitar servicios de asistencia de idiomas oral o escrita en su idioma principal, si lo necesita. Póngase en contacto con Denver Arts & Venues al DAVLanguageAccess@denvergov.org y se le proporcionarán estos servicios sin costo.

Denver Arts & Venues tuân thủ các luật Liên bang áp dụng về dân quyền và không phân biệt đối xử trên cơ sở chủng tộc, màu da, nguồn gốc quốc gia, độ tuổi, tình trạng khuyết tật hay giới tính khi cung cấp dịch vụ ngôn ngữ. Quý vị có quyền yêu cầu dịch vụ hỗ trợ ngôn ngữ qua lời nói hay văn bản bằng ngôn ngữ chính của quý vị, nếu cần. Vui lòng liên hệ Denver Arts & Venues tại DAVLanguageAccess@denvergov.org, và những dịch vụ này sẽ được cung cấp miễn phí cho quý vị.