{"id":59294,"date":"2025-11-20T20:39:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T01:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=59294"},"modified":"2025-11-20T20:39:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T01:39:16","slug":"lakeland-muralist-says-changes-to-city-art-art-infusion-program-hurts-artists-and-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2025\/11\/20\/lakeland-muralist-says-changes-to-city-art-art-infusion-program-hurts-artists-and-businesses\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakeland muralist says changes to city art Art Infusion program hurts artists and businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Lakeland mural artist says recent changes to a city program are shutting down opportunities for local creators and small businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n

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For years, Jon Sierra has been turning blank walls into colorful murals across Lakeland. He says growing up around graffiti culture in New York taught him that public art is never just decoration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cIt showed me that public art can inspire, can bring positivity, bring community to an otherwise blank space,\u201d Sierra said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lakeland Community Redevelopment Agency\u2019s Art Infusion Program<\/a> is a grant created to support artists like Sierra by funding murals to beautify commercial corridors and boost economic development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt allows local businesses to receive a grant to have public art in their space. It also allowed local artists to help put their imprint or contribute to the art landscape,\u201d Sierra said.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Sierra said a new stipulation is now threatening that mission. The CRA now requires businesses to invest $25,000 in facade improvements before they can qualify for the mural grant.<\/strong> Sierra says he\u2019s already lost two major projects because of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRight on South Florida Ave, right on the main strip, and it would\u2019ve been an awesome addition to the landscape of Lakeland, but those deals were killed as soon as they found out that they had to pay an additional $25,000,\u201d Sierra said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a full-time artist, he says the new rule doesn\u2019t just slow down public art, it hurts his livelihood and limits which small businesses can participate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI provide for my family, my three kids, through art, through design, through everything I do in the community with my art. This definitely hurts my business, it hurts my income,\u201d Sierra said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sierra is calling on the CRA to reconsider and make the program accessible to all businesses, not just those who can afford the price tag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cArt was meant to be public, not just to be shared for those who can afford it,\u201d Sierra said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Lakeland mural artist says recent changes to a city program are shutting down opportunities for local creators and small businesses. For years, Jon Sierra has been turning blank walls… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"6","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMTFcL1NvdXRoRmxvcmlkYUd1blBhd24tSlVMWTI1LTU2X3dlYnNpemUud2VicD9maXQ9MTAyNCUyQzY4NCZzc2w9MSIsInR4dCI6Ikxha2VsYW5kIG11cmFsaXN0IHNheXMgY2hhbmdlcyB0byBjaXR5IGFydCBBcnQgSW5mdXNpb24gcHJvZ3JhbSBodXJ0cyBhcnRpc3RzIGFuZCBidXNpbmVzc2VzIiwidGVtcGxhdGUiOiJoaWdod2F5IiwiZm9udCI6IiIsImJsb2dfaWQiOjE2MzA0MDY2MX0.7twkOyjvAiPWp-8cksaqKSWXrOzGuYsx3gZSHvSFD08MQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":59296,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/SouthFloridaGunPawn-JULY25-56_websize.webp","type":"image\/webp"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[12661],"class_list":["post-59294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","tag-lakeland-muralist-says-changes-to-city-art-art-infusion-program-hurts-artists-and-businesses"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59299,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59294\/revisions\/59299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}