Strickland Youth Center Murals Mobile, Alabama
Alabama mural artist Banks Compton has worked with Strickland Youth Center and young people involved in Mobile County's juvenile justice system to create collaborative public artwork rooted in creativity, storytelling, and community.
Through workshops with youth in both detention and probation programs, participants have contributed their own ideas and artwork to murals celebrating Mobile and the Gulf Coast. Rather than simply creating artwork for the young people, the projects invite them into the creative process and preserve their contributions within the finished work.
Creating Public Art With Mobile's ‘at risk Youth’
Partner: Strickland Youth Center / Mobile County Juvenile Court
Location: Mobile, Alabama
Artist: Banks Compton
Project: Youth Workshops & Collaborative Public Art
Participants: Youth from detention and probation programs
Projects: 2024–2026
Artwork: Collaborative murals and youth-created artwork
Project at a Glance
The Heart of Mobile
Banks first worked with Strickland Youth Center in the summer of 2024 on a mural project centered around the theme “The Heart of Mobile.”
Young participants were asked to consider what Mobile meant to them and how their own creativity could become part of a larger story about their community.
Through the project, youth helped create a series of twelve murals inspired by Mobile. Their individual ideas and artistic contributions became pieces of a larger body of work celebrating the city while giving participants an opportunity to see something they helped create become permanent artwork.
The project established a relationship that would continue through future workshops and public art projects.
A Mural About Mobile
The completed artwork draws from the landscape, culture, and visual identity of Mobile and Alabama's Gulf Coast.
Across the panels, recognizable imagery creates a larger story about place and community while individual details contributed by participating youth remain embedded throughout the artwork.
The project was designed so viewers can experience the mural as a finished composition while also looking closer and discovering evidence of the many hands that helped create it.
In this way, the artwork serves both as a mural for the courthouse and as a permanent record of the young people's participation.
Returning to Create Something Permanent
In 2026, Banks returned to work with youth from Strickland's detention and probation programs as part of a new project for the Mobile County Juvenile Court.
Over four workshop sessions, participants created individual artwork while also contributing directly to a collaborative mural panel.
The workshops were designed to give students room to make creative decisions of their own. Participants developed artwork using words, lettering, color, imagery, and personal ideas before contributing to the larger project.
Those contributions were not treated simply as preliminary exercises. Elements painted by the youth—including flowers, fish, and other details—were intentionally preserved in the completed mural.
Banks left their original marks untouched so that their work would remain permanently visible within the finished artwork.
The Youth Gallery
The mural project also connects with a larger Youth Gallery highlighting artwork created by young people involved with Strickland Youth Center and the juvenile justice system.
Displaying their artwork in a public and professional setting gives participants an opportunity to see their creativity treated with value and respect.
The gallery and collaborative mural transform the courthouse environment by introducing artwork created not only about young people, but with them.
Art as a Collaborative Process
Community-based public art requires a different approach from painting a mural independently.
Banks' role throughout the Strickland projects has been part artist, part instructor, and part collaborator—creating enough structure for the project to become a cohesive finished artwork while leaving space for participants to make meaningful creative decisions.
Not every flower needs to be repainted. Not every line needs to be perfected.
Sometimes preserving the individual character of a participant's contribution is more important than making every part of a mural look as though it came from the same hand.
That philosophy became particularly important in the 2026 project, where youth-created details remain visible as permanent markers of their involvement.
Public Art and Youth Engagement
Murals can provide communities with more than a finished image.
Collaborative public art can introduce participants to the process of developing an idea, working alongside others, making creative decisions, and contributing to something larger than an individual piece of artwork.
For cities, courts, schools, nonprofits, and community organizations, the process itself can become an important part of the project.
Banks' work with Strickland Youth Center demonstrates one approach to creating professional public artwork while making genuine community participation part of how that artwork comes into existence.
About Banks Compton
Banks Compton is an Alabama mural artist and RISD alumnus creating large-scale murals and public art throughout Alabama and across the United States.
His work combines storytelling, local culture, nature, history, and community engagement to create artwork rooted in the places and people it represents.
In addition to commissioned murals, Banks has worked with young people and community organizations to develop collaborative public art projects that give participants an opportunity to contribute directly to artwork displayed within their communities.
Planning a Community Mural in Mobile or Alabama?
Banks works with cities, schools, courts, nonprofits, libraries, institutions, and community organizations throughout Mobile, Alabama, and the Southeast to create site-specific murals and collaborative public art projects.
Projects can incorporate community workshops, youth participation, local history, educational programming, and collaborative painting alongside professionally designed and completed mural artwork.
