VCU news

By Malorie Burkett and Steve Nuckolls

RICHMOND, Va. – Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts has partnered with members of Richmond’s Fan District Association to fight graffiti with a billboard and poster campaign that sends a message to graffiti criminals – also known as “taggers” -- that defacing city and personal property results in serious consequences.

"We send a very strong message as one of the top art schools in the country, that if you want to push the envelope, graffiti is not the way to do it,” said Richard Toscan, Ph.D., dean of VCU’s School of the Arts. “Graffiti is property vandalism and that's especially destructive when it's done in historic districts in Richmond such as the Fan, Carver and Church Hill.”

The campaign is a collaboration of VCU, the Fan District Association, Lamar Advertising, and Richmond’s Clean City Commission.  It involves a billboard and posters bearing the concise message “use a spray can, go to jail.” The visual shows a spray can and handcuffs, suggesting that defacing property results in being arrested and or convicted.

The idea for the campaign originated in two different places around the same time last year. As chair of the environmental committee for the Fan District Association, Steve Nuckolls routinely faced the ongoing graffiti problem, and had been working on ways to solve it. Because Nuckolls had been assisting Lamar Advertising in getting graffiti cleaned from their billboards, the company approached Nuckolls with a proposal to begin working on an anti-graffiti campaign.

Coincidentally, VCU’s Joe Seipel, senior associate dean for the School of the Arts, received a phone call from a Richmond prosecutor suggesting that VCU should somehow spread the message that graffiti results in jail time. The attorney’s call was prompted by frequent cases in which young, local vandals were convicted of graffiti and vandalism.  VCU began working on an anti-graffiti message for posters that would appear all over campus. Nuckolls became aware of VCU’s efforts in combating the crime, and the teams merged to create the larger, citywide campaign.

The Fan District Association, Museum District and Richmond’s Clean City Commission provided funds for production costs, VCU provided the artwork for the billboard and Lamar Advertising supplied the space free of charge as a public service.

The billboard, recently installed at 9 E. Marshall St. facing west, features the artwork of Jerry Bates, a media specialist in the VCU Communication Arts and Design Graphics Laboratory. Lamar Advertising will periodically rotate the billboard to various locations in the city, depending on space availability.

“I commend VCU for working with us and being so supportive of this project,” said Nuckolls. “We’re neighbors in this together and this is a great example of how we can fight a crime that has hurt the community for so long.”

According to the VCU Police, most of Richmond’s graffiti is done by young individuals and is of the tagger nature – the offender takes pride in his or her creations while seeking recognition among members of this subculture. Approximately 50 individuals in the Richmond area have been arrested over the past three years for graffiti-related offenses, with many of the cases successfully prosecuted. VCU Police recently have worked along side Richmond Police in both patrol and plain clothes assignments to focus on the apprehension of taggers and will be conducting additional assignments in the future.