The youth council as art commission: The Mish and Project Shoe City

2023 – present · the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council

The Mish: The mechanism that commissions Mishawaka's newest art is not a board of artists but a council of teenagers. In March 2023 the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority launched a crowdfunding campaign, under its CreatINg Places / My Community, My Vision program with Patronicity, for The Mish — a pocket park in the heart of downtown, in front of the new City Hall, led by the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council and the Mishawaka Parks and Recreation Foundation. The campaign's stated furnishings were a mural and an interactive "Welcome to the Mish" sculpture; the park stands today at the downtown ground the campaign described, its page in the places record classed, without embarrassment, as public art. The mural's painter is not named in any source reached, and the work is carried at the campaign's documented size: a youth-led, crowdfunded place whose art was part of its founding brief.

Project Shoe City: The same council's larger work is the city's present public-art program entire. Project Shoe City, the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council's legacy project, sets large fiberglass shoes — each uniquely designed and painted — at places across the city, in honor of the Ball Band works and the shoe-manufacturing past; the city publishes the collection as a public art trail, on an interactive map it states is still growing. The funding is the mechanism's signature: a $35,000 crowdfunding goal, matched dollar for dollar through the Patronicity and IHCDA partnership, exceeded — the city reports nearly $100,000 raised from individuals, businesses and organizations. One shoe is a memorial: the Ball Band Memorial Shoe carries, for a $50 donation, the names of people who worked at Ball Band and Uniroyal — the donors' roll the city publishes runs from former shoe workers' families to the Marian and Penn high school communities. The ledger's line from 1884 runs: veterans' subscription, church ground, city commission, parks project, and now a crowdfunded trail of painted shoes placed by the mayor's youth — the instruments change, and the art keeps arriving by them.

Sources:

1. State of Indiana / IHCDA (events.in.gov), March 6, 2023 — the crowdfunding launch for The Mish: the $50,000 goal, the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council and Parks and Recreation Foundation leadership, the mural and the interactive "Welcome to the Mish" sculpture, the downtown site in front of the new city hall.
2. City of Mishawaka, "Project Shoe City" (mishawaka.in.gov), retrieved November 2026 — the MYAC legacy project; the fiberglass shoes as a public art trail; the $35,000 goal matched and nearly $100,000 raised; the Ball Band Memorial Shoe and its $50 name donations; the map "still growing."