The city of Kissimmee and Kissimmee’s City Hall are being recognized for overall city beautification projects to the downtown area. This week, they were presented with the 2025 Downtown Beautification and Innovation Award.
City leaders say a huge factor in receiving this recognition was the addition of roughly 30 murals to Kissimmee and its downtown area through the “ARTisNOW” public murals project.
Brian Camacho, the public arts coordinator with Osceola Arts, said it was an honor to be recognized, saying art is important in every community given the nature of expression associated with each piece of artwork.
Samia Singleton is the community redevelopment agency manager with the city of Kissimmee.
“Murals, they contribute to place making, right? Make your community a place — a place where people want to gather,” Singleton said. “A place where people want to be. A destination. What happens is we have a place, a destination that can attract residents. It can also attract employers and bring jobs because employers want to be where people want to work, and people want to live where they want to work.”
Singleton said the downtown artwork and murals do exactly this: They create a space where tourists will want to visit, and where residents will find community.
“So, we’re creating a place with murals. We’re creating destination,” Singleton said. “Murals attract people, so people may come down here because they hear about one thing, but they see our murals and they we want to come back to explore them, or they come to us for our murals.