Mural along New Rail/Trail

Let's beautify Cookeville, one wall at a time!

This year's Leadership Putnam community development project is a mural near the Leslie Town Centre along the new Tennessee Central Heritage Rail Trail - the bicycling and walking path that runs along the rail road tracks from the Cookeville Train Depot to Algood, TN.  

The mural will demonstrate community pride, produce an emotional response in viewers, and inspire other groups to turn abandoned or underused walls in Cookeville into spaces for creative expression and beautification.

We want the mural to be colorful, celebrate diversity and incorporate transportation images of trains, trails, bicycling, and vehicles.

Our project team is interested in completing a project that will have impact on several different levels:  promote art, creativity, exercise, the rail history of Cookeville, and community involvement.  This is a privately owned building and the owner has been verbally agreeable to our proposal.  The mural will be professionally painted with a goal of it lasting 20 plus years.  

Our fundraising efforts throughout the community are paying off! Thank you, Cookeville!

With the $1,000 grant from the Cookeville Arts Council, a $400 pledged donation from the TN Central Heritage Rail Trail, and numerous private donations by Leadership Putnam alumni and other members of the community, we have currently raised $3,300!!!

This means that we are just $1,700 away from reaching our goal of $5,000.

Can you help us with this final push?

All donations of any amount are needed!

Your donation will be translated into a beautiful mural that will stand the test of time and beautify our community for many years to come.

You will also be recognized at a special unveiling party during the Art Prowl this November! We want you to be there with us to celebrate the success! 

Leadership Putnam is a local civic organization affiliated with the Cookeville Chamber of Commerce.  Every year members of Leadership Putnam work on projects to better our local community.  These projects are designed to promote local business, industry and tourism in this area and to improve quality of life and resources in Putnam County.

This year’s community development project is a mural near the Leslie Town Centre along the new Tennessee Central Heritage Rail Trail, the bicycling and walking path that runs along the rail road tracks from the Cookeville Train Depot to Algood, TN.  

Our team chose to commission a mural to demonstrate community pride, produce an emotional response in viewers, and inspire other groups to turn abandoned or underused walls in Cookeville into spaces for creative expression and beautification.

We are interested in completing a project that will have impact on several different levels:  promote art, creativity, exercise, the rail history of Cookeville, and community involvement.

In addition to completing the mural for all the community to enjoy, we also hope we can provide a guideline for completing community art projects that we can share with other organizations in Cookeville to promote more art in public spaces.  We also hope that the mural will bring more people to visit and use the new trails, which will create more economic activity for the city of Cookeville.