Wall to Wall Festival
A Proven Model for Public Art as a Cultural and Tourism Driver
Founded: 2015
Produced by: Juddy Roller
Locations: Regional towns and metropolitan precincts across Australia
Overview
Founded in 2015 by Juddy Roller, the festival was created with a clear intention: to move street art beyond temporary activation and toward permanent cultural infrastructure, artwork that shapes identity, drives visitation, and delivers long-term value for communities.
Wall to Wall Festival is Australia’s leading street art festival and one of the country’s most established public art platforms.
Over more than a decade, Wall to Wall has evolved from a regional pilot into a nationally recognised model for placemaking, tourism, and community-led cultural renewal.
From Festival to Framework
Wall to Wall was never designed as a one-off event.
From the outset, it was built as a repeatable framework that could be adapted to different towns, precincts and contexts while maintaining consistent standards of curation, production and governance.
Each edition is guided by the same principles:
Permanent murals, not temporary installations
Artists selected for cultural fit and experience
Community engagement embedded into delivery
Walls chosen for visibility, longevity, impact and strategic relevance
This approach has allowed Wall to Wall to scale without diluting quality, and to leave behind lasting public assets rather than short-lived moments.
Demonstrated Economic Impact
Independent analysis has shown that Wall to Wall delivers measurable economic return for host communities.
Early economic impact research conducted for Benalla demonstrated that the festival not only attracted significant visitation during the event itself, but continued to drive tourism and spending year-round, long after the festival weekend had passed.
Subsequent strategic modelling confirmed that, when supported as an ongoing cultural asset rather than a single event, Wall to Wall has the capacity to contribute millions of dollars in visitor spend annually, forming a meaningful component of broader regional tourism strategies.
Media Reach & National Profile
As Wall to Wall has matured, so too has its media footprint.
Recent editions have generated significant national coverage across television, radio, print, and digital outlets, positioning the festival as a major cultural event rather than a niche arts program.
This earned media reach has played a critical role in:
Attracting new visitors
Building destination awareness
Establishing Wall to Wall as a trusted platform for artists and partners
Community-Endorsed and Audience-Led
Wall to Wall’s success is underpinned by strong community support.
Audience surveys collected across multiple years and locations show consistently high levels of satisfaction, strong support for public space activation, and a clear appetite for ongoing cultural programming.
Importantly, this feedback has been gathered through council-led engagement platforms, reinforcing the festival’s credibility as a community-endorsed model, not a top-down intervention.
Cultural Infrastructure Made to Last
The defining feature of Wall to Wall is permanence.
Murals commissioned through the festival:
Become landmarks and meeting points
Function as tourism assets and visual identifiers
Continue to generate visitation long after installation
This is why Wall to Wall is best understood not as an event, but as cultural infrastructure - low-cost relative to major capital works, yet capable of delivering immediate and compounding impact.
A Scalable Model for Towns and Precincts
Its success is driven by:
Expert, independent curation
Professional production and risk management
Alignment with council and tourism strategies
Long-term thinking beyond the festival weekend
Wall to Wall’s structure allows it to be adapted to different scales and settings, from regional towns to metropolitan precincts.
This combination has made Wall to Wall a reference point for councils, communities and partners seeking sustainable approaches to placemaking through art.
Looking Ahead
As Wall to Wall enters its next decade, its focus remains unchanged:
Create work that lasts
Support artists to do their best work
Help communities tell their stories at scale
With a proven track record across economic impact, media reach, and community endorsement, Wall to Wall continues to demonstrate how public art, when done properly, can function as genuine cultural infrastructure
Key Stats (At a Glance)
Founded: 2015
Editions delivered: 10+
Artists commissioned: 70+
Permanent murals: Hundreds
Independent economic impact: $6M+ annually (baseline)
Projected visitor spend (strategy modelling): Up to $21M
Audience satisfaction: Consistently high across surveys
Cost to attend: Free
If your town, Council or Development are considering a mural project like Wall to Wall Festival, drop us a line, we are always up for a new challenge.