Local Artists Put Their Creative Touch on the World Cup

From posters, T-shirts and street murals to sculptures, yard art and stickers to, well, a ton of cool stuff, Kansas City artists have turned the world’s biggest sporting event into a citywide canvas for creative endeavors.

A few artistic highlights:

• Local artist Jadie Arnett’s illustration was selected as the official FIFA host city promotional poster. Her artwork is being used on FIFA merchandise and signage across the metro.
• Both Clay County and Platte County held K-12 youth T-shirt design contests. The winning designs will be distributed and sold throughout the county at watch parties. Park University announced that the winning Clay County student, should they decide to attend the college, will be provided a scholarship covering up to half of their tuition for four years.
• Clay County also made a region-wide call for artists to create a design for a 20-foot inflatable soccer ball that will be at every watch party, says Megan Sahlfeld, tourism and marketing manager for Clay County. “It is going to be kind of our beacon in the Northland at each of these parties,” Sahlfeld says.
• Phil Shafer, owner and lead designer of mural creation company Sike Style Industries, has been working with Sporting KC, the Royals and the Chiefs for years and is now doing non-FIFA-branded work for World Cup events. Shafer did a custom design on the grass—a “ground mural”—for the FIFA Fan Fest reveal at the World War I Museum. “That was kind of like the kickoff,” Shafer says. “We’re into transforming spaces. We’re creating the experience of reinforcing a brand. We’re really excited to focus on some community murals that are going to be there to invite fans to engage with and to feel welcome. But they’re going to live beyond that. We need to really exemplify what makes Kansas City a great host city and show off our own story, culture and artwork. Two of the major murals that we’re doing are like that. Those and other murals will all be in the KC area from 20th street all the way down to the river. They’re going to be very, very visible, which is fun.”
• The Parade of Hearts art installation project began in 2022 with a five-foot-by-five-foot white fiberglass heart sculpture that artists personalized with any sort of design or message. This year’s heart sculpture is different—a little larger, shaped like a ball, with a heart shape cut out of the center. “We wanted to do something different and we thought, ‘why not let it be at least inspired by the event that’s happening in the summer?’” Tucker Trotter, CEO of Dimensional Innovations, says. His company coordinates the design and fabrication of the hearts. “A lot of the artists picked up on that connection (the ball representing a soccer ball), but we made sure that the artists understood that they couldn’t use FIFA logos and things that are licensed.”

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