O+ Festival Kingston

October 9-11, 2026

Submissions for the 16th Annual O+ Festival are now open!

Applications Open March 20th, 2026 All submissions due by May 1st, 2026 at 11:59p.m.

The O+ Festival is a celebration of art, music and wellness that offers access to health care for participating artists while providing the community with an opportunity to experience the healing and transformative power of art in all its forms. O+ (pronounced Oh Positive) fosters physical, mental and social well-being by connecting artists and musicians directly with a coalition of healthcare/wellness providers and resources in a shared vision to nurture both the individual and the community. By exchanging the art of medicine for the medicine of art, O+ empowers communities to take control of their collective wellbeing. Click HERE for detailed information on our mission. 

O+ Festival Kingston is now accepting submissions from artists of all styles, practices, identities and levels of experience to create public murals that add new perspectives and visual language to O+'s beloved Mural Program. The O+ Art Committee aims to curate work from these submissions, to be produced in and around the Kingston area, that reflects the meaningful juxtaposition between Kingston’s dynamic, multicultural neighborhoods and compelling, radical, relevant contemporary artwork. 

We invest in murals because public artwork provides communities with broad, inclusive and positive representation of the human experience while producing chance encounters with the transformative power of art in our everyday lives. Since its first public mural in 2013, the O+ Mural Program prioritizes the expression of women, BIPOC, nonbinary, trans and queer folk, and is committed to the continued expansion of representation, especially from a first person perspective, made possible through public art. All artists will be considered on the merit of their work and we are proud to provide intentional opportunities to amplify the stories and voices of historically marginalized people through the occupation and reclamation of public space that muralism provides. 

O+ Festival builds its program around a new theme each year and we ask writers to consider the theme in their proposals. In a time marked by political turbulence and division, art emerges as a potent instrument of the people—a medium through which voices are amplified, dissent is visualized, and collective resilience is forged.

The theme for the 2026 O+ Festival is MONUMENTS.

O+ Festival 2026 welcomes artists, musicians and writers who approach the theme of monuments as both a question and a form. They resist the singular, the simply heroic, or the permanent. Their work turns toward the work done, sometimes at the margins, that moves everyone forward. The labor of everyday heroes, the persistence of communities often excluded from dominant narratives, the culture of care that sustains life, one person at a time. These are monuments that breathe—temporary, participatory, and permeable–and connect us to the collective.

Learn more about this year’s theme HERE.

This year, we are approaching the production of O+ Festival murals in a new way while maintaining the priorities stated above. We ask that each artist select one of the possible walls found HERE and respond to the prompts therein, in whatever way(s) feels relevant to the artist in the scope of their current work. Within the wall options found HERE, please take note of the various approaches to the theme- whether political, regional, environmental, community driven and/or memorializing- welcomed at each location and use those insights as guidance towards the best wall layout and parameters for your work. We do also welcome wildcard mock-ups, not inherently tied to one of these wall options, but encourage you to consider a specific wall option offered as you develop a mock-up and proposal for consideration. 

In your submission, and in addition to your mock-up, we also request images of previous work that express the formal, conceptual and/or stylistic approach you intend to employ in your mural. We do not require O+ muralists to have previous mural making experience but do look to the work samples provided, in addition to the mock-up, for proof of your ability, your approach and the nature of your work as it moves from concept, through process to a resolved work. 

Building owners will be presented with the top three proposals selected by the O+ Art Committee for their respective site and will choose which artist's work they wish to steward from those finalists. Building owners may ask for limited changes to be made to the initial proposal - like an inquiry about a specific detail or inclusion of a color - but will not be in the position to significantly steer the content of the work. In this way, the model does not resemble a commission. Artists will be selected based on the proposal they set forth and will be provided with supportive direction and production assistance from the organization's Art Director and Committee. 

The O+ Mural Program has grown significantly over the last decade and we now have approximately 70 existing murals in the Kingston area alone. Beyond the quality of the artists' work, we consider what walls are available, city and historic area regulations, neighbors living in a given location, representation, budget and more. We hustle to find the best possible locations for O+ murals based on these myriad factors but cannot promise artists their ideal/preferred location, scale or surface quality. We ask that artists who apply do so with an openness to producing their work in the locations available to us with the understanding that we will work to support their success every step of the way while we navigate the complex considerations of producing public art. O+ reserves the right to shift an accepted artist's work towards a new wall if necessary and/or to discontinue a project all together if the piece cannot be successfully produced in an appropriate location within the mural production season for any reason. 

All submissions will be reviewed, and the festival art program will be curated, by the O+ Art Committee - a group of O+ alumni, practitioners, industry professionals, and community members representing different practices, identities and perspectives. Accepted submissions will be invited to participate at this year’s festival in exchange for access to care in the O+ Artists’ Clinic which is the primary compensation for sharing your work with the public. 

As O+ artists receive access to no cost healthcare, of all kinds, through our exchange, we are not a typical mural festival. Muralists are provided with paint and standard supplies, lifts/scaffolds and/or ladders (when relevant), transportation support, housing support in town (if needed), an intern to assist them on site (if desired) and a modest, flat stipend of $500 to compensate for their time. Additional support comes through the prepping of walls in advance of an artist's arrival including cleaning, priming and base coating as well as projection support to jumpstart the project and documentation of the process. O+'s Art Director will secure walls, mediate the building owner relationships and secure a building agreement with them upon mock-up approval that seeks to protect the artist, O+ and the property during production and beyond. Muralists will also be supplied with an artist agreement to ensure understanding of the terms, the approved mock-up and to protect their efforts. 

You can expect to be notified regarding your submission by mid-June. This year, we expect to receive dozens of submissions for a finite number of mural locations. Capacity for mural production each year is limited to less than 10. The number of walls produced each year is determined by many factors including budget, walls available, capacity to produce the work in addition to all other artists/projects included in the festival, and how the work proposed might add to the collection of public art that exists through the Mural Program. 

We ask for your patience and understanding should your submission not be accepted for this year and encourage all who are not chosen for O+ Festival 2026 to reapply in the years ahead. 

A note to O+ Alum: Lower priority may be given to muralists who have produced large scale murals in previous O+ Kingston Festivals, though we encourage all to apply. Building owners are asked to agree to a minimum of three years commitment to steward the work of our muralists and we seek to have as many perspectives available through the public art in Kingston at any given time. As our mission is centered in cultivating a diverse community of artists to whom we are offering access to healthcare, we also want to make sure we reach those who have yet to participate and may have a need to acquire care.

We continue to expand our model of care through the year round O+ Exchange Clinic. Through art and wellness programming in that space, we are constantly looking for new ways provide care and opportunities to artists. If you aren’t accepted for this year’s festival, you may be contacted over the year ahead with additional ways to connect you with O+. We thank you in advance for your understanding. 

Thank you for your interest in O+ Festival and support of our mission. 

We look forward to the opportunity to review your submission!

Positively, 

The 2026 O+ Kingston Art Committee

Please do not let any barriers, personal, perceived or technical, get in the way of submitting your work. Reach out to us for assistance in applying if you need support of any kind at info@opositivefestival.org or by phone at (845) 399-5343.