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The Declaration of Independence was signed by 56 white male delegates of the Second Continental Congress. Most of them were wealthy landowners. Some of them owned slaves.

But what if everybody could have contributed to the Declaration of Independence?

“It doesn’t really apply anymore. We need something new,” Philadelphia artist Jeannine Baldomero said. “It was a new country when it was written and so many things have fallen out from the last 250 years. We really need to address that disparity.”

Baldomero was one of over 1,000 people from all walks of life who participated in “Printmaking for the People,” a project by Mural Arts Philadelphia to engage residents in composing their personal Declarations of Independence and committing them to print. The results are now on view in the Heim Center for Cultural and Civic Engagement of the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Parkway branch.

Program manager Todd Bressi said it is the largest civic engagement project for the semiquincentennial in Philadelphia, and likely the entire country.

“The most fun aspect of this all is when people were done, they made their print and they pulled it off the press and they looked at it,” Bressi said. “I call it the ‘A-Ha’ moment. People said, ‘Ah! I did that. I said that. That’s mine.’”

In 2025, Mural Arts held 35 public workshops around Philadelphia in libraries, schools, recreation centers and art centers to engage in discussions about American liberty and to help city residents express their own ideas about inalienable rights in words or images.

“The were really magical,” Bressi said of the workshops. “You can imagine in almost any community art process people are going to be a little intimidated. Some people don’t think they have something to say. So, part of it is asking people to think and talk and realize they do have something important to say — an idea.”

Bressi said the artist-led workshops used a range of printmaking techniques, including letterpress, screenprint, linocut, gelli and cyanotype.

“You don’t know what you can do until somebody gives you the equipment and the encouragement,” participant Penny Hazelton said.

Most workshops offered prompts to spur a reaction from participants, such as asking them to complete this sentence: “Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and …”

Many responses added housing, health care, living wages and food as additional inalienable rights. Other concerns were privacy, women’s rights, trans rights and basic kindness.

Free Library curator Suzanna Urminska was struck by how many times people included the word “love.”

“They wanted to talk about love,” she said. “Which I think is so moving given that people are under a great deal of stress right now in a variety of ways, and that they would choose such a simple and straightforward and multigenerational idea.”

Graphic designer Rhonda Babb selected phrases from the prints to compile into a single poster. She discovered that they fell neatly into the Sustainable Development Goals determined by the United Nations, including no poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being, quality education and climate action.

Babb’s poster will soon appear at SEPTA bus shelters and rail stations. Mural Arts is looking for a wall on which to produce a large-scale version of the poster.

“This exhibition has the answer to really profound questions that we’re all asking ourselves in today’s world,” said Mural Arts executive director Jane Golden. “You will see hundreds of posters by Philadelphians of all ages, each one building on the legacy of the original signatories and reimagining a vision for the future.”

“Printmaking for the People” will be on view at the Free Library through August.