LAWRENCE, Ind. (WISH) — About two dozen local graffiti artists took over the Lawrence Community Skate Park on Sunday and spent the day tagging the surfaces with murals.

Will Stowe lives about five minutes away from the park. He picked up the sport just three years ago and always had respect for the culture. As a former athlete, it’s a way for him to stay active.

“Everybody’s here just kicking,” Stowe said. “That’s really why I still skate. I feel like it’s always room to improve, and the camaraderie is super, super beast.”

The Lawerence Community Skate Park opened in 2008, but time has not been too kind to the place Stowe considers a second home.

While graffiti is common at most parks across the country, local skaters say years of vandalism led the city to neglect maintaining it.

It reached a breaking point in July when a racial slur was spray-painted on the park’s bowl.

“We had it here,” Stow said. “People see it all the time, but it was never like the go-to park. People were just tagging the park with pretty whack stuff.”

In response, the park is getting a badly needed facelift by the people who use it most. Area skaters have come together to paint over graffiti that covered the space.

The city provided the spray paint for the murals. It also provided primer and paint for the concrete to cover up the old graffiti.

That’s where Casper Jones comes in.

He’s an Indianapolis skater and an ambassador for Skatepark Respect, an international nonprofit that works to clean up community spaces like the one in Lawrence.

“Skate parks feel like home,” Jones said. “Cleaning up parks and this sort of thing just feels good to do that.”

He and Indy muralist Robert Bently approached the city to see how to help.

The result: Lawrence Parks Department would get the paint, and local skaters would give their time.

Fellow ambassador Michelle “Chelle” Rippy says their work has already made a gnarly impact.

“The more I come and clean this park, the more I realize that there’s less and less trash to pick up,” Rippy said. “It’s had a really awesome ripple effect.”

The group hopes they can also change the attitudes surrounding not just skating, but graffiti, too.

Jones says tagging is part of the sport’s culture, but it should be a form of self-expression — not a way to offend people.

“Everyone coming together and working with the city is establishing that these artists are artists,” Jones said. The things that they’re putting up are art.”

It’s restoring a sense of pride in Stowe for his local park. He says the efforts are already paying off.

“Just to have my local kind of shine (and) everybody coming here, chipping in, (I’m) super stoked on the project, man, it means a lot,” Stowe said.

The park is still a work in progress – paint was still being laid down early Monday morning.

Jones says because of this new energy around the Lawrence Community Skate Park, the city is already talking about expansion, but plans have not been formalized quite yet.