In 1996, Merrill worked with the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art as a visiting artist for the Christian Boltanski exhibition, "So Far". He and Boltanski collaborated on the citywide community artwork Our City Ourselves. With the help of designer Bruce McIntosh, Merrill created a tabloid publication insert in the Sunday Kansas City Star inviting the public to bring their family photographs and personal archives to the museum where they could pin them to the walls. In conjunction with the exhibit, Merrill also created "Portrait of Self", an arts and educational archive of drawing, writing, photography, and other art forms to help young people discuss the many influences on their sense of sense. Since its creation, Merrill has gone on to use "Portrait of Self" in community arts projects in Dana Beach, Florida; Sydney, Australia; Dublin, Ireland, as well as Colorado Springs, CO; Pittsburgh, PA; Portland, OR; and a number of other cities nationwide. Building on these experiences, Merrill helped transform Chameleon Theatre, a small not-for-profit whose mission was to create dramatic plays about youth experience, into the broader Chameleon Arts and Youth Development agency that utilizes theater, Hip Hop, visual arts, and dance to transform the lives of homeless and at-risk youth. In 2005, he was invited to produce a community arts action for the Impact Conference in Berlin, Germany and Poznan, Poland. The project, "Pools of Belief", consisted of graphics of children's swimming pools laid out in a public square and filled with images of mousetraps shaped like boats. Trailing from the traps were narrow sheets of paper with the text “I believe in the New York Stock Exchange” and other statements. The public was asked to participate by writing their own answers to the phrase “I believe in ________” on a narrow sheet of paper, which they then attached to the work. "Pools of Belief" has gone on to be exhibited at the Dalarnas Museum for the Falun Print Triennial in Falun, Sweden and other museums around the world. Most recently Merrill has worked with Staci Pratt, director of the Office of Homeless Liaison, Kansas City, KS Public Schools to facilitate a number of community arts projects, including "Faces of the Homeless". "Faces" was a collaboration with Patrick Moonasar and Matt Hilger which produced a series of posters of homeless children showing not their need but their value. The posters have been exhibited nationally including the 2008 conference for the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth in Washington, D.C.