The “Wrzeszcz Community Art Project” began with a series of art workshops with children and youth in a working class neighborhood of Gdańsk. The project included interviews with local residents, whose stories were put up on a website, and culminated in a large mural that told their stories, incorporating imagery from the neighborhood and the creative expressions of local youth and adults. I used an approach that I have been developing this year called “Expressive Group Art,” in which the youth contribute their writings, drawings, and abstract expressions throughout the mural, all of which gets incorporated into the background of the mural, creating an interesting and innovative aesthetic. This is intended as a creative alternative to the traditional “paint-by-numbers” approach to youth mural projects. The students also had the opportunity to create their own mini- murals and learned to make stencils. Some of the students attended the high school where the mural was painted, and the smaller kids were participants of the NGO that organized the project.
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| I made a presentation during the first workshop |
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| Bartek with some students |
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| The students sketched their ideas during one of the workshops |
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| Preparing the wall for the mural |
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| I gave a demonstration on the first painting day |
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| Fun with paint! |
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| In every country I've worked in, kids end up painting themselves! I guess it's universal... |
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| Karolina creates "foot art" |
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| Dominik loved to practice his English with me! |
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| Some of the more dedicated students created their own mini-murals |
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| One of the students with her work |
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| Stencil art by one of the students. The king is telling the queen to scream, a reference to the name of the neighborhood, which is Wrzeszcz, meaning "scream." |
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| The kids try out their new stencils, which they learned to make in the art workshops. |
