LARGE-SCALE TRANSFORMATION OF GERMANTOWN AVENUE IN NORTH PHILADELPHIA, ONE OF PHILLY'S OLDEST COMMERCIAL CORRIDORS
PHILLY PAINTING
LARGE-SCALE TRANSFORMATION OF GERMANTOWN AVENUE IN NORTH PHILADELPHIA, ONE OF PHILLY'S OLDEST COMMERCIAL CORRIDORS
Favelapainting was commissioned by the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program (MAP) to conceive and engineer a large-scale transformation of Germantown Avenue in North Philadelphia. As major industries have gone bankrupt or abandoned the city, this neighbourhood has experienced a slow and steady decline for years. The goal was to revitalise and re-energise one of Philadelphia’s oldest commercial corridors.
Favela Painting relocated a block from the site and spent eighteen months as committed advocates to direct and execute the project together with a local team. With community leaders, they invited a dozen young men and women between the ages of 18 and 30 who lived in the area. Additionally, teams of (ex)prisoners, making their re-entry into society, worked on the project.
They faced the task of painting over 50 individual buildings on the Avenue while all the individual tenants had input in the design for their building. We devised a system of weaving bands of color creating consistency while respecting the desires of the individual building tenants. The colours were chosen after extensive analysis of the palette seen on the streets of Philadelphia. A swatch system was developed so building owners understood the framework and made their selections accordingly. Colours were then integrated into one building subsequently lending colours to the next. These swatches of “native” color were reshaped and scaled to transcend the architecture of the individual buildings, and lend uniformity to a lively but visually incoherent stretch of the avenue.
The playful design follows the existing architecture while creating an enveloping effect, visually connecting all the houses together. The owners pick the colours for their own As exciting as the project was, Philly Painting was not without its challenges: architectural, human and logistical. The commercial corridor between Huntingdon and Somerset is characterised by small businesses and not-for-profits, vacant buildings, wildly varied signage scale, styles and surfaces, deteriorating facades and cornices with boarded up windows. As complex as the challenges were, however, the potential is palpable. As we returned weekly to canvas merchants and seek their approval, the enthusiasm for the potential of this project to create enthusiasm and cohesion through art had grown with more and more merchants wanting to participate.
The project provided training and jobs in an area where unemployment and crime is extremely high, especially within the younger population. Wearing sweaters and shirts with the Philly Painting logo, the local painters were identifiable as transformers of their neighbourhood. A local team of filmmakers produced monthly episodes of video updates. Half of the painters went on to work for the MAP.
UNITED PAINTING CREW THE HAGUE PAINTS MASSIVE ARTWORK ON THE FLOOR OF THE STUDENT HOTEL THE HAGUE COURTYARD
UNITED PAINTING CREW THE HAGUE
PAINTS MASSIVE ARTWORK ON THE FLOOR OF THE STUDENT HOTEL THE HAGUE COURTYARD
After carrying out projects in numerous Student Hotels across Europe (Florence, Berlin, Dresden), we were invited by The Student Hotel (TSH) The Hague to paint their inner courtyard.
This would be our first project in the Netherlands with TSH and also one of our biggest artworks so far (in m2). This invitation had special interest for us also due to the fact that in 2018 we had launched a project in a nearby social housing complex in The Hague. This project was still running at the time and we felt that this would be the perfect opportunity to give our crew in The Hague the opportunity to run a project on their own.
We were asked to start painting in the last months of 2019 which meant that we didn’t have many painting days due to weather conditions. Eventually we were forced to postpone the painting until spring 2020. When spring came we rounded up the crew and resumed painting. One team leader was present for the first days and helped with gridding out the design and from then on the painting was left to The Hague painting crew. Using Whatsapp they sent us regular updates which worked perfectly. The painting was finished in the beginning of May 2020.
One of our main goals was to have this project run independently by our crew in The Hague and also to make sure that TSH paid them for their work in a way that would bring more long term rewards such as a fitness subscription, free study space at the hotel etc.
To make sure this reward matched the needs of our crew, we first sat down with two of our most outspoken painters, Salam and Sanaa, and the manager of TSH The Hague. For the design we chose to work with Ana Taratiel, an incredible Spanish artist who uses vibrant colours and bold design, something well suited to the large surfaces we were preparing to paint.
Although the project was considered a great success we did however learn a valuable lesson from this project; never use cheaper paint. Due to budget challenges we were unable to afford primer/undercoat nor the paint we would have ideally liked to have used. The result of which was that by the spring we could see some colours were already starting to fade. That being said, to witness how smooth the whole process was, thanks to the The Hague crew, was a reward in itself.
FLORENCE REVISITED - ACADEMY EVENT TO MARK THE LAUNCH OF A LOCAL TASK FORCE AND A LARGE-SCALE PUBLIC ARTWORK
FLORENCE REVISITED
ACADEMY EVENT TO MARK THE LAUNCH OF A PAINT TASK FORCE AND A LARGE-SCALE PUBLIC ARTWORK
At their 2018 opening, The Student Hotel in Florence invited United Painting to create an artwork in cooperation with the local community and newcomers. Creating art together forged a bond between the local and migrant youths, proving their eagerness to be part of – and contribute to their hometown, changing public perceptions.
About a year later, United Painting returned to Florence to create a visual intervention and organise a seminar hosted by The Student Hotel to mark the launch of a large-scale local public artwork. We invited relevant stakeholders to be part of this game changing movement which is vital for an inclusive community in Florence. We compiled a list of their ideas and discussed them during the seminar, in order to create a solid task force that can work on inclusivity projects in Florence and perhaps beyond.
So far, this taskforce has been able to set up a painting project with the University of Florence (click here to read more) and a project to paint a main square in a working class-neighborhood in Florence together with local residents. Alongside this we are still planning to create a huge public artwork in the centre of Florence.
As we always feel like painting something, we decided to paint another part of the courtyard of the Student Hotel, where the event was hosted. For the design we collaborated with Marije Lytske Hester, a young and ambitious designer from the Netherlands who specialises in patterns and insane colour combinations!
LOCAL TAP-TAP BUSES BECOME INSPIRATION FOR THE TRANSFORMATION OF HILLSIDE COMMUNITY VILLA ROSA IN PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAÏTI
HAITI PAINTING
LOCAL TAP-TAP BUSES BECOME INSPIRATION FOR THE TRANSFORMATION OF HILLSIDE COMMUNITY VILLA ROSA IN PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAÏTI
In 2015, Favela Painting was invited by Cordaid (Dutch NGO) to organise a painting project in Port-au-Prince. They visited many locations in the city before deciding on a hillside community called Vila Rosa to start the work. Vila Rosa is very centrally located in Port-au-Prince and was heavily hit by the earthquake of 2010. Many houses have since then been rebuilt but most are unfinished with the raw brick left exposed.
They invited local artists to participate in a workshop through which the design concept was established inspired by the elaborately painted Tap-Tap buses that are ubiquitous in Haiti.
A separate workshop was organised with the house owners to determine the color palette for the area’s transformation. A design was created for each individual house, which was then discussed with the owner and often adjusted to fit his/her taste, keeping in mind that the overall design should create a unified effect, connecting the houses with color. The team of local painters would execute the painting using the instructions by Favela Painting.
A team of 20 local masons plastered 15 houses after which they were painted by a team of 10 painters, including 2 women. Inspired by the Tap-Tap buses the design follows the architectural elements of the buildings with outlines of bold and typically Haitian colours. During the execution of the project Favela Painting encountered many problems in the area which needed to be addressed. They started by repairing stairs which were extremely worn and dangerous to walk on. Small open/public spaces, water drainage channel and retaining walls are also being reconstructed. All the work is done by residents of the neighbourhood.
Filmmakers, Romel Jean Pierre and Jon Kaufman were invited to train a local broadcasting team, called Tap-Tap TV, to report on the project.
Haiti painting received support by the Stimuleringsfonds in 2015. Cordaid left the project early 2016 after which we continued, collaborating with a local Haitian organisation, Cocread Haiti.
PRAÇA CANTÂO - HUGE COMMUNITY ARTWORK IN THE FAVELA'S OF RIO, AIMED TO IGNITE PERSONAL AND SOCIETAL CHANGE
PRAÇA CANTÂO
HUGE COMMUNITY ARTWORK IN THE FAVELA'S OF RIO, AIMED TO IGNITE PERSONAL AND SOCIETAL CHANGE
The third Favela Painting project took place in Zona Sul (South zone). Here the favelas are built on the steep mountains in the central area of the city. A sharp contrast between formal and informal. The location was Praça Cantão in a neighbourhood called Santa Marta. The location consists of houses built around a public space with a circle drawn into the concrete, in the middle.
The project required a simple design as it involved painting over 34 houses, covering an area of 7000 square metres and a limited amount of time. Favela Painting created a design based on a color circle fanning out its colours from the centre of the square, covering the buildings in bright contrasting rays. The coloured lines run diagonally across the buildings, accentuating their organic positioning.
The project involved training the local youths in painting and employed 25 locals to realize its completion within a month. The main objective was to create a huge piece of community art that serves as a catalyst for the improvement of housing and neighbourhoods. By empowering and bringing colour and joy to these people, we hoped to ignite personal and societal change on all levels.
