Graffiti Art Takes the Street Erasmus Project

Project Title

Graffiti Art Takes the Street

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Partnerships for Creativity

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy) ; Creativity and culture; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

Artists, particularly young ones, have generally struggled with finding paid work, and this lack of opportunities has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis as it has hit the cultural and creative sectors particularly hard. At the same time, within the wide spectrum of arts, street arts/graffiti has been a powerful conductor of social intervention/awareness, an extraordinary added value that’s not always duly recognized and awarded. However, despite highly attracting many youngsters and recently gaining some expanded venues with corporate work, it has not yet reached a general consensus/public acceptance, being still frowned upon by many people. And so, there is still a big lack of street and other public venues wherein to legally place this art despite this being its original context, because it is still misunderstood by the authorities and property owners in general.
In this context, the organisations involved wanted to create opportunities to enhance young graffiti artists self-sufficiency, and emphasize their power to convey important messages about global issues, such as environment/climate change and youth participation, being these two subjects a great source of concern in societies all around.
Within this context of issues for young artists today, GATS aims at having them make street art and graffiti (for simplicity, “graffiti” only will be used for the rest of the application) art pieces in publicly accessible ways. Which will provide them an opportunity to work, reaching a wide audience of people appreciating their art, without even having to go to enclosed locations, while openly promoting the aforementioned social messages. And, at the same time further promote and legitimate this form of art, with the production of a short-film, focusing on its social, artistic and cultural added value and on breaking myths around it. Thus, it’s objectives are:
Obj.1 – Create opportunities for young artists to display their art while also promoting their own activist goals
Obj.2 – Equip young artists with more developed skills, and increased audience and network
Obj.3 – Deliver products that contribute to the legitimation of graffiti
Obj.4 – Prompt young people to become more active and participate in social causes, with a focus on environmental and climate change.
GATS main target-group are young graffiti artists, and the hope is to meet their needs for more overall work opportunities; more venues available to broadcast their messages; skills development in terms of networking, marketing, entrepreneurship, etc., directed at enhancing their overall employability and self-sufficiency; higher acceptance/legitimisation of their art form, as it still remains perceived by many as illegal and harmful, and not “art”.
In addition, through the messages about climate change and youth participation, other young people are also targeted, the intention being that the messages from the art pieces will move more youth to become more active about those causes or others close to them.
As such, the expected results are:
– 20 young graffiti artists with more developed professional skills and enlarged audience and network of contacts
– messages about environment and youth participation/activism promoted and disseminated among over 40,000 people (total expected foot traffic in the venues in a year)
– enhancement of the graffiti public image and legitimacy as an art form, through the advocating potential of the art pieces delivered and the short-film
The envisioned GATS impacts, from short to long-term, are an advancement in the acknowledgment of graffiti as a legitimate art form, able to connect and promote social intervention, by raising awareness about local and global issues. Which in turn has a great potential to mobilise youth to be more active, in terms of citizenship, as graffiti is a powerful vehicle of communication that usually resonates very well among them. While developing skills in young artists, can boost this field and its employability and self-sufficiency, opening more doors for it to happen in public spaces, and other venues.
As a spin-off effect, we believe that the graffiti locations will benefit from the increased tourism revenue that can come from the participation/visibility in such an artistic (transnational) venture, a clear result from the dissemination of the project.
Lastly, GATS strongly entails the potential to not only benefit individuals and broadcast important messages, but also to contribute to an art field that is sometimes remiss of its own place of origin. Graffiti has been used in its history to broadcast numerous public opinions, and as the political regimes across Europe have changed and the generations have grown it exposes and testifies to the changing culture. This project would, in its own way, make a small contribution to an important part of Europe’s culture.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 108034 Eur

Project Coordinator

Embaixada da Juventude & Country: PT

Project Partners

• UDRUZENJE GRADJANA BUM
• Eco Logic
• uniT GmbH