Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn, are two artists whose original plan was to go to the community of Vila Cruzeiro and create a documentary of what life was like to live in the Favelas in Rio. The Favelas, is an area where there is a lot of poverty, crime and drug wars. Towards the end of their trip, an idea struck them to paint the unfinished houses and give them life. They came up with a design and found a building in the center of town to be the focal point. They gathered some locals to help them and they began their project. They painted this building bright blue with a little boy flying a kite. This painting caught the attention of the local news and soon went viral. Seeing that they were able to bring a community together with a mural on the side of a building, inspired them to keep going. They were invited to North Philly, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the US. They gathered a group of people, taught them how to paint, simplified their ideas and together they all transformed their town from run down buildings to beautiful works of art. As their projects started growing, they ran into the problem with funding. How were they going to pay for all of supplies? They started a, “crowdfunding campaign… 1,500 people put together and donated over 100,000 dollars.” This allowed them to continue transforming these poverty cities into beautiful murals. They were able to give these people who helped painting their cities a purpose.
The power in their painting did more than just create a more visually pleasing environment. It gave inspiration to the people in those communities. Raising the spirit of people living in poverty is motivating. Getting the community involved sparks them to continue to do things to make their lives better, to fight against the crime and other issues that drag them down. This project gave them hope for a better future and helped them see their talents and abilities.
I agree with the strengths that you mentioned about art in this form. I also picked this TED Talk and so I understand some of the points you made. I also included this similar detail about how this act transformed the attitude of these neighborhoods into something great. I like the detail you included about how this project “sparks them to continue to do things to make their lives better.” I did not think much about the future effects of this project. Some of the limits to this art that I mentioned in my post were time and funding. Initially they did not have a lot of funding because they could not answer a lot of questions about the project, since it was so spontaneous. They also seemed to run out of time because they did not anticipate the projects taking this long. This caused them to rethink some aspects of the paintings. Overall, I agree with the points you made in this post and I had a lot of the same ones.
I like how you go into detail about how they started their project. I picked this Ted Talk as well. I also found their story very interesting and thought that it was great cause. I really like how you went into a lot of detail about the project and how it is going to change peoples lives in the future for the better. I was amazed with all the support that they got from the community to get all those supplies and raise all that money. I thought that you made a lot of good points and that you did a good job explaining the article.