A forty meter long concrete wall in Meppel will be taken care of this week by students of Cibap in Zwolle. Flower drawings flourish on the gray screen and should bring some color to the city. “It’s a blast for three days,” says Maureen Overbeek, teacher of the Specialist Painting course. Everything must be finished tomorrow.
The design of the paintings comes from Lonneke van Zutphen and Jacqueline Philipsen of the Wall Art Meppel foundation, the creative brain behind the project. “We were founded for all ugly walls and spots that deserve some extra color and there are quite a few,” says Jacqueline Philipsen of the foundation.
The idea arose after a mishap with illegal tags and graffiti in the city. Instead of reporting the perpetrators, the organization talked to them. “It turned out that there was actually a lot of sadness and misery on the wall,” says Philipsen. “Then we said to each other: sand over it, but help us to make the wall very cool now.”
She invited a well-known street artist to the young people and the project left her wanting more. “If you can motivate young people in this way not to put their sadness on walls in that way, but to make something beautiful out of it together, then the world will be a bit more beautiful.”
In the absence of great artists, the students of Cibap’s painting training are helping the foundation this week. Second- and third-year students can immediately taste a professional assignment during their first days of the new school year. “I think it’s exciting, because I’ve never had a project like this before,” says student Anna Zwemp. “I make paintings in different sizes myself, but this is a bit larger than I normally do.”
Watch the video to see how that will look