Workshop on Graffiti and art in the public sphere, projected and realized by thegoodhand in collaboration with the Centro Terrotoriale Mammut. Naples, Italy.
The idea to do this workshop was not ours. In the last years we did several works in Naples, especially in the district of Scampia, in the northern periphery of the city (see thegoodhand.net). Most of this works where carried out with smaller children, but we also got to know their older siblings, a lot of them fascinated by Graffiti. Since this desire was expressed to us for several years we finally decided to realize a workshop on graffiti (but not exclusively).
“’n gopp ‘o mur’” means “on the wall” in Napolitan dialect (“sul muro” in Italian) but also “on top of the wall”. We chose this name for the workshop because we did not want to tell the kids, that it is going to be a Graffiti-workshop, but preferred to leave the possibility to decide what they are going to paint to them. So it is about everything you can imagine to paint “on the wall”.
For us the idea behind this workshop is to involve adolescents in the creative (re-)design of their neighborhood, and by doing so developing a sense for the possibilities of political intervention and social participation. On the other hand one of the main ideas was to try to overcome the borders and “walls” within napolitan society, to promoten social interaction beyond the limits of the neighborhoods and to use Graffiti as a method and perspective to discover the city.
Thats why we formed a group of participants coming from different parts of the northern periphery of Naples. More specifically from two different public-housing complexes within Scampia, “le vele” and the “7 palazzi”, which, although close to each other, are still profoundly divided due to the camorra-war of 2012 in which the to blocks were dominated by antagonistic clans.
Another component of the group comes from Piscinola, another district of the northern periphery which, urbanistically is totally different from Scampia. In contrast to the functionalist public-housing-complexes built in the 1970ies and 1980ies, in Piscinola the historic center of the former village with its tight pathways and piazzas has been preserved. Despitez their proximity there is little social interaction beyond the border between the two districts.
In the last two weeks we started to meet with the whole group to do sketches, talk about the history of Graffiti and art in the public-sphere, especially in Naples. Besides the sessions in a room in the cultural center GRIDAS we also did some excursions within the neighborhood of Scampia to discover the pieces of Graffiti and other kinds of paintings on walls done by local writers, artists and political activists. To discover other parts of the metropolitan area we started to do excursions in smaller groups:
Melito
Leaving Naples on its northern edges does not at all mean leaving the urban area. The city continues beyond its administrative limits. One of the towns that border Scampia is Melito. On a sunny saturday afternoon we went to Melito to meet the local writer Gola and paint a wall with him inside a run-down sports facility where the kids of the neighborhood spend their free time.
Pozzuoli
Pozzuoli is a town on the western border of Naples, with a quite active graffiti-scene. So what could be better than spending a sunny sunday afternoon in Pozzuoli, meet local writers and paint a wall in the cumana trainstation.
Piscinola
The “Villa Comunale”, main public park of Piscinola is used by its inhabitants to spend some time outside the bussy traffic, to make children play to take a walk with the dog, ecc. It is surrounded by a run-down concrete wall. So we decided to go there with the whole group to add some colour to the grey. Soon other local kids joined us to see what was happening and to try to use the spraycan themselves.
For more information about the project visit www.thegoodhand.net page.