Street Art with a social impact.
Important announcements and more cool stuff, in your 1st-of-the-month newsletter.
Ciao,
How are you? Can you believe we're already in the midst of spring? I've had a busy April myself, having just returned from a fantastic trip to Naples with an Italo-American reader of this newsletter.
My traveling companion is a PhD student researching street art and its social impact. We spent three days exploring Naples and discovering the city's socially driven urban art projects.
That’s part of the reason why I picked Naples for this research, as the city boasts the highest concentration of socially driven murals in Italy. These urban art projects aim to involve marginalised individuals and communities, as opposed to being produced solely for the purpose of “urban regeneration” -a term, and a concept, I personally dislike, as it’s often the prelude to gentrification.
Additionally, in Naples we had the opportunity to connect with researchers at Italy's Urban Creativity Monitoring Centre (INWARD - Osservatorio Nazionale sulla Creatività Urbana), which is based there. It was a fantastic chance to exchange ideas and gain a deeper understanding of this research on the social impact of street art.
I plan to write an article about our trip to Naples soon, though my schedule is quite busy over the next couple of months (more on that later).
So, in the meantime, I wanted to share a sneak peek of our journey with you in this month's newsletter. You can even check out the google map we used for our trip, which includes a variety of off-the-beaten-path spots and some fantastic pizzerias from my previous trips to Naples. (as always, the link to all google maps is in the footer of each newsletter).
Grab a cup of your favorite beverage (that would be coffee, if you want to stay on topic), and let’s discover Naples’ murals with a social impact.
Street Art with a social impact in Naples, Italy.
The first impressive fact about Naples’ street art scene is that it originated at the hands of worldwide pioneers of the movement such as Ernest-Pignon-Ernest, Blek Le Rat and Banksy. None of them is Italian: a detail that has set Naples’ street art on its own route early on.
Another characteristic of the city is its social fabric. Without going into details nor indulging in stereotypes, it’s a challenging city where social workers and educators are never enough.
Our research started with the Assafà Project. Curated by INWARD, the project brought together NGOs and street artists to create murals that highlight social values.
Through workshops with the local community, 23 murals were created between 2018 and 2019. I'll be sharing more about them on the blog soon, but for now, I want to show you my two favorites:
Millo, “La Sensibilità” (Sensitivity)
In the north-western outskirts of Naples, we visited a neighbourhood known as Pianura, where we met educators from the local NGO (Volontari Flegrei per l’Ambiente) who had gone through a very tough time, with a kid being shot to death just a week prior to our visit.
Back in 2018, these local heroes worked with the children of the neighbourhood on themes such as harmony, cohesion, understanding, contact, listening, and senses. Through several workshops, the children had even created a zen garden inside their school, symbolising a new way of life for their neighbourhood: one built upon small acts of kindness and by tuning into their innermost and primal senses.
Millo’s exceptional sensitivity made him perfect for the job. He painted a giant female figure, with an open cage as her torso, symbolising that emotions and impulses are free to come and go. This powerful mural urges us to remain true to our humanity and to let our emotions spread, no matter the cages that society, or we ourselves, construct.
Rosk&Loste, “Pulcinella ‘e mille culur” (Multicoloured Pulcinella)
Rosk&Loste, a street art duo from Sicily, brought the theme of "Inclusion" to life through a mural in the heart of Naples' multicultural neighbourhood.
Educators from the "Obiettivo Napoli" association led children in developing relationships based on cultural exchange instead of exclusion.
The local children learned about various cultures from around the world by exploring their music, dance, and crafts. They then collaborated with Rosk&Loste to create a mural of an African child, a regular attendee of the association, wearing the iconic Pulcinella mask, symbolising Naples.
Although I'm eager to share more about the Assafà Project with you, I won't be able to update the blog for the next few months. (don’t worry, though, I always make time for writing this newsletter).
Let me tell you why…
Festival Participations
Following my trip to Naples, I began working as the social media manager and content creator for CVTà Street Fest, the festival founded by Italian street artist Alice Pasquini in 2016.
In the article below, I reveal who are the artists painting at the 8th edition of festival:
Right after CVTà Street Fest, I’ll fly to Scotland for the annual appointment with Nuart Aberdeen festival, the spin-off of the world-leading street art festival Nuart.
As always, I’m media partner of the festival, so you can enjoy plenty of fresh content from Aberdeen on my Instagram from June 8th to 11th (and more in-depth content after that, both on the blog and here in your inbox).
For now, I wrote a quick article to introduce this year’s festival theme, Rewilding, and the artist line-up:
“In the 1970s, Guerrilla Gardening emerged as a form of urban rebellion in New York City. Its seed bombs landed in areas where gardeners had no legal right to plant and grow plants, reclaiming common spaces.
Similarly, street art has flourished as an unsanctioned and rebellious art form in the uncurated corners of our cities.
Both street art and weeds thrive in unregulated and unpredictable spaces, and this awareness has driven Martyn Reed since he founded the Nuart Festival in 2000 to promote street art by giving it the freedom and space to flourish.”
The novelty, this year, is that I’m speaking at Nuart Plus, the world’s leading street art symposium!
Nuart Plus is my favorite part of the festival, as I’ve mentioned several times in my previous dispatches from Nuart and Nuart Aberdeen. It’s where scholars, curators, artists, key thinkers, and independent researchers come together to discuss and debate the state of street art. It’s an honour and a bit nerve-wracking to share the stage with such street art experts!
That’s all for now, let me know where you are heading this spring by replying to this email (or in the comments section on Substack).
Until next month,
Giulia
ps. Before all that, I’ll be in Bologna in May to attend the Alumni Reunion of my graduate program; hit me up if you wanna meet in Bologna for a beer ;)
Updated!
Our three-day research trip in Naples was also the occasion to update the article on my favorite pizzerias in Naples!
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Handpicked by yours truly
Gonzalo Borondo inaugurated an amazing show in Reggio Emilia, Italy, organised by the art gallery SpazioC21. Think Borondo experimenting with photography to reconstruct the ideas of memory and identity, and then turning the whole thing into an installation.
Aryz inaugurated an exhibition at the Reial Cercle Artistic in Barcelona, Spain. The title of the show, Vestigio, refers to the many hints to different eras of art history that the artist has hidden into his canvases, as a tribute to the generations of artists before him.
A cool piece by my friend Vlek on the duel between unsanctioned street art and the art establishment:
Vlek’s opinion is evident, but now I want to hear yours: do you see graffiti and critical street art in conflict with the large-scale, commissioned murals?
If I see you are interested in this topic (= many of you taking part in the poll), I might write the next newsletter about it!
I'm an urbanist, and did a research project a few years ago looking at street art's role in urban regeneration and whether it is an effective tool nowadays or whether is just 'artwash' (similar concept to 'greenwashing' in the environmental sphere). If you or the PhD student want to contact me I'm happy to share my findings, as I'm sure it touches on many common themes :)