Taller a Vista Alegre — a street-art and graffiti workshop in Castelldefels

This weekend we ran an urban art and graffiti workshop in the Vista Alegre neighbourhood of Castelldefels. The sessions were made possible thanks to the support of Castelldefels Town Council through the Pla de Barris programme, and culminated in a community mural on the wall of the former Vista Alegre school. This workshop was notable for the collaboration of the Castelldefels Centre for Mediation and Civic Coexistence, which brought in two young people from its alternative measures programme to join the team of educators and graffiti artists running the training and the community mural. A group of trainee mediators from the Master’s in Professional Mediation at Pompeu Fabra University also took part.

The weekend began on Saturday morning with a theoretical talk on the origins of the graffiti movement, current references and new trends within urban art, along with a reflection on good practice when carrying out artistic action in public space. This was followed by a group exercise to capture the elements that define the Vista Alegre neighbourhood, and to think about how to represent them on the wall. Ideas that came up included the neighbourhood’s distinctive location — part of a coastal town yet right up against the mountain; its generational make-up, with many older residents but also driven young people; and finally, the neighbourhood’s history of struggle. From these ideas came a collective sketch of what the mural would look like: one side would represent the sea and the other the mountain (cool colours and warm colours), a face would represent generational change, and finally a fist to show the neighbourhood’s lively, outspoken character.

On Sunday there was a lot of work left to complete the artwork, which, given the size of the wall, would be a large-scale mural. The more technical elements were done by urban artist Aram’rah, while the lettering, painted by residents, was done by two young local graffiti artists referred through the Mediation and Coexistence Centre. Residents, especially children and young people, responded enthusiastically to the activity, learning to paint with spray cans and spending time building neighbourhood ties through urban art.