Cores de Belém (Colors of Belém)
Because of its use of graffiti as a technique to integrate street and gang youth into the life of the city, Cores de Belém is one of the most creative government programs anywhere. The project is broken into two parts:
- Transforming boys’ lives through graffiti and art
- “Subverting bourgeois hegemony” by integrating marginal arts into the life of the city.
Cores began with a research project. Everyone knew that graffiti covered every wall in the city, but no one knew why. Researchers found that graffiti artists saw their scribbles as a struggle for the control of public space, a symbol to remind the city that they existed. Their nascent political conscience was expressed through vandalizing the city.
The French Philosopher Roland Bartes inspires the program’s ideas. He wrote, “We want texts that don’t just decipher symbols, but something that produces meaning and multiplies language. The text is an anagram of the body.” Cores saw that the writing of the graffiti artists wasn’t about interpreting the world, but about making new meanings and forcing society to recognize their existence. The problem was that graffiti wasn’t doing what these young men wanted it to do -- it only contributed to their exclusion from society.
At the end of the 1990s, a graduate student at the Federal University of Pará began to work with graffiti artists in the favela of Terra Firme. His work inspired the creation of a graffiti collective, which he then trained in art and in politics. Instead of scribbling on the walls, this collective began to do careful and powerful political art. Cores took this experience as a model and turned the young artists into its first educators.
Today, there are ten graffiti collectives in various Belém favelas. The Education Department trains them in art and teaches them about politics, while the city provides space for graffiti murals -- the city is now full of bright art on city walls. These groups have also prepared several young men to become leaders in their communities.
Cores found that schools are always a contested space for graffiti. Because many poor children see the school as a place that oppresses and excludes them, they try to take over the space with graffiti. Cores promotes graffiti murals in the schools and works with teachers to make schools juster and more inclusive. The program does the same with government buildings, where graffiti artists can come to learn and to paint.
Cores de Belém
Secretaria Municipal de Educação, Coordinação de Esporte, Arte, e Lazer
Avenida Almirante Barroso 2174
Marco, Belém, PA 66060 230
91 276 3493
Contacto: Fátima Monteiro (“Macapá”), macaesport@bol.com.br
