Paint the town red, yellow and blue

‘Art for a change’ by Tricolor initiative aims to bring communities together by painting walls in different neighbourhoods.
Volunteers painting the wall in MylaporePhotos: Romani Agarwal
Volunteers painting the wall in MylaporePhotos: Romani Agarwal

‘Art for a change’ by Tricolor initiative aims to bring communities together by painting walls in different neighbourhoods. It began on Sunday with the public wall at Nageshwara Rao park in Mylapore; 20 more areas will soon have their walls painted.

CHENNAI: What does Mylapore remind you of? Hot filter kapi, colourful flowers, temples...the list goes on. But, what if you could bring them all together in one place — for a good cause?
The Chennai Tricolor initiative has come up with a community event — ‘Art for a Change’ where the public walls at different locations in the city, will be painted to strengthen the civic sense of citizens and to engage them in participatory activities in the community.

‘Mylaporeans’ and a few people from other parts of a city had a plan — to paint the public wall at Nageshwara Rao park. “This is phase one of the project and this is the first community wall painting event at Nageshwara Rao Park. There are limited platforms for the community to work together and we are happy to provide that,” says Mridulya, volunteer, Tricolor initiative.

With over 200 participants, the event, in association with city works, was guided by cartoonist Biswajit Balasubramanian. “We wanted everyone from the community to engage in this activity, so we went around giving away pamphlets and flyers — door to door. And it worked wonderfully!” he smiles.
Painting with alacrity since 7 am and  explaining curious onlookers about the project while also helping participants, Biswajit says, “I did the initial outline a day back and it’s being filled with colours by different people,” he says, pointing to the wall plastered with vibrant red, blue and yellow.

Krithika, a 10-year-old who had her hands dripping with paint, enthusiastically shares, “I painted two to three patches of the wall and I can’t wait to show it to my friends!” And this is the spirit of the community, opine the volunteers. “This is one of the ways to make people take ownership and contribute to a public space. We want more people coming up with such initiatives,” shares Santosh Subramanian, volunteer.

Tricolor initiative plans to build a 207-foot high national flag at Marina beach, which will be completely crowdfunded. “We will be doing a lot of participatory activities around that and this is one of them.
We have permission to paint walls in 20 other locations in the city and the next phase will unfold shortly,” says Mridulya proudy.

For details, visit their page Tricolor on FB

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The New Indian Express
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