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| Mars in Newtown |
Past Experiences has been doing Graffiti tours for a few
years now and my passion for graffiti has really grown (so much so, that I am
now doing my Masters on Graffiti in Jozi). I realise that some people are anti-graffiti,
but I think that graffiti adds so much to an area: colour, interest, creativity
and art. For most, art is unfortunately a luxury, not a necessity, and I think
that this is really true in the Inner City. Many people earn so little, they
live in inadequate housing and basically life is incredibly difficult..no time
for art when you are just trying to feed your kids. Although graffiti (and
street art and public art) might not do anything to alleviate these situations,
they do bring something to Inner City communities: colour and art (particularly
Inner City kids). I also appreciate that graffiti artists interact (more than
most) with marginalised communities and difficult areas, as this is often where
graffiti can be found. And on its most simple…graffiti looks awesome.
The warmth and support of many of the graffiti artists
towards the tours has been great and we really try to make our tours benefit
them where possible.
We were suuuper lucky to have one of Jozi’s most talented
graffiti artists Mars join us on a tour a few weeks ago. The tour focused on the
graffiti in Newtown and it was really awesome to have the insiders’ view of
what it is like to be a graffiti artist, info on the graffiti culture in Joburg…and
so much more. Mars made us all think about graffiti in a different way, how in
many ways it can be seen as a dialogue, between different writers, communicating
through the walls of the city.
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| Mars explaining his work to some of his young fans |
I also think it’s really cool, how Graffiti tours draw a
crowd of people from many walks of life, different backgrounds and ages. We had
parents, kids, teenagers and young professionals on the tour- all united by an
interest and open mindedness for graffiti.
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| The message says it all |
We got some rave reviews for this tour..and we hope to do
many more similar experiences and tours with local artists in the future. If
anyone is interested just drop us an email and we can definitely organise you
something similar.
