Chalk it up
BRIXTON - In Brixton, some community members don't express their feelings with anger, or with rage. They express them with chalk.
The pen is said to be mightier than the sword, but is chalk mightier than the crowbar?
Residents of Brixton say the answer is a resounding ‘Yes.’
Community members of this suburb livened up the wall surrounding the water tower on Barnes Road on 9 August with a temporary community art project. The impromptu graffitti and drawings were done in chalk, and residents wrote down why they loved their suburb.
“After a series of break-ins and thefts in the neighbourhood, people were feeling a little violated,” Birgitta Stone-Stone Johnson explained.
“I thought we could perhaps create an art event where people could express some of those feelings in a more positive forum.”
The idea had its origin on social network site Facebook in a conversation between Stone-Johnson, Ashley Heron and Ann Simmonds, and was unofficially endorsed by the Brixton Community Forum.
“We’ve invited people to think of something that has been taken and why it was meaningful to them, or to express why they love being part of the neighborhood,” Stone-Johnson explained.
“The idea is that sometimes we lose something, or it gets stolen. For example, my backup hard-drive was stolen and all my wedding and honeymoon photos were lost. But perhaps this way we can get people to look beyond the negative aspects of those losses and to create a new positive story.”
