Our colleague Gürkay Kayacan, social counsellor of a residential group at the European Vocational Training Centre, has just exhibited the first works of the new graffiti project on which he has been working for several weeks with pre-vocational training participants - a project that is supported both by the Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, Malu Dreyer, and by the Police Inspectorate of Bitburg.

But how did this rather unusual project come about? It all began with the participants of boarding house 4 being asked for suggestions for leisure activities, which showed that they would like to spice up the bistro in the leisure house. One idea was to use art in order to give a wall of the bistro a new shine. At that time the “UrbanArt Biennale” took place at the World Cultural Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte, which gave an overview of the UrbanArt scene all over the world. After visiting this exhibition it was clear that this was exactly the kind of art that the participants wanted to apply to the wall in the bistro.

However, before the first practical work was started in the project, an employee of the Bitburg Police Inspectorate visited our participants and informed them about illegal graffiti and preventive measures and distributed flyers. Extremely impressed by the project, Christian Hamm, head of the Bitburg Police Inspection, then commissioned the group to design a wall of the Bitburg police area. On Thursday, February 13th, 2020, our project participants discussed a first conception of the wall design at the Bitburg Police Inspectorate. Many thanks to the Bitburg Police Inspectorate for their support, which is both preventive and creative!

Motivated by these two art commissions, the four participants Nico H., Lisa-Marie K., Aaron P. and Ilka S. now meet once a week together with Gürkay Kayacan to learn step by step the art of graffiti. First they were introduced to the color theory according to Itten, before they entered the stencil technique. Practical support was provided by two graffiti artists from CiterArt, who held a workshop on the general use of the spray can. Many thanks again to CiterArt for the great help!

Today these first stencil graffiti were exhibited as an interim presentation in the conference area of the Euro-BBW. Our project participants would be pleased if many participants and employees came to see their works of art.

The next project unit is graffiti freehanding. As soon as our participants also master this technique, they will get down to work and start designing the wall of the bistro with the chosen theme "Animal kingdom and nature". At this point it can be revealed that the finished work of art will be officially inaugurated in the bistro together with a hip-hop party afterwards. As a next unit, they will tackle the practical design of the wall of the police inspection.

By the way, the Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate, Malu Dreyer, has financially supported the graffiti project with a generous donation. The European Vocational Training Centre would like to thank once again for this donation, which was used to purchase the expensive materials such as sketchbooks, foils, breathing masks, stretcher frames or paints.