A Just Place:
: Open Mural

A Place of Our Own: Open Mural: A participatory event where the students organise to paint a mural to tell the story of the Bodegem shelter and invite the residents to connect by imprinting their personal stories as a visual into a common wall.

We propose a mural installation in a ~26m² wall in Foyer Bodegem in participation with KU Leuven architecture students and residents at the homeless shelter. The purpose of this project is to provide students with a shared moment of collaboration with the residents, presenting our methodologies for community participation and providing mentorship on how to make acitivities accessible and engaging. Our ultimate aim is that through this process, the residents will feel empowered to participate and contribute towards the visual identity of their shelter.

Activities

Pre-engagement (Nov 3rd - 24th): This is the phase is meant to be in-house only where only the students and the residents get a chance to participate in an art session or workshop. We will facilitate one week of this sessions and enable students to propose ideas for facilitating the next week sessions, open to the neighbourhood.

Design (Nov 22nd - 26th): During this phase, we collect all inputs that were created during the pre-engagement phase and come up with a design to be painted on the wall.

Painting (Nov 27th - 28th): This will happen over two consecutive days open to both students and residents who would like to participate.

Objectives

To empower the residents narratives, and use the mural wall as relational object in architecture, where multitudes of backgrounds and experiences can meet and create collective memories through the various action possibilities instored in the dynamics of other bodies and artefact.