The Third of September 2016 Street-Art Workshop

The Street Art Workshop

The third of September 2016 was probably this summer’s most beautiful day in Umea, northern Sweden, which did contribute to the success of the event. With forty attendants and cooperation from several organizations, we consider the event successful. It was challenging to get every single piece of it working, but at the end it forged friendships and contributed to integration efforts. The weather was exceptionally good, with +24 degrees Celsius it was one of the most beautiful summer days, though the summer had formally ended a week before.

From the perspective of our movement, sustainability is not only a matter of our species having a balanced relationship with the biosphere, but also that human communities should aspire to an active civic spirit and to the democratic control of the means of their sustenance. To achieve that, an active and activated citizenry is necessary. Moreover, if several groups share the same living space without interaction, there will be a heightened risk for misunderstandings and even conflicts.

During 2015, over a hundred thousand refugees arrived in Sweden, a country with a little less than ten million inhabitants. This has strained the government’s ability to both register, accommodate and help to integrate these refugees, since nothing like that has been experienced at least since the Finnish Winter War of 1939-1940.

While we have limited ability to help, and do not as an organisation try to advocate wholesale political positions on said issue, we believe that the EOS has a duty to aid integration efforts and to foment spaces where positive integration can be possible.

This is why we have launched the Umea Ecolab Project locally, with the goal of helping create a youth centre focusing on providing the opportunity for youths from divergent backgrounds to meet, form projects and create together. The centre aspires to contain 3D printers, media production equipment and computer systems, allowing youths in particular and people in general to master the latest technology from the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The Street Art-workshop was the first step on the winding road towards realising this dream.

We want to thank our partners at:

JAQ Studios

Studiefrämjandet

Kulturkraft

Texoferr, Steel & Construction