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CULTURE

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on large urban walls, the diversity of styles and writing. And the joy of local residents, seeing their living and working en-vironments in a riot of youthful colour.

Public spaces are vital for city dwellers’ standard of living and sense of well-being. Visitors to the city also notice this un-consciously. How public space is designed - and by whom - makes all the difference. The Bolzano city council recognised this long ago, encouraging young people to express their colourful need for freedom and expression on a large scale.

Street art was placed at the service of the city's inhabitants, with the large-scale youth project MurArte and Breathe: the most recent project, in conjunction with the provincial admin-istration.

No more monotonous façades, ugly boundaries, dams, cycle path fences and factory walls. Strolling around Bolzano, you’ll see how contemporary urban art resists the anonymous grey through freely accessible street art. Youthful vibrance in search of expression - which elsewhere, and occasional-ly also in Bolzano, is often lived out anarchicaloccasional-ly or through vandalism - is redirected by the project into modern art. Not only are dour buildings transformed, but youthful creativity is channelled positively.

Riccardo Rizzo (vedi Rizzo in azione a sinistra) is something of an authority here. He was himself a Bolzano graffiti artist in his younger days, back when there were no legal possibilities to let off steam as an “aerosol junkie”. After formal education at an art-orientated high school, followed by art academy, he landed a professional role with the MurArte project. To-day, Riccardo manages and documents the project, and has done so since 2010, as part of his work for the non-profit association Volontarius. One of the association's core tasks is working with the socially excluded. The city council chose Volontarius as a partner for the project, thanks to its volun-teers’ and youth workers’ intimate knowledge of the Bolzano youth scene and the relationships they’ve built with young people. The MurArte concept arrived following the initiative by the Turin city council, who were hugely successful with it, inspiring other Italian cities to adopt MurArte projects over

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the years. So how does it work? Any young graffiti art-ist, from beginner to expert, can participate by filling out an online application form. Most are between 14 and 18 years old and either spray alone or with friends. When they apply, they request the size of the area they want to spray (from 2.5x2.5 m up to 5x2.5 m) and if their application is accepted, they are allocated a specific wall area and a time window of four months to com-plete their artwork. A permit from the city of Bolzano allows these young artists to identify themselves, in case residents or the police want to check they’re au-thorised (although this rarely happens these days).

There are no rules about style or colour, and only a

few about the content or the written and symbolic messages. They must not cause offense and not ad-vertise products nor serve propaganda purposes.

The city council acts as guarantor and most available walls are owned publicly or by participating partner companies, such as the railway. Demand is so high that walls are re-graffitied every few years!

MurArte also holds graffiti workshops and annual graffiti meetings in Bolzano, enabling young local artists to graffiti while tutored by renowned stars of the international scene. The 39c Graffiti Jam has been held since 2016, with the last one taking place in 2019.

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Social issues interwoven with art and youth culture.

Michela Vanzo, from the city council’s Office for Fam-ily, Women, Youth and Social Promotion told us “In terms of content, MurArte is about youth expression, but Bolzano's murals are also about a city's culture of remembrance and about honouring those who have served Bolzano. It’s also about coming to terms with the experiences of individual neighbourhoods - the city, lived by its inhabitants, who are also themselves questioned about their neighbourhood and its histo-ry in social projects”. So there is both the artistic free-dom in youth expression, through the long-standing MurArte initiative, alongside commissioned art by cel-ebrated street art professionals. The last two murals

in this sense were created in autumn 2021: a 90 m² portrait of Gino Pasqualotto, local ice hockey legend, captain of Hockey Club Bolzano and member of the Italian national team in the late 1970s. It’s the work of an artists' collective and very appropriately adorns the façade of the Bolzano Ice Wave. The second mural was inspired by Agitu Ideo Gudeta, a popular Bolzano goat breeder and entrepreneur, who fell vic-tim to a femicide just over a year ago. By Trentino

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visual designer Nadia Groff, it adorns the boundary wall of the Ada Negri school in Via Druso.

Almost exactly a year ago, the provincial council decided to extend this project, to add colour to building façades in other South Tyrolean cities, following the Bolzano model. Significantly, it’s called Breathe and aims to bring fresh air into the urban landscape during these pan-demic times: on public as well as private walls. Among those areas that have been hit particularly hard by the current crisis are both youth culture and art. The Breathe project combines both aspects and pro-motes the corresponding areas. Coordinated by the artists' organisa-tion Outbox, together with the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, six artists from the local and international scene work hand in hand with residents and local youth associations.

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Learning to see: Not every work lends itself to immediate understand-ing. This is as true of graffiti as it is of contemporary art in a museum.

We invite you to stop in front of the graffiti on your walks. Take a closer look at the individual works, the lettering that explores the bounds of fonts and letter art, the passion of these young artists for expression, with spray paints and very different styles.

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For those wanting to see the MurArte works in a half-day or day trip, a cycle tour is thoroughly recommended.

Here is the itinerary, geographically arranged from the north-east of the city behind the railway station (Bolzano's Piani-Rencio district), through the city centre to its most south-western corner (industrial zone and airport area), then back again via the Oltrisarco and Aslago districts:

- Via Macello

- Via Piani di Bolzano - Via Mayr Nusser (cycle way) - Via Trento (walkway Langer)

- Via Vintola (youth center and adjacent park) - Talvera (softball field)

- Via Lancia & via Grandi, Valbruna Steelworks - Ponte Palermo

(below the bridge, at the level of the cycle way and footpath) - Ponte Resia (cycle way in direction of via Similaun)

- Ecocenter Water Purification Plant - The Lungo Adige cycle way

(wall at the foot of the Alperia Tower, visible from the cycle way) - Viale Europa footbridge (crossroads with Via del Ronco) - Piazza don Bosco

- Via Buozzi

- Bolzano Sud Train Station (wall below the tracks) - Via Torricelli

- Via Loris Musy (railway underpass)

- Cycle way underpass at Via Maso della Pieve & Via Einstein - Via del Parco

(wall with a historical theme, by two school classes)

See also the photographic documentation on the website of the City of Bolzano

(www.comune.bolzano.it) and Volontarius (hiips://gruppovolontarius.it)

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Addio alle facciate monotone, alle odiose divisorie, ai tristi muretti, alle anonime recinzioni lungo le piste ciclabili e ai cupi capannoni industriali. Chiunque pas-seggi per Bolzano dovrebbe poter ammirare ciò che la città ha da offrire in termini di arte urbana contempo-ranea per scacciare il grigiore - arte non commerciale e, soprattutto, liberamente accessibile. La forza creati-va e l'energia tipicamente giocreati-vanile, che altrove - e oc-casionalmente anche a Bolzano- è spesso vista come espressione anarchica o è sfociata addirittura nel van-dalismo, è qui abilmente ricondotta ad arte moderna:

una riqualificazione dello spazio pubblico da un lato e un riconoscimento della creatività giovanile dall'altro.

L'Amministrazione comunale di Bolzano ha riconosciu-to presriconosciu-to questa potenzialità e ha incoraggiariconosciu-to la sce-na giovanile a esprimere liberamente il proprio bisogno di colore e di libertà su larga scala, mettendo l'arte di strada al servizio degli abitanti della città, prima con il grande progetto giovanile "MurArte" e - più recente-mente - insieme all'Amministrazione provinciale, con il progetto artistico "Breathe!".

Il Comune ha scelto come partner per l'implemen-tazione dell’iniziativa l'associazione no profit Volon-tarius, al fine di interagire direttamente con la scena giovanile di Bolzano. Riccardo Rizzo è responsabile del progetto dal 2010 (vedi a pag. 29). Il suo forma-to era già staforma-to importaforma-to a Bolzano in precedenza, seguendo l'esempio del Comune di Torino. I giovani writer, anche quelli con poca esperienza, possono comunicare il loro interesse a partecipare compi-lando un modulo di iscrizione (facilmente reperibile online). In caso di accettazione della domanda, verrà assegnato loro un determinato spazio murale da de-corare entro una finestra temporale di quattro mesi.

Uno specifico permesso della città di Bolzano per-mette a questi giovani di identificarsi se - al giorno