LATA 65 GRAFFITI GRANNIES TO NUART

LATA 65 – Young at Art, the worlds leading street art project for seniors lands in Aberdeen. Over 65? Sign up now !

 

 

As part of this years festival we team up with Portuguese curator Lara Seixo Rodrigues to present a series of workshops aimed at the over 65’s. Lara is the founder of the world renowned LATA 65 project. A unique groundbreaking street art project for seniors that has been emulated the world over.

 

Lara is also the curator for Wool Street Art Festival, a Portugese street art festival established in 2011 and a long time friend of the Nuart Family.

 

 

Inspired by Lara’s LATA65 project, Nuart have been running a seniors program for several  years now, the project has been hugely popular. Like Lara, we noticed the audience for Street Art was much broader than was being publicised, we noticed a lot of pensioners were joining street art tours and attending openings and wondered if Lara’s project and philosophy would transcend borders, and of course it did.  We’ve since had participants aged between 80 and 100 years join the workshops and in 2018 toured  the regions old peoples homes.

At the core of Nuart is a desire to see our city walls hosting ground breaking street art but also to see our communities engaged as active participants and creators, not just passive observers. Through her own work in Lisbon, Lara discovered there was a much more diverse and wide ranging group of citizens appreciating street art  and decided to offer them the same opportunities normally reserved for younger participants. The result is the ‘LATA 65′ project and series of workshops – Young at Art.

 

 

Graffiti and street art have both often served to deepen the rift of misunderstanding between young and old, LATA 65 works to destroy old stereotypes and turn senior citizens into genuine street artists by providing them with spray  cans, masks and gloves and hands on tutorials before finding them free spots in the city to tag up and paint!

 

 

Lara says: “My favourite thing about doing LATA 65 is watching the huge transformation that each senior goes through. It’s always amazing having the possibility, of just after a few small challenges, watching the elderly group just like any bunch of kids having fun in front of a wall, where there’s no pain, no traumas, and without any definition of what is right or wrong for a person of their age.”

 

The workshop comes with a tongue in cheek warning for seniors,  “It’s best,” says Seixo Rodrigues, “to use a nickname when you write on the walls, just so the police don’t find you afterwards”

 

Application forms for LATA 65 – Young at Art can be picked up, filled in and posted into an application box from a pick-up point near the food court area on the Upper Mall of the Bon Accord Centre. Electronic versions can be requested by emailing apply@aberdeeninspired.com

 

The deadline for all applications is 29 March 2019. Participants will be selected at random and notified by 2 April 2019.

 

 

Lata65 founder Lara Seixo Rodrigues will also be participating in a Q&A after the screening of a short documentary on Saturday afternoon at Belmont Cinema as part of the Nuart Plus series of events. Check back soon for program details.

 

 

Lata65