On last Tuesday 26 of July, and as part of the international initiative “Mainstreaming Media Literacy and Thinking Competence in Youth Work”, the FCV team, with the help of the street artist Reos, organized the cultural intervention in the public space ‘Don’t be fooled’ and the painting of a collective graffiti on the walls of the 3 Xemeneies square, in the district of PobleSec, in Barcelona.

The aim of the activity was to promote situations of exchange and cooperation, to let people express themselves through an artistic method, while bringing awareness against the influence and manipulation from the media. 

The way to encourage people to join us was using social media, precisely, and on the spot that same day, inviting the passers-by to paint with us, being also the opportunity to speak with them about that intervention, and create a debate on big topics like media propaganda and media literacy. 

Reos shared his techniques and let everybody participate in the realization of the painting. In the afternoon, Akbar joined us to improvise rap songs in English (with some Spanish, French and Dutch) and encourage people to participate, and Marcin joined us to keep the energy of the event with improvised songs in Spanish (and some Catalan). 

Little by little the people around the square came to participate and, at the end, a little crew organized itself around the wall. Young individuals were either painting, singing, writing with chalks on the floor, communicating, creating connections or, simply, observing the creative process. The last step of the wall was to add the “punch-line” to provoke people’s thoughts. With the opinion of the individuals present at that moment we choose the hashtag “#enjoyyourfreedom”, sarcasm to highlight the manipulation we suffer from the medias.

The activity was a success on many points: more than 30 persons, kids and adults, participated in the intervention and in painting the mural; that will serve to bring awareness around the topic to everybody who passes by such a crowded square; we also created links with new people and other organizations, looking forward creating other local initiatives with them.

We would like to thank all the participants of this activity: Reos, who did the job of imagining and leading the mural’s painting; Akbar and Marcin to share their inspiration, texts and voice, and to the Civic Center El Sortidor to support us with the technical equipment. 

It was a great pleasure to share this activity, and we are already thinking about the next activities of this type with the people we met on this day.

The activity took place with the support of the Erasmus + program of the European Commission and the Barcelona City Council.