PeaceJam | Creative Graffiti

Creative Graffiti

Breaking the Cycle of Violence

Affiliate:	Great Lakes

Club:	The Greenspire School

Location:	Traverse City, Michigan, United States

Created:	6/3/2012

Last Update:	7/16/2012

Project Goal: The goal of our project is to clean up the inappropriate graffiti on the old buildins around our school community and create a space where the creative graffiti can be expressed. Root Cause: The root cause of the graffiti is that the buildings around our school are not being lived in or worked in. They look like they are abandoned, so people don't respect that they are part of a community restoration project and that we go to school here. Some of the graffiti is really creative and artistic, but it is on buildings that are being restored, so it has to be cleaned off. A lot of the graffiti is just rude and inappropriate. Project Plan: Our plan is to talk to the owners of the property and ask if we can help designate a space that can be used for truly artistic graffiti that is not offensive. Next we will create a message to the public that asks for their help in keeping the walls of the buildings to be restored clean and lets them know that if they want to create graffiti that will not be washed off, there is a place to do that. Then we want to have a community event to unveil the designated space (which is going to be a huge unused water cistern). We will also continue to monitor the graffiti and clean it off if it is not in the designated space or if it is rude.

• What specific problem does this project address? • What research was done for this project? • How was this project decided upon? • How will this project remain ongoing? • How is this project going to make a difference?