Graffiti artists don’t normally get invited in for coffee when they visit the suburbs, but Fin DAC isn’t your average spray can vandal and Altos de Cazucá is light years from the Daily Mail reading home counties.
Like other famous pioneers of the graffiti scene, Banksy, Os Gemelos and Shepard Fairey, Fin DAC knows a thing or two about being on the back end of a bad reputation, and working hard to change peoples’ misplaced perceptions. It’s one of the reasons he hit it off instantly with Colombia.
Much maligned and with a point to prove, Fin and the neglected kids of Altos de Cazucá seemed like a match made in spray can heaven. Teaming up with Tiempo de Juego, the brainchild of Andres Wiesner, the socially conscious online travel guide opened its mission to bring a little colour to Colombia’s most deprived barrios with an inspirational portrait of football player Radamel Falcao on the sporting foundation’s new headquarters.
FinDAC’s portraits are more than just graffiti; they are social statements and efforts to improve lives and urban aesthetics.
Wiesner, a TV producer who inspired his former employer Guillermo ‘Pirry’ Prieto, to push every Sunday for a “revolution of the small things,” now works with more than a 1,000 children in Cartagena and Bogotá to give them hope through his program of ‘football for peace.’
In Bogotá alone, his foundation inspires more than 700 children a week, urging them to dream of and work towards “a more optimistic reality” while helping reduce their exposure to the dangers of life in one of the Colombian capital’s most marginalised communities.
Colombia may be going through a healthy resurgence in tourism,drawing 1.6 million foreign visitors a year to the colonial charms of Cartagena, San Augustín or La Candelaria in Bogotá but the tourist dollars haven’t made it to Altos de Cazucá quite yet.
Described by Medicins Sans Frontieres as a “belt of misery and exclusion,” it suffers from the problems that plague too many of Colombia’s neglected barrios – gangs, drugs and violence.
During seven years working in Altos de Cazucá and Santa Rita, Cartagena, the foundation has become involved in other areas like the arts, baking and ‘voluntourism’ as it tries to create concrete job opportunities for the children graduating from its program.
“What better symbolizes the possibilities in this country than the phenomenal Radamel Falcao?” says Wiesner. “It doesn’t hurt for the children to dream of being Falcao, especially if it helps them escape the difficulties of life in Cazucá.”
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Taking a local view of tourism and accentuating the positive impact travel can have on local communities, the online guide thisiscartagena.com is pushing for its own “revolution of the small things.”
“Getting Fin involved was easy. He immediately identified with the project to bring some colour to the lives of 700 kids who don’t get many breaks in life,” says David Bushell, co-founder of This Is Cartagena. “Travel should leave more than just a dirty carbon footprint behind and we believe that individually we can all help make the world a better place. Being able to bring someone like Fin DAC to Bogotá and Cartagena and raise awareness about the great work by organisations like Tiempo de Juego is part of that mission.”
To the soundtrack of the aspiring local hip-hop artist Gabriel Castillo, one half of the rap duo Gitanoz, Fin and 20 of the foundation’s children armed with 30 cans of spray paint tore into Tiempo de Juego’s new HQ with inspirational results.
“El gringo sabe,” (‘the gringo knows what he’s doing!’) the locals uttered in approval as they offered him yet another tinto (small coffee) and their kids threw themselves into painting walls and anything else to hand – shoes, shirts, bags – with gusto.
“I got in to street art because it gave me something to live for,” says Fin. “I used it to drag myself up and make myself a better person. It if worked for me, it can work for others too.” To prove that inspiration doesn’t have to be a one-way street, Fin admits to having his eyes opened by his holiday in Bogotá.
“Everyone tells you how dangerous Colombia is but it’s only when you feel first hand the generosity of its people that you can appreciate how misunderstood this country really is,” he says. “They celebrate life in a way that will always stay with me.”
But it’s not just the good memories that he took back with him to the UK as a souvenir. Like many who visit Colombia he’s been converted into an ambassador for the country’s unique charms. Armed with his spray cans, Fin discovered a very special way of exporting Colombian happiness to the rest of the world.
Smuggling the faces of a handful of lucky Colombians back to his studio in southeast London they will very soon be immortalized in new works, carved carefully into his larger than life-sized stencils and painted three metres high on the walls of Paris, Rome and Amsterdam.
For more information on Cartagena, check out: www.thisiscartagena.com
