The sixth year of the street art festival Město=Galerie is in full swing. After Nymburk and Poděbrady, it will culminate from September 13 to 18, 2022 in Mladá Boleslav, where it will visit for the first time in history. Top artists focusing on graffiti and large-scale paintings from different corners of Europe will participate in the six-day event. The weekend warm up was a small sample. As part of it, for example, a unique interactive work of art was created in the city center. Of course, there was also an event in the Pluhárn, where visitors could take part in graffiti or parkour workshops, see a skateboard exhibition, attend a lecture on the history of street art and, at the end, take part in the announcement of the Mural Opencall – a call for young artists.

In September, for example, “Bates” from Denmark, “Fatheat” from Hungary or the trio Slider, Caparso and Rico from Germany will visit Mladá Boleslav. The domestic street art school will then be represented by Lukáš Kladívko, 3ILLA or Pauser, an artist recognized on the European scene. He already presented himself in Mladá Boleslav during the weekend warm-up, when he created a special interactive work in the city center in front of OC Bondy, in which graffiti and sculpture were connected with augmented reality. “This is a real image supplemented with digitally created elements, which visitors can only see through a special mobile application,” reveals Jakub Jandora, producer of the City=Galerie festival.

However, almost anyone can participate in the course of the festival. Already in June, workshops were held for clients of the Mladá Boleslav home for the elderly and young artists from the Mladá Boleslav ZUŠ. The plan is also to involve children from the Children’s Center of the Klaudián hospital, and there will also be a joint graffiti jam on the tangent, where the opportunity to create will be open to everyone. “Our festival is not only about meeting artists who inspire each other. Every year, we also try to attract hundreds of viewers from all generations and show them what street art entails and that it can certainly be beneficial for every city,” Jakub Jandora points out.

The main goal of the festival is to present street art as a modern artistic direction, to reach the public across all generations and to motivate them to new ideas on how to improve public space in a positive way. “We agreed with the producers that we want to involve the public as much as possible in the festival, reach out to different age groups and also give space to young budding artists. The City=Galerie festival can give Mladá Boleslav a new impetus from the point of view of the development of public space. We believe that we can use this art to cultivate the city and its industrial environment in the long term,” says Ladislav Kučera, director of the ŠKODA AUTO Endowment Fund, which brought the premiere edition to Mladá Boleslav.

During the City=Galerie festival, four large-scale paintings will gradually be created in Mladá Boleslav, which will begin to speak to the public space. At the same time, the concrete wall at the Children’s Center of the Klaudian Hospital will be transformed. This work will be intended for children, who will participate in it together with the hospital staff. “We will consider it a success if the artists manage to realize all the planned paintings according to their ideas, the visitors enjoy all the accompanying events, the weather is beautiful and there is a good mood the whole time,” adds Jakub Jandora.

You can find the complete program of this year’s street art festival Město=Galerie in Mladá Boleslav here .

Source: Škoda Auto
Foundation Photo: Škoda Auto Foundation