Drawing on walls is a trait Egyptians have inherited from their ancestors the Ancient Egyptians, and as if to prove this point a group of students from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Zamalek have decided to colour key walls and bridges in the streets of Cairo, even setting up a Facebook page entitled “Colouring a Grey City.” Members of the group share a common passion for colour, and they want to add a touch of colour to their home town. “If you want to see the change, be the change,” they say. Marwa Nasser, one of the founders of the group, said that the idea had come from looking at pictures of painted houses and stairs in other countries, among them Italy. “When I saw these pictures, I wished that I could live in a city like the ones I saw online. Whenever I compared these pictures to the place I lived in, I would find a striking difference because all the stairs and bridges in Cairo are grey, a depressing colour. Our walls are all covered in political graffiti, and others are not clean,” she said. According to Nermeen, a co-founder of the group, there are 15 core members together with a group of affiliates who join in with the painting. “But anyone who wants to join us from our faculty colleagues is very welcome, as is anyone reading our Facebook page,” she said. Dina Faisal, also a co-founder, directs the volunteers. “We have our page on which we write news about our events and people can contact us on it,” she said. According to Rama Ahmed, also a co-founder of the group, members feel free about the places they plan to paint. “We choose places that people visit,” she said. “We are interested in places people single out.” For Inas Awad, another co-founder, “we choose vital places in Cairo, either near the River Nile or a place of importance to pedestrians. However, in every case the place should be neglected, making it important to change it by adding colour.” There are no conditions for volunteering with the group. “Anyone can participate in our campaigns as long as they like painting. A volunteer does not even have to know how to draw, as we can teach him while we are working,” Nasser comments. “Most of the drawings we do are geometrical, like triangles and squares, and then we fill these in with colour. This doesn't call for many drawing skills anyway,” Nermeen adds. It is the place that determines how the drawings will look, according to Nermeen. “So far we have only been doing geometrical shapes, but it is the shape of the wall that determines what will be drawn on it. For example, one wall with rainbow colours on it is the way it is because we immediately thought of a staircase. But there are also walls with freehand paintings on them,” she says. The group does not have any financial support, and for the moment it is self-financed. “We started as a group of students who wanted to change reality, so we brought our own materials and as no one understood what we were doing and no one was convinced by it at the beginning, we started funding it ourselves,” Nermeen said. “No one has funded our group, and this is a good thing as we needed to have control over our projects and to be free in painting the places we wanted to, which was why we did not seek funding in the first place. But after three or four projects, we were given paint by a well-known paint company. In fact, we sought support from various companies, but this was the only one that supported our ideas.” Nasser said that the group used simple materials. “We only use waterproof paint that is not affected by the weather conditions,” she said. Many people, even passers-by, have been willing to help the young people in their work, she added, including some street children. “The inhabitants of Al-Kit Kat near the Al-Awamat bridge observed what we were doing and decided to paint their own homes as well, even painting the ferry station in different colours,” Awad said. “This is an example of how our work can help people to see their surroundings differently,” she added, explaining that since the painting sessions were public people of all ages and backgrounds were free to join them. The group has managed to paint some key areas in Cairo. “So far we have painted seven wall areas, five flights of stairs and a larger wall,” Nasser said. “We started with two stairs on the 15 May bridge at the Agouza end and the Al-Kit Kat end and a wall in Al-Kit Kat Square. We have also done a flight of stairs in Ghamra and another one in Ramses and the two stairways of the Ghamra metro station.” All this has been part of a project to help people see reality differently. “Yesterday we coloured a flight of stairs at Ain Shams University, though this was with the help of the students there. In fact, we wanted to take on the role of supervisors in this case, letting the students change their faculty by themselves. We plan to do the same at Helwan University, but we are still waiting for the necessary permission. We intend to paint some of the informal housing districts in Cairo,” Awad said. In the near future the group plans to put smiles on the faces of those who need them most. “We plan to colour the staircase of the Children's Cancer Hospital, as this will make a difference to the children if they can see colour from their windows every day. Of course they are more than welcome to join us if they can,” Nermeen said. Though the group has achieved a lot under its own steam, it still needs help gaining permissions from the authorities, Awad said. “We need assistance in terms of helping us to get permissions, and in some cases we also need special equipment. If there is a company out there that can help us with this, we would love to hear from it, as well as from anyone who is able to help us with transport and materials,” she said. Such appeals for assistance do not mean that the group intends to change what is essentially a hobby into a business activity. “We focus on renovating places that need renovation. If a businessman were to want to help us out, he could do so best by helping us to keep our activities as they are today. This means sending colour to those that really need it, people who may not see colour at home and certainly do not see it in the streets,” Nasser said. “We are still students, and what we want to do is to put a smile on people's faces when they see our drawings. So at the moment we do not intend to turn our project into an official one,” she concluded.
