The Colouring a Grey City group, in cooperation with the Vision Students Club, painted the stairs of the Commerce Department at Ain Shams University in Cairo in October. They also transformed the gloomy grey stairs of the Ghamra Bridge in Cairo by adding cheerful colours. Some passers-by started to smile after seeing the colours, while others offered the team encouragement and prayers. However, a minority told the group that what it was doing was useless as there were other priorities in society. Colouring a Grey City is the brainchild of Marwa Nasser, the team coordinator. Nasser, 20, is in her second year at the Applied Arts Faculty, as are the other team members. She told Al-Ahram Weekly that colouris a major preoccupation in the students' lives. When they leave the Zamalek district of Cairo, where the faculty is located, they are affected by the grey on grey of the rest of the city. A push for them to start the project was seeing photographs of colourful houses and streets in countries aboard. They felt that they could do the same in Egypt. Nasser presented the idea to her friends and the group received official permission to go ahead with its ideas. The original group was made up of 10 students, and has now increased to 20. Their work began on 31 August, when they painted buildings in the Giza and Cairo governorates. The group was self-funded at first, but is now supported by a paint company which provides them with free paint. Nasser said that the group welcomes members from outside the Applied Arts Faculty in Cairo. She said that students from other governorates also wanted to start painting. Art students from Minya University in Upper Egypt have already begun, as has another group in Suez. Meanwhile, the Cairo group has divided its work into different areas, including Nasr City, Maadi, and Heliopolis. They plan to designate members who will be responsible for work in other governorates. The group plans to paint the area around the Children's Cancer Hospital in Cairo to give the children a more cheerful view. “We try to make the environment as colourful as we can to improve people's moods and psychological wellbeing,” Nasser said.
