Crowdsourcing graffiti: Color+City matches empty walls with street artists

Walls separate. That’s their job. But unleash the PSHHH of an aerosol can of paint and maybe a wall can bring people together.

So thought Victor Garcia and Gabriel Pinheiro, two guys who founded Color+City with help from Google’s Cultural Institute. The website, which just won the Webby for City and Urban Innovation, connects graffiti artists with businesses and others who want their sad gray walls to get some color. (The runners-up are worth a look too, including a Philly project that pairs companies with city challenges and a guide to Tallahassee’s trails.)

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Wall- and façade-havers post photos of their space on the site, which artists peruse and then book for 15 days. (Street art doesn’t have a long shelf life.) The project was inspired by the way colorful murals have transformed São Paulo, Brazil. As Gilberto Dimenstein of Catraca Livre says in a video about the site:

This conspiracy of color makes São Paulo an open-skies art gallery. This is an ugly city, where people decided to beautify it with their own hands … They transformed fear into a way of communion, of companionship … That wall that separates became a wall that integrates.

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