{"id":15373,"date":"2025-02-20T15:05:43","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T14:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svjmedia.nl\/internationaljournalism\/?p=15373"},"modified":"2025-06-06T11:14:02","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T09:14:02","slug":"a-mural-can-provide-a-sense-of-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svjmedia.nl\/internationaljournalism\/15373\/a-mural-can-provide-a-sense-of-security\/","title":{"rendered":"Michel Steers: “A mural can provide a sense of security”"},"content":{"rendered":"
They can get up to 80 meters high. Artists working on a small scaffolding for sometimes more than fourteen days to get it as a realistic as possible. And with awarded results: you can find the most beautiful mural in the world in Eindhoven, a city in the Dutch province Noord-Brabant. But help awarded murals change our perspective on the graffiti world?<\/strong><\/p>\n Graffiti and murals: the difference<\/strong><\/p>\n Let\u2019s have a closer look on the graffiti world. Because if we\u2019re talking about graffiti, we\u2019re talking about \u2018tags\u2019, \u2018blowups\u2019 and \u2018pieces\u2019. But no \u2018murals\u2019. Murals are part of \u2018street art\u2019 culture. And except for the same use of spray can, the two of them don\u2019t have a lot in common.<\/p>\n Where graffiti is meant to be made fast, we\u2019re talking about minutes, street art can be a whole process of making one piece. \u2018For a serious graffiti artist, making a mural is boring. It\u2019s fun for a day, with friends, beers and drugs, but it\u2019s not how graffiti is meant to be\u2019, says a graffiti artist whose name he prefers to stay hidden because of a possible conflict with the Dutch authorities (name known with editor). To show how private he is about his name, he pulls down his bottom lip and shows his \u2018tag\u2019 tattooed on the inside. \u2018My name doesn\u2019t cross my lips.\u2019<\/p>\n The world of graffiti is much more dangerous than the world of street art. \u2018In countries around us, the community is much tougher. Spray over the work of soccer hooligans in Poland and your teeth will be knocked out for sure. Or look at groups in Spain and Italy, there are drugs involved. They go f*cking high into the tunnels to make pieces. In the meantime, they hold a machinist at gunpoint so they can get out of the tunnels without being caught by the police. So, when I’m working in Spain, I always have a knife in my pocket,\u2019 the man says.<\/p>\n Graffiti artist and owner of Graffitifun Michel Steers can confirm it: \u2018In the world of street art you don\u2019t find such rivalries.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n[aesop_image img=”https:\/\/svjmedia.nl\/internationaljournalism\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/378\/2025\/02\/IMG_7938-scaled.jpg” panorama=”off” credit=”Leonie van Barneveld” align=”center” lightbox=”on” captionsrc=”custom” caption=”A spray can used for the graffiti workshops” captionposition=”left” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]\n Graffitifun<\/strong><\/p>\n Steers has 22 years of graffiti experience himself and has now for almost 20 years his own graffiti company. With 40 artists all over The Netherlands, he provides with GraffitiFun graffiti workshops for all ages. \u2018We also give graffiti workshops in cities like Berlin, Paris and Barcelona. We sometimes go to suburbs where you can’t walk safely with your daughter. Painting a big mural in those neighborhoods can create some sense of security.\u2019<\/p>\n The big murals are coming up way more then 30 years ago. Even Steers sees the appreciation of the art by passengers. \u2018People sometimes come up to me and express their appreciation for the pieces we\u2019re making. But when I started giving workshops I sometimes got told \u2018Graffiti is not allowed, it is vandalism!\u2019. Nowadays you see more often that people express enthusiasm for our form of art and appreciate the murals they have seen.\u2019<\/p>\n If we will see more murals in the future Steers remains hesitant: \u2018It can be a trend that will disappear in 50 years but maybe it’ll stay popular for a longer time. Also, we need space to be creative and in the city we see a lot of space disappearing making room for constructions.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n[aesop_image img=”https:\/\/svjmedia.nl\/internationaljournalism\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/378\/2025\/02\/IMG_7926-scaled.jpg” panorama=”off” credit=”Leonie van Barneveld” align=”center” lightbox=”on” captionsrc=”custom” caption=”A woman works on a piece during a graffiti workshop at the Hall of Fame in Utrecht” captionposition=”left” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" They can get up to 80 meters high. Artists working on a small scaffolding for sometimes more than fourteen days to get it as a realistic as possible. And with awarded results: you can find the most beautiful mural in the world in Eindhoven, a city in the Dutch province Noord-Brabant. But help awarded murals […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2288,"featured_media":15734,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acls","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n