When 12 chil­dren, their par­ents, a church, a neigh­bour’s wall, paint, wire and many hands came to­geth­er the re­sult was love at Mt D’Or Junc­tion, lit­er­al­ly 25 feet of it, along the East­ern Main Road.

In a heart­warm­ing dis­play of com­mu­ni­ty uni­ty and cre­ative ex­pres­sion, one NGO–De­vel­op­ing Art and De­sign Aware­ness & Projects (DA­DA) with the Mt D’Or St Jude RC Church, came to­geth­er to bring a pow­er­ful mes­sage of love to the area.

This is a big change from the neg­a­tive im­age of the his­tor­i­cal ‘hotspot’ nes­tled among in­dus­tri­al gi­ants like the Carib Brew­ery, WIT­CO, SBCS, for­mer Unilever, an ice cream fac­to­ry, and a sawmill.

The eco­nom­ic land­scape in the re­gion has seen a boost in re­cent years, with the es­tab­lish­ment of the coun­try’s largest Stan­dards store, a Food Bas­ket branch and phar­ma­cy, a casi­no, a hard­ware store, and a four-tow­er HDC com­plex. Yet, it’s the small-scale art project like this DA­DA ex­pres­sion wall that touch­es peo­ple every day.

DA­DA se­cured per­mis­sion from Mt D’Or res­i­dent An­tho­ny Ap­pari­cio to utilise the EMR space for the project. Over a week, chil­dren from the neigh­bour­hood worked tire­less­ly to bring the art to life.

DA­DA mem­ber Sean Leonard said, “We want­ed the chil­dren to de­ter­mine the mes­sage. It was easy for them as they all reached for the theme of love. In the end, the chil­dren helped to change a neg­a­tive space in the area in­to some­thing aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing now.”

St Jude RC Church pro­vid­ed space for the work­shop and as­sist­ed in re­cruit­ing lo­cal chil­dren and fam­i­lies to par­tic­i­pate. Ar­chi­tect Leonard and artists Adele Todd and Dean Arlen, both DA­DA mem­bers, guid­ed the project.

Arlen, a well-known fig­ure in the art com­mu­ni­ty, em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of such projects. He said, “Our main goal is to sup­port the cre­ation and in­stal­la­tion of pub­lic art in Trinidad and To­ba­go in ways that en­hance the en­vi­ron­ment, ben­e­fit lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties, pro­mote sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and fos­ter col­lab­o­ra­tion.”

Arlen un­der­lined the idea that pub­lic art should be ac­ces­si­ble to every­one and has the po­ten­tial to in­volve the com­mu­ni­ty, pub­lic process­es, and even pub­lic fund­ing.

Cur­rent­ly, Arlen, as a mem­ber of DA­DA, is en­gaged in oth­er long-term projects with chil­dren and the com­mu­ni­ty in the Heights of Aripo St Judes RC School. Se­cur­ing sup­port and fund­ing re­mains a chal­lenge, but “it’s prob­a­bly hard­er to get the gen­er­al so­ci­ety buy-in to the con­cept of com­mu­ni­ties trans­form­ing through so­cial/col­lab­o­ra­tive art and de­sign. It’s not the on­ly av­enue, but it is an ef­fec­tive one”, Arlen said. The or­gan­i­sa­tion is com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive, par­tic­i­pa­to­ry prac­tices that en­cour­age so­cial change.

To fur­ther their mis­sion, DA­DA is host­ing a free three-day sym­po­sium, “So­cial Art & De­sign: Pub­lic Space & Com­mu­ni­ty Trans­for­ma­tion,” with work­ing ses­sions sched­uled from No­vem­ber 16 to 18 at the Cen­tral Bank.

Those in­ter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing can reg­is­ter by call­ing 475-5257 or email­ing dadapro­ject­sadm@gmail.com and look out for de­tails in the me­dia.