FESTIVALS AND EVENTS:IN A deserted, rain-soaked car park at the rear of Belfast's Waterfront Hall, a group of teenagers are covering a wall with spray-painted graffiti. But this is no act of vandalism. The hoody-clad youngsters are honing their skills under the watchful eye of professional aerosol artists Ken Maze and Glenn Black, writes FIONOLA MEREDITH
It’s all part of the Urban Arts Academy (UAA), an annual programme of innovative courses in the creative industries, held over three weeks in July at the Waterfront Hall. As well as aerosol art, participants aged 15 and over (there’s no upper age limit) can choose from week-long classes in rock music, DJing, comic-book illustration, game design, stand-up comedy, live percussion and other subjects. There was even an intensive course on developing iPhone applications.
Today, the young aerosol artists seem indifferent to the rain, working with precision and meticulous care to sketch in the bare bones of their design. By Friday, the team will have designed and created a full-scale mural to go alongside last year’s impressive effort, which features wicked-looking snakes and skulls with glittering emerald eyes.
“Get comfortable down on your hunkers to get a nice sweep with the can,” advises Black, squatting down in paint-spattered combat shorts to demonstrate, as Barra O’Brien (14), from Turf Lodge, in west Belfast, has a go.
With its anarchic overtones, it’s easy to see why this appeals to teenagers. “This is a great chance to do graffiti legally,” says Niall Gormley (14), from Holywood, Co Down. “We’ve been studying local graffiti around Belfast, and looking at the work of street artists from around the world. Once you try it, you’re hooked – this is a rare hobby.”
Cliodnagh Rice (15) is the only girl in the group, but she isn’t bothered by that. Why did she sign up? “It was summer, I was bored, and this looked like fun.”
According to UAA coordinator Adam Turkington: “Urban Arts Academy trains people for the alternative creative industries, those not catered for by the traditional education system.”
While the aerosol-art and rock-music courses are dominated by teenage participants, Turkington doesn’t believe that urban arts should be defined by youth culture. “The first year we did the courses we got a lot of people ringing up saying ‘Is it full of kids?’, ‘What’s the upper age limit?’. Well, there isn’t one. Our average is early 20s – something that few youth programmes aimed at that demographic are able to achieve.”
UAA runs in parallel with Trans, an eclectic summer-music festival that prides itself on including many all-ages gigs. “This means our journalism students can write reviews of gigs, our photography students can capture the images, and our design students can take all that and make it into a magazine,” says Turkington. “And it’s all held at the Waterfront Hall, where the likes of Björk, Robbie Williams and Blur have played.”
Inside the Waterfront, the corridors resound to the bone-shaking racket of a fledgling rock band. The four young people only met yesterday, but by Friday, they will have written and performed their own song and shot a video.
Upstairs, a roomful of DJs, their jeans slung fashionably low, heads bobbing mesmerically to the beat, experiment with the latest Traktor Scratch software. And it’s all swaying hips, shaking booties and popping arms in the gallery space, as tutor Cherrie Brammeld puts the urban-dance students through their highly energetic paces. One older male participant gamely struts his stuff among the aspirant young Beyoncés.
It all looks highly enjoyable, but Turkington insists that the Urban Arts Academy offers more than a summer stopgap for bored teenagers. “This is vocational training, and we have lots of anecdotal evidence to show that it offers our students entry points into creative industries. We put them in an environment where they are interacting with professionals, making contacts and connecting with people from different disciplines. For instance, the guy who runs our comic-book course does drawings for Batman comic. People come from all over for that one.” For those who find the £60 (€69) basic course fee impossible to meet, bursaries are available.
Younger urbanites needn’t miss out, either. Each year, the academy offers a scaled-down “Urban Arts A-kid-emy”, part of the Belfast Children’s Festival, where youngsters aged eight to 14 get the opportunity to be rockers, clowns, dancers and designers.
