In the Ted Talk “How Can Public Art Projects Transform Rough Neighborhoods?”, artists Dre Urhahn and Jeroen Koolhaas aim to get rid of the notion of certain “bad neighborhoods” by creating art throughout them. Dre talks about how when he has out in Rio spending a lot of time with the people he noticed that “there was this constant return of the word image”. Dre decided to make a difference.
As Dre states, “Like, this happened, and the we thought, oh, my God, if this happened in – on the small scale, let’s build it out”. I think that it is really cool how they didn’t even plan on doing this when they went to Rio and the fact that after they did it and chose to continue is pretty cool.
I think that what Dre and Jeroen are doing is really something special. They are bringing a sense of “light” to communities that need art to help keep people’s spirits. Just by changing what the area looks like it really has transformed how people think about their homes.
