If you look at the iconic murals across Technopolis, on Pireos Street, I must say that I quite like them, and so do my children!


And also the iconic murals on the walls surrounding the Elais factory in Neo Faliro are very "different" and far more original than most of those boring factory walls that I normally see when driving on Pireos Street and elsewhere in this city.

Perhaps what Athens needs is a major (annual?) international mural competition -- which could tentatively be called the "Big Olive Mural Bash" ("BOMB") -- and to invite "guerrilla artists" and talented young people from all around the world to come to the Big Olive to create colourful, iconic, new, "fresh" murals on especially "ugly" walls throughout Greater Athens (pre-selected by the organisers, of course), which could then be sponsored or even "auctioned" for charity (like the Cow Parade) by Greek and international socially-responsible companies. Proceeds could be donated to non-profit urban youth projects and perhaps even a Greek or international campaign to educate all stakeholders on this hotly-debated issue.


This could in turn contribute to a healthy debate, bring in tourism revenues and global publicity for Athens, educate people, provide a legal (!) and organised (!) platform for young people and artists to express themselves on walls they are allowed to work on, and avoid such mistakes as the one referred to in the BBC article, among many other benefits.

In this recent article ("Iconic Banksy image painted over"), the BBC mentioned... "People used to come from all over to see it and photograph it."

Well, hopefully we will start posting more photographs on Alexia's blog!

Keep up with the excellent work, Alexia!!!

Kali evdomada,

Peter Michel Heilmann
Athens
http://www.eurocharity.org/en/