Do you ever wonder what lasting legacy you are leaving behind as a leader? Mine comes in the form of a solid blue wall.
On Children’s Day, 10 years ago, we painted LEMural together. Those were wonderful times and one of my favorite memories from the social activities of my organization aDaSie. Whenever I see a memory of that day on social media, I smile.
A social housing block in Krakow was the victim of hooligan fights over vulgar tags and slogans. The residents themselves came to us asking for help.
We asked Joanna Karpowicz, a painter and a comic book artist from Krakow, to design a mural inspired by the work of a science-fiction author Stanisław Lem, who used to live next door, and that’s how the LEMural project was created.
We had some discussions with the officials issuing permits – they suggested that the sky should be a little less blue, to go for shades of gray or brown. I think it was about matching it to the rest of the building, but it amused us (through tears), because after all, these were the times of the Great Smog in Krakow – the gray-brown sky was outside our window, we didn’t want to paint it on the walls. Finally – the permit came, with a blue sky in in.
And then? Everything went smoothly. The residents of this and the surrounding buildings helped, but also people from other parts of Krakow. A man who normally paints apartments came with a tall ladder to paint higher ceilings of clouds.
An elderly lady wanted to help, but did not have the courage to grab a brush, so she started cleaning the windows of football club stickers.
The babies slept in strollers, and their mothers painted the grass. The older children either helped or built robots from cardboard boxes. Together.
This was a time when social media was used to build communities. When people turned to grass-roots initiatives to do good, and to look for people with whom they wanted to do something together – to be FOR something, not AGAINST something.
That one day spent with paints and brushes awakened a sense of agency, a sense of pride in their neighborhood and a sense of being together in dozens of residents of social housing – it built social capital.
Ultimately, the mural survived intact for many years. The vulgar tags never came back. After the dumpster fire, a large part of it was destroyed, and the entire wall was repainted in a uniform color.
In blue.
