The old Coop is under bombs … of color. For its third edition, Colors Urban Art Festival, an event devoted to street art and graffiti, reinvests the Port du Rhin district and Strasbourg throughout the month of September. This year, the Colors collective is setting up in the Enlightened Workshops, its new HQ located in the former Virgule de la Coop.
The Colors collective, newly “anchored” in this port area, gave carte blanche to 16 artists from all over France for a fortnight in August at the Enlightened Workshops. The place will open its doors to the public free of charge every weekend in September from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., guided tours are organized.
A place unknown to the public
“The place is particularly well suited”, assures Julien Lafarge, director of Colors, even if he recalls that the festival and the artists adapt, in essence, to all sites, whatever their constraints. “We created a course and the feedback is very good. We still had 2,000 people last weekend. There are works in three zones, indoors, outdoors, a pop store and a place of conviviality. It’s really interesting. There is the In festival, but also everything that will happen around it with the Hors les Murs. “
No gentrification therefore for street art, but the opportunity to tag the event in the Strasbourg calendar. “The concept of the festival remains the same. Namely that we find a place unknown to the public, we give it to artists who have two to three weeks to express themselves. “
The objective of Hors les Murs “is to make the festival shine throughout the Eurometropolis with interventions in different places. We want to shine a little on his neighborhood and we have formed partnerships with several organizations including the Port Autonomous de Strasbourg (PAS), welcomes Julien Lafarge. We are going to have workshops around art and graffiti throughout the month of September with young people from the neighborhood and the creation of a participatory fresco on rue du Port du Rhin. “
Live events also like this weekend at the PAS merchandise station with the artist Goddog, and a dozen electrical boxes will be graffiti on the Bischheim side. “We also want to bring art, bring color to the periphery,” says Julien Lafarge. Where people live and, since 2019, we have been working in the districts of Meinau, Neuhof, Cronenbourg, Hautepierre. To bring art back to people. “