Our friends over at BRAINFART Switzerland just sent in a nice package of photos covering a series of a 5 days workshop with young people! Each one, teach one! Read the interview below and check out the photos!
Please introduce yourself and what’s behind BRAINFART?
Brainfart is a streetart collective from Zurich (Switzerland) or short: The perfect symbiosis between crazy and urbanart: BRAINFART.
Consisting of the members: André Bex, Facundo and Nahuel Morales. The birthplace in 2011 was in Zurich. Bex and Nahuel, just wanted to draw and put our creations on paper. The goal was to show the world from a simpler, funnier and more colorful side. Our perseverance over the years has paid off, because we were allowed to bring our urban art to the masses at various events like Streetart Festival, Comic Festivals and at Exhibitions as a livepainting act or Workshop.
You are giving workshops to kids and teenagers regularly?
Yes, that’s correct. At BRAINFART, we learn new things every day and apply them immediately. And we want to pass on what we learn to the kids and young people. How we would have loved to have learned about graffiti and street art so early on …
What’s the concept and idea behind your workshops? How a typical workshop is structured?
As already mentioned, we want to give the young people what we learn and use on a daily basis. We work with everything from simple pencils to spray cans and, if the school allows it, we teach the young people all the disciplines. No one should have any hesitation about working with a spray can or be afraid of a piece of white paper. We help to break down these fears and give free rein to the imagination.
In our workshop, we do a lot of painting ourselves, but it is also important for us that people learn about the history of graffiti and street art, which is why we always have a short presentation/video with us where we talk about the origins of graffiti/street art.
You recently did a one week workshop, how that came together?
We were asked to organize the project week for the Berufs- und Weiterbildungs-Zentrum Rapperswil. The request originally came in 2022, but we were only able to organize the project week in 2024. Sometimes such requests take quite a long time until we can hold the workshop and sometimes we have a request today and the workshop starts next week. You can send us a request at any time and we will do everything possible to ensure that we can meet the desired date 🙂
The kids and teenagers were able to subscribe?
We have very few requirements for our workshop. Kids from 4th grade onwards are welcome to contact us and we need at least 4-6 participants for a workshop to take place. If the participants are not quite of age, an accompanying person is of course required.
You basically teach graffiti and street art history there before doing the practical part right?
Exactly, we always try to teach both. With us, you can start with the small pearls of the city (stickers), then paste-ups, then stencils and finally freehand spraying at a legal spot. Of course, the schools/institutions have a different budget, so we have to see what we can offer with this budget, but we always try to offer the maximum so that the young people have fun.
What’s the practical part about? How does that work?
As I said, you can book a “simple” sticker/character workshop with us or we also offer to design your own paste-ups. As soon as we can work with spray cans, there is the option of designing stencils with us or we can work on a piece together and then spray it together.
What the teenagers basically feedback you afterwards, are they interested in learning more about all that?
This is very, very important for us so that we know what works and what needs to be optimized.
Of course, all young people want to spray, but unfortunately it always depends on the budget. That’s why we always give them the opportunity to get in touch with us so that we can perhaps make up for what they’ve missed at the next workshop.
MOLOTOW is always part of your workshops, why and which products you use?
Since we started the workshops, Molotow products have always been included. We ourselves work a lot with Molotow markers and spray cans and always want to give the young people the best material and the best tools.
Thanks for the quick interview!
Thank you for the interview and thank you for your support.
Thank you that we can enjoy street art every day and hope that we can give something back to the community with this workshop.
