Youth Centres and youth inclusion: creativity and artistic expression in Vasto, Italy

I was a guest artist at “Youth Centres and youth inclusion: creativity and artistic expression” workshops organised by ARCI with the support of ERASMUS + and Vasto Community. Seven days of workshops that included street art/mural painting, comics, dancing and video, gathered young people from Belgium, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, Cyprus, Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, and a host country Italy.

Vasto

City of Vasto is built around uphill fort, fallowed by Marina di Vasto, a complex of hotels and rental house on the coast. This is a place where Italians go for summer vacation when they don´t go to Croatia, and that is happening more and more often. You can say that Italians just recently discovered beauty of their Adriatic coast. Old town is old and beautiful, fort has long promenade with the bars, gelato and restaurants.

The old city has few town squares, churches, towers, with Piazza Rossetti with Castello Caldoresco being a central one. Promenade ends with park, where you can take your children during hot summer days to play in the shades of trees.  Also, on two locations on Friday and Saturday there are open markets where you can buy domestic products, from organic fruits and vegetables, to local cheese and meat products. I have experienced amazing feeling, a recall of the childhood memory, when I tasted mama Rita’s mozzarella. I remembered the flavors of the fresh cheese, taste of milk, smell of cow and barn, cheese that my grand-aunt used to make before the Bosnian War.

We stayed at B&B Al Teatro di Vasto, a building where Arci Vasto has its office. B&B is renting out renovated and fully equipped apartments, and its position is just perfect. Near by is a bus station where you can take bus to the seaside, and it is in nice corner of the fort with one corner leaning to the one of the fort towers. In the base of the tower there is a nice coffee bar, where you can start your morning with espresso and have coffee creme before siesta.

Workshop

This time I did two artworks at the workshop, first one is Grande Onda e Trabucco or the Great Wave of Vasto, a mural on the wall of Arena delle Grazie and Nel blu dipinto di blu, polyptych painting featuring characters from Lupin the III. But my real luck was to work again with my friend Dejan Mijatović aka Redži. This time he did colored drawing on the inside wall of the Youth Center Consulta Giovanile Vasto, in tradition of Moebius, in sucha good way that Nataša (Konjević) and me both agree that we should ask him that next time he should paint something less good so we wouldn´t feel inferior 🙂

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Fort´s promenade

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View from the promenade from position of the wall where I painted Grande Onda e Trabucco

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Mama Rita with fresh mozzarella

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Open market near Teatro Rossetti. A real tomato.

B&B Al Teatro di Vasto and Arci Vasto Office

B&B Al Teatro di Vasto and Arci Vasto Office

Dejan Mijatović aka Redži aka Živojin