Stukafest a.k.a. making a wall painting with more than 30 people in a tiny space

For those who aren’t familiar with the phenomenon: Stukafest is short for ‘Studenten Kamer Festival’ which means ‘Student Room Festival’. Basically you have a number of locations throughout the city in which a student house can host an artist for the night. Then there are three rounds of 30 minutes, in which students travel from house to house and watch different performances in groups of about 10 people. They might encounter bands that rock their socks of and poets who touch them with their words. We took part in the event (which was last week) with the Big Bug Collection (the creative collective I am part of). The students who visited us took part in a giant wall painting. We prepared cards with words of which they could choose something to paint, varying from a guitar playing astronaut to an elephant in a wheelchair to who knows what. We encouraged them to paint big and be creative. We helped where possible, yet this time people from the crowd were the main painters, not us.

It was so much fun. The room was a student house living room that had white walls with some marker quotes on it before we started. The students living there basically were open to anything silly, colorful, creative; something less boring and didn't have any problem with random strangers doodling on their walls; which was great.

For me the best thing was seeing the fun people were having and the creative silly things they came up with. I guess many of them never experienced the freedom of just randomly starting to paint on a wall. In between rounds, we worked further on what people had already started. It wasn’t about the end result so much. It was mostly about having fun and being creative. Although honestly speaking I am happy that it wasn’t my own room, I think it was a great night, which ended with a big party with all of the students and a lot of dancing. It was good.

When was the last time you doodled on a wall?

(most pictures are by Luke)