we got there,” McCarthy explains. “What we’re doing is reviving Kingston to what it used to be.” As McCarthy points out, Paint Jamaica is not the first attempt to use street art for transformation in Kingston. He points to the work of Rosie Chung of Studio 174, and Alison Perkins, who conducted the Red Rubberband painting project through the Kingston on the Edge (KOTE) festival. Still, Paint Jamaica has easily been the most successful. “Not only do you paint something, but you also attract the attention of other people who wanted to do something,” McCarthy says. Indeed, the project would not have been successful without throngs of volunteers from the community and outside it. Working on the project also significantly boosted the skills of the individual artists in creating murals, as well as better understanding
A girl from the neighbourhood, posing here with her friend, discovers an uncanny resemblance in artist Matthew Henry’s mural
the people in the community, you don’t get the authentic story,” McCarthy says. Additionally, Paint Jamaica has benefitted from a democratic process among the artists. The group found themselves inspired by the 2011 Arab Spring and its germination via Facebook. So they too started a Facebook page, and invited other interested artists to share and participate. One key element is that interest in the Fleet Street project has leveraged opportunities for both the artists who have worked on the project and members of the community as well. One of these is Life Yard, an ital (i.e. vegetarian) cookshop that operates just across the street from the warehouse. Apart from benefitting from patronage by visitors to the mural, Life Yard has also been hired to cater events outside the neighbourhood. And members of the community are getting exposure and making connections and gaining opportunities previously closed off to them, because of the music videos and photo shoots taking place there. “There are a lot of artistic people in the community, and they’ve been practicing their craft long before
Paint Jamaica is more a movement than a foundation, but its foundations are rock solid: using art to create and inspire change
how to run art projects aimed at stimulating development. Yet, despite the project’s success, Paint Jamaica has been deliberately slow in proliferation across the island. “It was alluring to go everywhere, but it was also beautiful to stay there and watch the community grow,” McCarthy says. “Many people consider me a painter, but I personally consider myself a social engineer.” Interestingly, Paint Jamaica was born after the police had systematically removed murals of fallen “dons” from the walls of several communities throughout Kingston. McCarthy admits that the decision to pursue the project was a direct response to that. “We try to do things that will have an impact because they are a response to other things that are happening,” he says. “This project is a very diplomatic project. We don’t do anything because we think it should be done, we do it because we feel it must be done. The neglect was unreasonable. I don’t think any community should suffer from this kind of neglect.” For Paint Jamaica, its greatest impact will not simply be how it transforms one community, but rather how it inspires others to do the same. “I want to make sure that every artist feels the current of this project,” McCarthy says, “that they can do this too. We were just a set of average Joes on Facebook.” n WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM
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