Carelessness is a scourge of our time. Discarded packaging piles up into an unmissable mountain if one doesn't pick up cans, yogurt cups, plastic fruit trays, bags, portion packs, and much more. That's exactly what 30 children did when they participated in the "Plastic People" summer holiday program run by the association "Krass" (Cultural Education for Children and Young People).
“We were out and about along the railway tracks behind the Stadtwerke Park and on an industrial wasteland in the south of Düsseldorf, collecting the litter lying around,” says Dirk Krüll. “From this, we then created life-size figures.” These now hang on Kettwiger Straße at the entrance to the Stadtwerke Park as memorials that not only symbolize the climate crisis – a central issue of our time – but also address the war in Ukraine.
Krüll is an artist and led the Krass holiday project. He knows firsthand how much work and creativity went into creating the rock musician, the soldier, the giraffe, the cartwheeler, the clown, and the other figures. After collecting the trash, the children sorted and washed it. Outlines of some of the children were drawn onto wooden boards, and then the shapes were cut out. Then the kids could transform the clean trash into art to their hearts' content. "But we also involved Awista, the waste disposal company," reveals Krass chairwoman Claudia Seidensticker-Fountis. "An employee explained the dual recycling system to the children."
This resulted in many new skills being acquired by the 20 refugee children from Ukraine and the ten kids from the Krass tutoring group, as handling tools such as hammers, screws, pliers or jigsaws is not part of the children's everyday activities.
“Artistically, I’m very pleased,” Krüll judged. “The figures are the result of children’s creativity. We do give instructions from time to time, but we don’t restrict them.” The result is an eye-catching piece at the Stadtwerke Park that encourages viewers to reflect on the problem of waste and climate change.
The Krass association was founded by Seidensticker-Fountis to enable all young people, regardless of their family, cultural, or social background, to succeed on their individual educational paths. "Since 2009, my team of volunteers and I have been committed to ensuring that disadvantaged children and young people have free and barrier-free access to art and culture," explains Seidensticker-Fountis.
RP from August 8, 2022 by Tino Hermanns