This year, the ‘Novi Sad 2021 – European Capital of Culture’ Foundation initiates the implementation of the ‘Urban Pockets’, programme for restructuring public spaces. As stated in the Bid-book of the ‘Novi Sad 2021’ project, one of the Foundation’s tasks is to implement the project for painting public wall surfaces, in order to improve public spaces and strengthen street art and local artists. Moreover, the first year is dedicated to the ‘Hope’ thematic bridge, i.e. raising infrastructure and human capacities. For that reason, the project will be focused on hiring local artists this year.

In order to establish transparent model for the selection of public surfaces, in accordance with the legislation, and of artists who will paint the murals, the Foundation organises discussion entitled ‘Novi Sad – The City of Murals’, which will be held in the Pavle Beljanski Memorial Collection (Trg Galerija no. 2) on 3 May at 12 p.m. The proposal of the model for the selection of public surfaces and criteria for the selection of artists and topics will also be presented during the discussion.

This is the first clear and direct call for organisations and associations that are dedicated to urban culture and, of course, to all individual artists who paint murals to come to the open discussion about restructuring of public spaces. Our intentions it to initiate constructive discussion in a transparent way and through participation of all interested parties, in order to jointly form the final model for the implementation of this part of the programme.