Can we help disadvantaged populations through street art?
Canada is one of the largest donors of international assistance, especially for projects deemed “progressive and feminist”, which it funds around the world. La Converse went to Lebanon, the seventh country to receive the most Canadian funding, to analyze two development assistance projects and examine their limitations.
How can real solidarity between North and South be envisaged?
At a time when inequalities are growing and anti-racism is growing, it is important to think about ways to help, especially through art.
The result is enchanting. An array of colors and a series of frescoes cover the entire city center of Al-Qalamoun, a fishing village in northern Lebanon. From historic stalls to more recent cafes, they accompany walkers from the highway to the seaside. We walk around with dreamy eyes, relaxed and amazed.
The “Al-Qalamoun in colors” project began in 2019 when Utopia, a Lebanese NGO, decided to carry out an artistic project in this small coastal town located 75 km north of Beirut.
“We wanted to benefit young people, so we talked to the municipality, consulted the population, and it was the young people who chose to paint the walls, rather than doing activities,” explains Shafik Abdulrahman, one of the founders of the NGO. A hashtag is created, the project gets people talking, tourism increases.
“We thank the NGO, the result is beautiful. It had a big impact on the youngest,” Rim Kaddour tells us over the phone. The young woman is one of 120 people who painted the walls of their city, along with fine arts students and a Palestinian artist.
The problems under the paint
But once the project is over, the structural problems reappear: the houses are as dilapidated as ever, the infrastructure is deteriorating and the roads, full of holes, are always more and more dangerous to use.
“Any driver passing by would destroy their car due to the large number of cracks and holes. The situation is really shameful,” says Marwan, Rim's father, who runs a candy store. “We would have preferred to have interior renovations rather than exterior renovations. It would have helped us more, especially psychologically,” regrets Salma el Hendi, a Palestinian resident of Qalamoun. She is surrounded by her neighbours and women in her family, and all say that the NGO did not ask them what they wanted.
“We had to beg one of the workers to paint one of the walls of our house inside”, she tells us in her small apartment that does not block the cold of winter. The place is humid, and mold lines the walls. “It gives a bad smell, the water from our neighbors' sewers seeps into our house. The houses here are old; if they were renovated, they would be magnificent, but there is no money,” she continues. These problems should be borne by the City, by the State.
“We want the municipality to intervene to maintain roads and infrastructure”, summarizes Rim Kaddour.
This paint job is not enough to solve the systemic problems of the city and the country. At first glance, such artistic projects are positive and do no harm to anyone. But on closer inspection, they are part of the inaction of the public authorities and are out of step with the needs of the populations.
The Utopia project therefore becomes a metaphor for Lebanon, where development aid hides misery and maintains the complacency of the State.
Marketing and “NGOization”
For Utopia and its donor, the main objective of the project was to be seen and to generate tourism, rather than to thoroughly renovate homes. An intention that takes precedence in many NGO initiatives, according to Clothilde Facon, a researcher in political sociology at the University Sorbonne Paris Nord. “In general, this type of project meets a need for visibility — which is crucial for donors”, explains the one who works more particularly on NGOs working in Lebanon. This is the GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), a German state development agency, who directed the choice of action.
The young people of the village were consulted, but after the choice of an artistic project was made. A situation that reproduces a neocolonial logic, according to Clothilde Facon. “There is an imbalance of powers, and it is Westerners who impose their vision and their solutions on the countries of the South,” she explains. This approach, although at the forefront of development assistance, corresponds to that of Canada, among others. When NGOs from the global North carry out a project in a country in the South, they involve local groups, but without giving them decision-making power.
However, “decision-making is crucial in development”, recalls Ms. Facon. Even when a call for projects is sent from an NGO from North to South, local organizations must comply with Western expectations and self-censor to obtain funds or because they have internalized Western methods, according to her. Beyond marketing, there is also the image of the donor or owner of the NGO. “He wants to have recognition, and that comes with the white savior complex.
It is a form of help that is linked to an excellent intention, but also serves to make you feel better,” continues Maïka Sondarjee, author of Losing the South, decolonizing international solidarity in 2020, a book in which she deconstructs the development aid and humanitarian sector and gives solutions to better help, in other words in a decolonial way.
A gap between needs and the project
The population of Al-Qalamoun is not the only one who knows the joys and the frustrations of an artistic project. A few kilometers further north, in Tripoli, the second largest city in Lebanon — and also the poorest in the entire Mediterranean region —, a French association decided to “bring art” to one of the most marginalized neighborhoods of the city: Bab el-Tebbaneh. Bars of decrepit and gray buildings stand up, stung by bullet holes, and trash litters the streets. Only a few facades are covered with murals, which are masterful and colorful.
Artivista inaugurated a project by Street art on five facades renovated and repainted by Lebanese and French artists. The aim was to “transmit the Street art as a means of expression among young people, and joy in hearts”, specifies Claire Prat-Marca, the founder. She claims to have fully involved the residents and organizations of the neighborhood and carried out renovations in two buildings to meet their needs. “The repainted wall looks out to the outside of the neighborhood. People on the highway can see and admire it, but not us,” replies Sabah Ali Jawhar, a 60-year-old mother living in one of the buildings concerned.
She welcomes us on her decrepit balcony, vaguely overlooking a mural, and serves us coffee flavored with cardamom. “We thank the NGO, it brings joy to our hearts, but we would have liked the adjustments to be made from the inside, more on the neighborhood side, or in our houses, which are dilapidated,” she said, saying that she had not been consulted by Artivista before the start of the work. Mold covers the walls of his apartment, which is plunged into darkness due to a power outage. Since the crisis, the state has only provided a maximum of two hours of electricity per day, and running water has become a luxury. “Installing solar panels or water tanks would have really changed our daily lives,” criticises the mother of the family.
The right moment
Perhaps one of the problems with art development projects is that the Timing Bell, explains Karine Rajoelisolo-Debergue.
The artist and doctoral student at UQAM studies the relationship between humanitarian work and indigenous people. She did her master's research on artistic intervention and the work team in the humanitarian field. “Art can have different intentions and should be used on a receptive audience. In these two projects [of Artivista in Tripoli and of Utopia in Al-Qalamoun], we can ask ourselves if it was the right time,” asks the doctoral student, who recalls that there is a difference between humanitarian aid and development aid.
Humanitarian aid responds to emergency situations, while development aid is aimed at persistent problems. “When there is an emergency, it is not the time to propose art,” explains Ms. Rajoelisolo-Debergue. However, Lebanon is currently experiencing the worst economic crisis in the world since 1850: the currency has lost 90% of its value, 82% of the population lives below the poverty line, and two-thirds of Lebanese people are skipping a meal. “We want something that is beneficial for us as human beings, not just a nice view of the outside. We want nothing but our basic rights: most of the children in the neighborhood fall asleep without eating or drinking,” sighs Sabah Ali Jawhar. In this context, projects focusing on food or basic infrastructure might have been more appropriate.
For less colonial art...
However, art can really have immediate effects on stress, mental health and the resilience of populations, says Ms. Rajoelisolo-Debergue.
“The practice plays on affect, on creativity, but also on the commitment of the population”, continues the researcher. She argues that artistic expression initiated by local populations “can be part of the solution and lead to decolonial forms of development assistance.” For her, the most important thing is to adapt artistic projects to the real needs of the inhabitants. This is confirmed by Maika Sondarjee. According to her, North-South artistic exchanges must continue. “We need to bring Canadian artists to see what artists from other countries are doing, for example.
A lot can be learned from the Global South. But we must stop sending young people with Quebec without borders to “help” populations in countries of the South,” she says. “To help in a less colonial way, you must work fully with a local organization and arrive there without preconceived ideas about the project. That is the most difficult thing, because you have to agree not to impose graffiti if the population wants something else,” continues the researcher.
... and less colonial international aid
“The work of a northern NGO in a southern country is not necessarily a problem; it is how you do it that can be problematic,” explains the professor of international development. For Sondarjee, the big problem lies in the condescending and patronizing side of international cooperation. She maintains that, to avoid this trap, local movements and the ways in which populations act should be made more visible. A point that seems to have been taken up by Artivista, which in particular involved a university and a school in anti-corruption workshops.
However, Maïka Sondarjee points out that it is not enough “to include to be decolonial”. “You can try to be innovative, to do things differently, and this can be interesting if the initiative is local, but this is often done at the expense of the real needs of the populations”, she explains.
These words were confirmed by people met in Bab el-Tebbaneh. There, there is a growing need for justice and equality. “Here, there is no justice, the government has made us poor. In Beirut, it's different, there's money, it's like Italy seen from here,” says the mother of the family, whose son has been living in boarding school in the capital and another has been in prison for five years, without trial.
In her smiling face, only the eyes and wrinkles evoke the difficulty of the neighborhood's living conditions. Bab el-Tebbaneh has a reputation for being a dangerous, violent area, plagued by delinquency. For Ms. Jawhar, these are the consequences of poverty and underdevelopment wanted by the centralized state. “Most children here have no education or work, they are powerless, and when you have this kind of situation, it results in violence,” she sighs.
How NGOs affect civil society
It is precisely these structural inequalities that NGOs do not help to eliminate. “Humanitarian aid and development aid do not change the system,” says Clothilde Facon, a doctoral student at the Sorbonne Paris Nord. For her, the very large number of NGOs — which are very attractive, among other things, by offering above-average salaries — “divert” young people who are involved in activism, politics or civil society into development aid. This is the famous “ONGization” that she studies in her research. “NGOs depoliticize what is happening in Lebanon. We are simply approaching the situation through a purely humanitarian prism,” she laments. The problem?
This is killing civil society. “As soon as there is a political or activist goal behind a project, it loses its funding and its visibility. This creates a dichotomy between overvalued humanitarian NGOs, and those from civil society, which lack resources,” she explains.
For her, supporting more alternative local political organizations would be an essential avenue for initiating real change. “The work of these Lebanese organizations is essential to reform the political system, which is problematic,” stresses the researcher.What if, in order to help, we stopped wanting to help? For Maika Sondarjee, it would rather be a question of promoting “radical solidarity” between allies. “We could see redistribution as an act of social justice,” she continues. To stop considering the Global South as a place where famines and humanitarian crises are concentrated would thus show that the battles waged in Lebanon and elsewhere are often the same as in Canada, since they focus on wages, women's rights, social rights, social rights, social rights, housing, racism, inequalities.
*Some comments were collected with the help of Rayanne Tawil