Stories from Dortmund will be transformed into the city’s first urban art route

The route will feature 15 murals by artists from all over the world

On 13 August, artists will start creating Dortmund’s first art route on its streets. The process will take place until 21 August and will adorn the city with 15 murals, based on the stories of 100 people who love their hometown.

During that time, the drawing will take place along a small booth that will turn the drawing process into a mini festival for the neighbourhood that will host the murals - Hörde. There, people will be able to meet the artists coming from places like Europe, Colombia and Canada.

An urban sound collage turned into visuals

The art route in Dortmund actually started as a sound collage, before it was ready to be turned into visuals. Local artist Silvia Liebig interviewed 100 people about how they felt about their hometown and later interwove the recordings with archived sounds to create a sound collage/performance, called ‘Brückengeschichten’ (Bridge Stories).

The piece premiered on 12 May in the Lutheran Church in Hörde, along with a first glimpse of what will later become the mural tour. This, consequently, would be the second phase of the project, where the personal audio experience is going to be transformed into a visual one, curated by local emotions to produce international interpretations.

This is because only 5 out of the 15 artists will be German. The others are from the UK, Italy, and France, but also from Colombia, Israel and Canada. Here is the line-up:

Mason (Dortmund), Roids (UK), Broken Fingaz (Israel), Popay (France), Ericailcane (Italy), Bastardilla (Colombia), Troy Lovegates / Other (Canada), Carolina Falkholt (Sweden), Aris (Italy), Katja Bot (France), Ursula Meyer (Essen), JuMu Monster (Berlin), Giza One (Cologne), Anna Schuldig (Bochum).

After work is complete on 21 August, the creators will give a free guided tour of the whole route, after which it will stay open to the public at no cost.