MAKING THEIR MARK: Teens create a stage set design as part of a City of Vaughan and A Stroke Of Art initiative to promote youth involvement in the community, positive graffiti and urban art education. (Courtesy David Di Benedetto)
You can fight fire with fire, or so the saying goes.
But can you fight graffiti with graffiti?
That’s what the City of Vaughan is pondering.
A community survey on the city’s website is asking residents whether they would support graffiti art murals in Vaughan and a permit system for businesses that want graffiti on their property.
The idea, says Safe City Committee chair and Ward 3 councillor Bernie DiVona, is graffiti with artistic merit in designated areas will help curtail inappropriate graffiti, such as gang-related territorial tagging. The city would encourage graffiti artists to use the medium as a form of legitimate expression.
A similar concept is employed in New York’s subway system, where panels are offered up for graf artists to show off their talent. It’s been successful so far, DiVona said.
“Graffiti can be a positive influence, be attractive,” he said. “But at the same time it has to be something where the ownership has to be taken care of. You just can’t go out and haphazardly paint all over the place.”
David Di Benedetto, a former graffiti artist and current creative director of Vaughan’s Urban Zen Studios, supports the idea.
He’s worked on murals with young adults at the Vellore Community Centre and educated them on spray can usage, the illegalities of graffiti and how it can be used as a positive force.
“Education is key,” Di Benedetto said. “If you tell someone, ‘No, you’re not allowed to do something,’ you can sure as hell bet they’re going to do it tenfold.”
Taggers are unwilling to deface someone else’s artwork, says York police gang prevention officer Shayne Mulligan, so murals should help reduce the incidence of nuisance graffiti. But there will always be holdouts that insist on making their mark wherever they want, he said.
“There seems to be a draw for taggers to the illegal portion of what graffiti offers,” he said. “It gives them that kind of rush: being out in the darkness at one o’clock in the morning, tagging up a building or powerbox, . . . and then having people see it the next morning and not know who it was and where it came from.”
The questionnaire is part of Vaughan’s ongoing war against graffiti. All responses are expected in by March 31.
Last year, the Safe City Committee initiated the Erase Graffitti program, which works in concert with York Regional Police’s own anti-graffiti program.
In November, the city received a $20,000 Safer and Vital Communities Grant from the province’s Community Safety Ministry to help stamp out tagging.
