What I did
I came up with the idea of painting the mural with pollution itself, and ran the programme end to end: the competition across 4,000 colleges, the masterclasses and the final wall in Delhi.
What was broken
India has 14 of the world's 20 most polluted cities, and Delhi often tops the list. Students know the climate is in trouble and they want to act, but they rarely get a real platform or real resources to do it.
What we noticed
Dell Futurist exists to turn young people's passions into careers through technology. The most powerful thing we could give students wasn't a lecture on sustainability. It was the chance to make something the whole city would see.
What we made
Dell Futurist Sustainability+Art challenged students across India to show their sustainability ideas through art. The winners would paint the most sustainable mural in the country, using ink made from the very pollution it was about.
The ink was AIR-INK by Graviky Labs, made by capturing carbon soot from the air. The mural's own words say it best: "Six hundred air-conditioners on a cloudy day, a flight to Mumbai to watch the last game before the summer break, forty test drives on the latest sedan, a glass factory on a Sunday, and twenty-four thousand cigarettes is all that went into making this mural. Made from the soot in the air that you breathe everyday."
Wipe the smog off the wall to see what the students painted.
How it actually happened
We partnered with 4,000 colleges and universities. Students attended masterclasses with Anirudh Sharma, co-founder of Graviky Labs, and the artist Kunel Gaur of Art&Found. Because of COVID-19 restrictions, the team planned and designed the mural over virtual sessions.
Five students were mentored by the experts and five were chosen to design the mural with the artist. Together they painted it on a 35-foot wall in Delhi.
The bragging bit
The point was never just the mural. It was that students made it.
“Dell Futurist Sustainability+Art has been built over a span of 4 months, with partners from across the country and 4000 colleges and universities.”
Who made it
- Agency
- Flux@The Glitch (part of VMLY&R)
- Partners
- Graviky Labs (AIR-INK), Art&Found
