Rubí claims COLOR as a city brand

Mayor Ana María Martínez Martínez and city councilman for City Promotion, Moisés Rodríguez Cantón, along with the director of edRa Art & Design School, Candi Casedevall Carreras, and street artist Urih, presented a new campaign for the city this Tuesday. Under the name COLOR, it takes colours as an impetus for promoting actions in the public space. ‘The idea sprang from our city’s name: Rubí. There are only some 20 cities in the world bearing names of colours and, in our case, colour goes beyond the visual sense and also refers to our diversity and plurality,’ explained the mayor. The proposal will be structured around actions in the public arena with colour as a common denominator ‘to claim colour as a part of our identity and to quash the mistaken idea that Rubí was a mere dormitory town,’ concluded Martínez.

The first of these actions is the mural in Plaça Constitució, inspired by the story Little Red Riding Hood and created by local artist Urih, from the local association Petados Crew. He finished the piece on 13 March, although it could not be publicly presented due to the Covid-19 health emergency. The mural is the largest project ever created by the artist, who explained that ‘for a street artist, being able to paint that wall was wonderful’.

‘Filling the streets with colours right now, after nearly three months of confinement, also means bringing life back to the streets and starting to see our neighbours again,’ believes Martínez. The edRa Art & Design School is also participating in the initiative. Its director, Candi Casedevall Carreras, added that ‘at the school we work with colour in everything we do and when we received the commission, we started to work from Rubí’s red colour palette’. The campaign, coordinated from the city’s City Promotion Service, is cross-cutting for all municipal services, especially the areas of culture, youth and mobility, to name just a few.

The next action planned is the creation of a carpet in Rubí colours in Plaça Pere Esmendia, where the letters from the word ‘COLOR’ will be showcased. The Umbrella Project in the pedestrian promenade is also forecast for the short term, as well as different horizontal interventions to expand pedestrian zones to meet new mobility goals.

In the medium term, we will work on:

• International COLOR Network (led by the city of Vigo)
• Think Tank, Congress on COLOR
• Monument to COLOR (methacrylate with soil from all the territories that enrich Rubí)
• Full Colors, an autumn festival
• Revival of Mixing Colors, and in spring 2021 it will be established as one of the most important international festivals for linear artistic creation, due to the significant number of continuous metres of graffiti pieces
• Dividing wall competition
• ‘Murs lliures’ (Free Walls) project
• Aid to improve private façades with COLOR
• Local artists, ‘Ambassadors for Rubí and COLOR’ in the world