Daan Utsav volunteers give city railway stations an arty makeover

College students, school children, NGOs and working professionals came together to add some sparkle to the railway stations across the city, as a part of Daan Utsav (formerly known as Joy of Giving Week). This Utsav, which was launched in 2009, is celebrated every year from October 2 to 8, through various charity and public engagement events. 

Beautification underway: In Chennai, 19 stations have been earmarked for beautification. Work has already begun in most of the stations in the Chennai Beach-Tambaram Suburban line and the Velachery-Beach MRTS line. 

Selva Ganapathy, a member of AID India, one of the many NGOs participating in the Utsav, said, “The railway officials liked our proposal and have given us the go-ahead to beautify the walls of 23 stations. Currently, work is underway in 19 stations. The idea is to create engagement in public spaces and drive conversations through murals and art. We avoided logos and political messages,” said the volunteer, who was painting the walls of the Fort station on Monday. 

The murals are a way to encourage the public to stop spitting on the walls and defacing them. Art, said Namrata Ramaratnam of Paintbox, an organisation which paints art and poetry in public spaces, is the best way to engage with the public. “Problems of garbage and littering can be tackled through art. We have been doing this for more than three years and we found that people think twice before littering near our painted walls,” she said. 

Selfie spot in Tiruvanmiyur: Corporate organisations too are chipping in, using volunteering as a way to engage their employees. Tiruvanmiyur was turned into a ‘selfie spot’ by employees of an IT firm. 

An employee of the firm said, “Our employees and their families came forward to participate and it was a great team building exercise. We chose Tiruvanmiyur because many of our employees embark there and it is quite a crowded terminus. So, our design team chose interactive art to engage with the commuters, using existing props like benches to create ‘selfie spots’. For example, on one wall, we created a mural of a boy giving a rose. If you pose in front of it, the art gives the illusion that you are accepting the rose. On other walls across the station, we used funky pop-art to create a namma Chennai theme to pay a tribute to this city.”