The Belonging Trail is an expansive installation bringing lived experience of care boldly into public spaces around Scotland. Each mural was created through a collaborative creative process led by young people with experience of care, supported by Articulate and organisation local to them. During this process, young people commissioned a mural artist of their choice to bring the ideas to life.

 

Street art was chosen very intentionally. Public space has been a canvas for resistance throughout history, marking current times and expressing that which isn’t being heard. In communities it forms a place’s identity, becomes a conversation starter, or a battle for space. But not everyone feels equally entitled to take up space. Some of us grow up learning that existing too visibly is dangerous, in an environment where expressing yourself had consequences, where the more you made yourself small the better. 

 

The Belonging Trail celebrates loud expression rather than just tolerating it. It rewrites narratives about vicious young vandals and rogue lower art forms. Putting spray cans in the hands of care experienced young people - which likely would have been discouraged or banned in their care settings - and giving them access to gable end walls, the power to make a mark on their physical environment, we aimed to challenge stigma around care experience. 

 

Through delivering this arts engagement we also focused on 1) providing young people with individual skills and confidence and 2) strengthening community connections. Positive outcomes in these areas have been marked by formal qualifications young people have gained, what they have gone on to do after engagement, sustained collaborations and relationships in each locality and positive feedback from the public.