Copenhagen doesn’t have food banks… it has paint banks! That’s right, the welfare state tends to be so good in these parts that they’ve gone from food… to acrylics.
‘Paint It Forward’, a relatively new initiative in Copenhagen, helps to distribute paint, which would otherwise be burnt, to good causes and to those who need it most.
And there you thought the poor and needy didn’t need paint!
But it is logical! Painters are rarely successful in their actual lifetime. Few visits to an art exhibition end without a final revelation that ‘so and so’ died of tuberculosis in a cold, penniless place without a (painting) pot to piss in.
Huge demand from the public
From their distribution center in a basement on Lundtoftegade in Nørrebro, Paint It Forward typically distributes 200 and 300 kilos of paint over the course of two hours – such is the demand, KøbenhavnLIV reports.
When the initiative started – founder Lea Moltke-Leth was inspired by a news story about a family who couldn’t afford to pay for paint – Paint it Forward ran on a monthly basis, but it quickly increased to once every fortnight and as of today, once a week.
The amount on offer means that there is quite a wide range of colours. KøbenhavnLIV spoke to a couple who for years have not been able to afford the paint needed to revive a room with purple and yellow walls.
“The more you can give to those who have the least, the more important this project is to me. We have people who come and say, ‘I haven’t painted in 10 years,’ because they haven’t had the money to do it, and they get so crazy happy about this offer,” enthused one of the Paint it Forward volunteers, Mai Vanilli.
Donors and distributors are always welcome
Since the start, Paint it Forward has distributed a total of 11 tons of paint in collaboration with Copenhagen Municipality and Amager Resource Center.
Donations are always welcome: Fill a mason jar with leftover paint you won’t use and take it down to either Vermlandsgade Recycling Station in Amager or Bispeengen Recycling Station in Frederiksberg.
And it wouldn’t work without the end user either. Register for the next distribution evening via Paint It Forward’s Facebook page. Or alternatively, volunteer to help the cause!
Source: The Nordic Page