Mediaboss Marketing

TUCSON, AZ (Tucson News Now) -

The end of the year is often a time for personal reflection. It's an opportunity to look back but also to consider hopes and resolutions for the future.

One project is giving communities a chance to dream out loud.

When artist Candy Chang lost someone very close to her, she didn't grieve in a therapist's office. She grieved on a chalk board.

"I painted the side of this abandoned house in my neighborhood in New Orleans with chalkboard paint and then stenciled it with the grid of this sentence "before I die I want to," Chang said. "So anyone who walked by could pick up a piece of chalk and reflect on their lives."

What Chang didn't expect was that these reflections would start a global movement.

Her "Before I Die" project has spread to 400 walls in more than 60 countries.

"These walls are kind of an honest mess." Chang said, "An honest mess of the longing and pain and joy and insecurity and gratitude and fear and wonder that you find in every community."

Communities like Paterson, NJ, where graduate student Nkem Okakpu took up the project.

"This is a non-judgmental zone," Okakpu said. "You can write whatever you want. No one will judge you for wanting to rave in a sunset in Ibiza or wanting to buy your son a home, and wanting to get off drugs."

Read the original here:
Project born in grief spreads chance to dream worldwide