Please tell us why you would be suitable for this position, how you meet the criteria stated

in the person specification for this role and any further information that would support your
application. We encourage you to use examples to demonstrate this. Please use the space
below to write

I am writing with great interest and enthusiasm to apply for this job opportunity, of Artist
Educator at Bow Arts. I am incredibly interested in this job opportunity, as it feels a
continuation of all the work I’ve been doing since I started my career, as an artist and as an
artist educator. I am very excited at the opportunity of joining the Learning team of Bow Arts.

As a visual artist, urban artist and arts educator a lot of my work focuses on crossovers.
Collaborating with people from a variety of fields I research and explore how urban art is
developed and integrated throughout different genres of art. With this creative dynamic and
the possibility of communication and performance that the streets provide, I create site-
specific work which aims to reactivate the attention in public spaces as well as the viewers
experience. The work seeks to act as a speaker and story teller. Offering visibility to the
protagonists of the portraits and their stories. I want to encourage reflections around issues
related to queerness, loneliness, distance, love and isolation. The streets and cities are our
greatest galleries and the most accessible to all communities within a city.

As an artist educator, the chance to be part of Bow Arts gives me the chance to meet other
artists with different perspectives, which can bring another dimension towards my work as an
artist educator. I’m a very passionate person, communicative, a team worker, social and a hard
worker. As an artist educator I have wide experience planning projects, collaborating with
teachers and organizations. I have high experience working with children and young people.
My career as an artist educator is mainly focused in the “mural” and “urban art” practice, but it
also includes a diversity in other art practices not involved with the urban arts. I will develop
some of those projects a bit better below.

Reading about the Bow Arts Learning program, I’m feeling really connected with it. My practice
and work, sets from the same perspectives and values. I want to highlight one artistic
educative project I had been working with, which is not about muralism or urban art, and it is
called Interseccions Visual Arts project, in which I was involved over two years as an artist
educator (2020-22). This is a city program, promoted by El Prat de Llobregat City Council
(Barcelona), to improve people’s quality of life. This project conceives of art as a
transformative tool, empowering the critical gaze of students to promote collective reflection
based on artistic processes. The proposals of each school are designed jointly by teachers and
the School of Visual Arts of El Prat (where I was also working at that time), and are connected
to the social fabric of the city. This project is associated with the visual arts learning
environment and is carried out in collaboration with 1 school, 1 special education school and 1
high school. Like Bow Arts programme, one of the main goals of Interseccions Visual Arts
project is to create artist-led projects for children and young people built around individual
school priorities, and to collaborate with teachers and other members of the project. Like in
Bow Arts program, it searches an impact within the local community through art. This project I
took part in is associated with the visual arts learning environment, the aim of which is to
provide a meeting space where teachers and artists educators share the status of the projects
and the related concerns, challenges and resources. With this project we are equipping the
teaching community with new teaching resources, increasing their confidence as art learners
and giving them a broader experience and perspective, which they can be able to apply at their
own lessons in the future. Another highlight of this project is the accessibility; we create
projects based on the circumstances, needs of the children and the context in where the
project will develop, making it more suitable and relatable to them. Art is a way to give them
more self-determination, happiness, and to process feelings in order to achieve better
communication skills.

In my opinion, these projects are a powerful tool for personal and collective transformation;
they promote an integral development of the person, they help to broaden the gaze on what
surrounds us and its complexity. They enhance the recognition of diversity and enrich the view
of ourselves and others. They nurture creativity and the construction of shared universes; they
generate knowledge.

With this project I took part as an artist educator, it shows how similar and connected are
those projects with the Bow Arts program. I do think with my passion, experience and my
approach of understanding arts and education, I would be very suitable for this position, I
could give a good project for Bow Arts. Putting the community in the centre of the creation, in
order to find innovative approaches to overcome barriers and to inspire younger generations.

About “mural” and urban arts projects, “Intergenerational Mural” (2018) is one of the projects
I fondly remember; it was my first time collaborating with young and elder people at the same
time, sharing experiences and working together in order to be able to create a mural near the
organization’s headquarters. This project was commissioned by The Red Cross from La
Garrotxa (Spain). The mural represents a very special living room. This project I directed
runned for a month, and on the first weeks, the kids met the group of elder women who live in
the protected residence of the Red Cross, which aims to improve social relations in their own
and community environment, as a basis for promoting social participation and to address
loneliness and the improvement of intergenerational relations, motivating social development
to be a key pillar in improving their quality of life.

During those weeks the young volunteers of the Red Cross visited some of the women living
there, they shared life experiences and spent great moments together. After those
conversations they got different objects, important or illustrative from their lives, and they
represented it painted in the mural. The radio that Ms Fina, a blind lady, listens to, the old
ticket of the Barcelona underground to talk about Rosa’s experience as a worker there, or two
red dancing shoes, are some of the elements depicted in the mural. The technique we used to
do paint this mural was the stencil, which was great to help us to paint and to have a great
result without having a painting background. This mural wants to represent old age, with low
veins and from a feminine perspective, and had arisen from the collaboration between two
generations of the Red Cross. This was one of the first collaborative projects I did as an artist,
which was the beginning of my following experience as an artist educator. I discovered my real
vocation, and it was connected directly from the art, and what I understand and believe from
Art. For me the work I do as an artist and the work I do as an artist educator comes from the
same place, they are inseparable, and they grow on the same direction. About my experience
being an artist educator in terms of the audience I work with, it is very diverse. I’ve been
working with kids up to 3rd years old to people of 80 th years old, even though my biggest part of
experience is in projects involving kids and teenagers. I had been working in a School of Arts
with kids from 4 until 12 years old for two years.

Another project I directed is “Vincles”, a project fostered by the Contorno Urbano Foundation
and the Municipality of Sant Vicenç dels Horts (Catalonia), which aims to improve the urban
landscape of the town through participatory processes with neighbours and different
organisations. The project potentiates the work in community in order to create different
murals around the town, with the participation of professional artists who work alongside the
citizens and local organisations. I spent between 5 and 10 days in the village to work with the
community and the community participated in all the artistic phases, that is, from design to
execution. The theme of the mural was chosen collectively from entities, residents of the
municipality. The stairs that connect the streets of the Sant Josep neighborhood are a
necessary means of communication to intertwine. For some people, they are a source of
memories and anecdotes, for others, the result of hard work and effort with a great outcome
in common. This intervention seeks to enrich the experience of walking around the
neighborhood, giving color and transforming the neighborhood with the same neighbors and
streets.

As a conclusion, I would like to express my great enthusiasm to be a part of the artists

educators of Bow Arts learning community. I have an immense amount of interest to be
involved with this and I cannot wait to start working on new processes, contexts, and needs,
collaborating with schools, artists and the Bow Arts team.

I really hope you consider me as a possible candidate and I look forward to hearing back from

you.

Yours sincerely,

Eduard S. Soy

Picture of one moment in the class for the Interseccions Visuals Arts project. In this year we worked
around food as a key element about health, but also as a ritual space to share. School Pepa Colomer, El
Prat (Spain).
Painting a mural together, the process. At Red Cross La Garrotxa, Olot (Spain).

Mural painted by the Youth Center of Cassà, Girona (Spain).

Project made in collaboration with the Iris Foundation where we painted the stairs from Sant Joan de
Déu Hospital, Barcelona (Spain).

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Under the artistic name of RICE, Eduard Sacrest Soy (Olot, 1993) was graduated from Fine Arts
at the University of Barcelona. As a visual artist his artistic work deployed mostly by interacting
with the public space, using the environment and its landscape as a platform to interact and to
express his interests, concerns, and reflections. His work is seen not only in urban surfaces and
walls but also in galleries and museums across different cities around the world. Frankfurt Am
Main, Berlin, Paris, Utrecht, London and Barcelona are some of the cities where his work can
be found.

Initiated in the technique of oil painting from an early age, it was not until he arrived in
Barcelona when he was first motivated by the diverse and vibrant urban culture that the
surroundings offered. There he began attempting to paint with aerosols whilst trying to
maintain his painting technique and form of portraiture in this new venture; improving it and
adapting it to the conditions of the public spaces with an intention of creating dialogue with
the many spectators in a city.

With this creative dynamic and the possibility of communication and performance that the
streets provide, he creates site-specific works in where to reactivate the attention in public
spaces. Seeking to act as a speaker and story teller in hope of offering visibility to the
protagonists of his portraits. Through their stories activating a reflection around issues related
to queerness, loneliness, distance, love and isolation.

With a pictorial practice that combines studio and street work he is also passionately linked
with different educational and social projects, taking mural painting and urban art as a
pedagogical tool for the community and engine of change.

He has been exhibiting in national and international galleries like the Surface Gallery
(Nottingham), The Visual Aids (NYC), the Spanish Embassy (Washington, DC), or more recently
at the Museu de la Mediterrania (Tossa, Spain), amongst others. He also has been developing
different mural projects, participating in festivals for urban arts and linked to many different
participative projects developing social awareness.
Mural made for the UdG (University of Girona), Girona 2021 (Spain).

Mural made for the Transgender Day of Visibility, Barcelona 2021 (Spain)
Mural made for the IBUg Street Art Festival, Chemnitz 2019 (Spain).