The school’s aim in setting up the Mail Art project was to create a communications pathway between its pupils and the prisoners in Ghent prison on Nieuwewandeling.
Prisoners can only communicate with the outside world through letters. Other communication methods (mobile phones, email) are forbidden. A creative correspondence using images and text resulted in an intense interaction between the prisoners and the Art Institute pupils.
In practice, this meant that both parties could artistically shape the postcards using text and images in a range of different materials (mixed media, recovery and recycling of materials, etc.). The postcards, the creative result of this postal traffic, were subsequently enlarged and exhibited on the façade of the school building on Ottogracht.
The initiator of this project was Luc Dondeyne, painter and tutor of printmaking at the Art Institute. This project fulfilled one of the key goals of the TRACK project: to stimulate contact between different communities within the city and to encourage participation.
