Room 13 kicks off in HCMC!

On Sunday, July 24^th, at 8:40am, 20 minutes before the official launch of Room 13 Vietnam, an 11 year old Long and his 9 year old sister Ngan arrived at the TBWA office. By 9am, the young artists were all seated and ready for Room 13 Vietnam.

"Ship offshore" by Ngan

The first day of Room 13 Vietnam was pretty organized, quiet, kind of like an art class. You could tell that the young artists were used to being students, being instructed by a teacher, so they were well behaved for the most part. Mr. Vo Binh, the artist in residence gently guided the young artists as they painted and we saw flowers, tigers, ships, a princess and a robot on the canvases on the first day.

Room 13 artists took to the walls of TBWA

Launching Room 13 in Vietnam was, without a doubt, exciting, but I’m more excited for a month, 3 months and 6 months later. What will come out of the young artists then? How will they be expressing themselves through art? How will they change when they see themselves as artists rather than students?

The goal is to encourage the young artists to have ownership of Room 13 Vietnam, to make decisions as to how to run the studio and how to sustain it.

We took a big step forward towards that goal on Sunday.  The amazing process has begun!