[Dhaka, Bangladesh] – In August 2024, Bangladesh was rocked by an uprising that saw the fall of its government. As in many uprisings, the people used street art to voice their issues, hopes, wishes, frustrations, and desires. It became the voice of the people, a raw and unfiltered expression of their demand for fairness, equality, freedom, and justice.
However, as history often shows, once people’s power leads to change, their wishes are frequently ignored by the new government. Renaissance, a Bangladeshi publisher committed to championing freedom of expression, set out to ensure that the demands captured in street art didn’t fade away but were formalized in a way that the new government couldn’t ignore.
Renaissance embarked on an ambitious project to create The Walls of Change, a book that would capture the public’s voice and present it as a formal record for policymakers. The first step was photographing roughly 250,000 murals across the nation. These images were shared on social media, inviting people to vote for the messages that best captured the wishes of the people.
The most popular demands were then compiled and printed in a book, featuring 37 artworks that captured the essence of the people’s voice. This book was distributed to the new government, constitutional reform commissions, political leaders, and journalists as a formal record of the demands that emerged from the revolution.
To date, 12 of the demands from the murals have been turned into laws, marking a monumental step in the nation’s transformation.
The Walls of Change stands as a testament to how the voices of the people can not only bring down governments but also shape nations, ensuring that the wishes of the masses are heard and acted upon.
