Winter Olympics Protest Piece with Pictures

To time with the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics, IDa4 produced  a new mural to

 highlight the plight of the LGBT community & their supporters in Russia.

Despite seven months of international outcry, Russia's law restricting gay-rights activity remains in place.

This new mural was a protest to the way that the LGBT community has been vilified in Russia with the recently passed Gay propaganda law.  This inhumane new law will be in full effect at the Sochi Winter Olympics. 

With the backing of local business man Adrian Gadd, who owns a number of businesses within the Newcastle gay quadrant, IDa4 painted his protest mural on a prominent wall within Newcastle city centre. This will hopefully serve to be a sign of support from the people of Newcastle and especially the North East  LBGT community.

We timed this to be in conjunction with the opening weekend, to show the IOC, its huge cooperate sponsors and the general public the reality of this brutal new law and that LGBT people must not be targeted with violence or deprived of their ability to advocate for their own equality.


We were fortunate, that this piece was picked up by the local and national media, and this piece went viral.

We had emails from all over the world, from Brazil to Australia.  But the ones that really made us feel like it was worth it, was from a gay teenager in Russia thanking us for raising awareness to this issue.

I'll not put all the links up from the numinous websites, but i think the best and most meaningful one was from The Guardian news paper, a UK national news agency.

Sochi Winter Olympics: Newcastle street art protests against Russia's anti-gay laws - video

Thanks for all the message of support.

14# IDa4 MURAL IN EUROPE:Ljubljana, Slovenia. BIT Center Hotel

About the BIT Center Hotel

The Bit Centre hotel Ljubljana was completely renovated at the beginning of 2012.  And as you can tell, for the first time on our travels we stayed in a HOTEL, instead of a hostel.  The BIT Hostel and Hotel are linked and in the same building, as much as we like staying in hostels (we find them the best way to meet people, be it fellow travellers or people from the local area) we made the most of our stay at the Hotel.  

This was a BIT of luxury, with a flat screen TV, en suite facilities, this was the first time we hardly ever ventured outside, (this might have also due to the fact that the Slovenian winter had descended on us and was -5 outside).  

We were also at the tail end of our trip and it was nice just to relax a bit, and take in what we had achieved in the 4 months we had been away. 

We took the relaxing to the max and used all of the facilities in the hotel, which had a huge private gym and a sports hall  , we relaxed in the Sauna, we pondered in the Bar and we finally contemplated over the lovely breakfast.

The staff at this hostel/hotel just like all our previous experiences were spot on, and were made very welcome.

About the Art

We were asked to decorate one of the hotel rooms, with a theme from our travels and  we thought that a montage in browns would suit the room and the surroundings

We had quite a selection of stencils to use after 14 hostels, so we went about and changed this room and hopefully it will put a smile on peoples faces when they stay in the room.

have a look at the video

IDa4 painting the BitHostel, ljubljana slovenia


PHOTOS