Bhubaneswar: Residents of the city will now be actively involved in its beautification process with the Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited roping in members of the public in its ambitious Smart Park Artwork programme.

In a first-of-its-kind public art event, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation organised the day-long event to foster public art and community participation at parks at the redeveloped BDA Park on Sunday.

With features such as graffiti on the walls, amphitheatre and dedicated spaces for community gardening, this park is being developed along the child friendly design principles and the event added vibrancy, while consecutively engaging the citizens.

The event included kids, young volunteers from Humara Bachpan and the general public, who were guided by around 30 artists from Bakul Foundation how to paint a concept on a public space.

Artists and nearly 100 children of different age groups, along with city officials, community members and citizens created murals and art installations on the designated walls for art at the park's open air gallery.

The smart park has 12 designated walls for murals and graffiti. These walls will also double up as open-air art exhibition centres in the future. While the broader theme was "Art for Relaxation" or "Art as Therapy", the artists, divided into 12 groups, picked a theme of their own to create the murals on the walls. The kids and community members joined these groups and contributed in their own way.

Young artist Soumya Jena and his team depicted the popular story of the cow and the calf with the tiger through vibrant images and shadow puppetry on one of the walls, while artist Pinaki Mohanty and his team opted to paint birds based on the thought that parks were not only meant for humans, but also the fauna.

"The artists chose a variety of themes such as art installations using pieces of terracotta tiles to depict shadow puppetry, meditating Buddha and abstract forms of modern and contemporary art. It was a nice experience for all," said Pinaki.

More such events will be held at other parks in a phases, said sources in the smart city agency.