Graffiti Grannies

Several years ago, Daily Motion ran a video with the headline

Graffiti na terceira idade! Conheça o grupo Lata 65 de Lisboa

(“Senior citizen graffiti! Get to know the Lata 65 group from Lisbon.”)

In Portuguese, the phrase terceira idade, which translates literally as “third age,” refers to those people of retirement age. The name of the group, Lata 65, is both a nod to that age and also includes the word lata (“can”) in reference to spray paint. The video at the link above also includes this description:

Lata 65, a collective of elderly who make street art and graffiti in Lisbon, Portugal, is an absolute success on social media. Equipped with cans of spray paint and stencils, the members of the project take over walls in various regions, participate in artistic interventions in cultural festivals and shows, and gather in workshops with younger participants, in a creative mixture of generations. Lata 65 arose in 2012, during the first edition of the Urban Art Wool Festival, developed by Coworklisboa. The workshops gather people interested in mastering the technique and learning the history of graffiti. The students are older than 65, thus the name, Lata 65.