A spotlight on: LUU’s restored Chilean mural

It’s been a long time since campus was at its busy and bustling best, leaving staff and students alike missing our brilliant site and all it has to offer.

You may have heard about one of the Union building’s most special features, a mural dating back to 1976 uncovered during a building upgrade 40 years later – but do you know its story?

The mural & its restoration

This fascinating piece of history – a mural depicting miners and agricultural workers, accompanied by the Spanish for ‘And there will be work for all’ – was painted by Chilean students and activists who left their country to escape persecution at the hands of General Pinochet’s regime. As well as highlighting the dictatorship and the plight of the Chilean people, the mural acts as a symbol of workers’ solidarity, and reflects LUU’s track record of supporting student political expression as well as the importance of welcoming refugees into our communities.

Thanks to a £16,300 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the mural was carefully restored by artist Kasia Breska and members of the Chilean community in 2018, and today is available to see in one of LUU’s student advice rooms.

The restoration project helped re-establish the mural’s cultural significance as a piece of community and political art, within both the Chilean and local communities. It’s well worth a look, but due to its location you’ll need to make an appointment to see it once we’re all back on campus. Just send over an email to mural@luu.org.uk to get your slot.

Gilberto Hernandez, one of the students who painted the mural, said:

“This mural is very meaningful to me, I helped to paint it together with other refugees when I was a student in Leeds after being exiled from Chile. It  has a strong meaning to me because it denounces the crimes committed by the Pinochet dictatorship and still acts as a symbol of solidarity and friendship for the people who have been persecuted by dictators and continues to show hope for refugees.”

Our partners

Resources

In the meantime, we have a range of online media resources from the Pinochet regime available for you to explore, reflecting life in Leeds for the Chilean community and activist movement. If you’d like access to the resources, please send us an email.

During the restoration project, a team of Leeds MA students worked to collect oral histories of the mural, working with the Chilean community to document the history of the mural and the stories of those who created it. Listen to these insightful conversations here.