Papua New Guinea is famed for its tribal art – but a group of students and former street kids have been getting a chance to express themselves with modern street art.

Australian-based artist Regan Tamanui has been in Port Moresby teaching kids how to use stencils and spray cans to convey their artistic ideas.

A wall and its new stencil art adornments is part of the Australia Week cultural programme in Port Moresby, put on by the High Commission.

As well as nurturing young artists, the programme is part of wider efforts to decorate the city walls with street art and then coat it with a special clear layer that prevents graffiti.

While the problem of graffiti is not high on the list of challenges Port Moresby faces, there are efforts to beautify the capital in time for the Pacific Games next year.

The New Zealand-born, Melbourne-based Tamanui, known in the street art world as ‘Haha’, is a guest artist.

“The students who were doing the workshop, as well as other street artists, they’re doing really awesome stuff,” he said.

“And the interesting thing I noticed was some of the kids cut their stencils then took their t-shirts off and started spraying their t-shirts and then their school uniforms.

“And to me, that’s a sign of young creativity wanting to become unleashed.”

He said he did not hear any feedback on the spray-painted uniforms from the kids after they took them home to their parents.

“I don’t think I want to,” he said.

Keep Port Moresby Colourful organiser Sallyanne Mokis says the concept is working.

“I’ve found that because we used the kids that live in the settlements just behind the site where we worked on, I had kids from that area actually help with doing the artwork on that particular wall,” she said.

“We’ve found that in the last five months since the wall’s been up, no-one has touched it.

“So effectively what we’re doing is creating a sense of ownership amongst these young people so that they know that this is – ‘we’ve done this work, it belongs to us’.”

The tension between modern urban life and traditional cultural roots in Papua New Guinea is plain to see on the wall.

Stencils of pop art portraits sit alongside dugout canoes, tribal masks next to alien faces.

Martha Yagama, 13, is one of the new artists who gathered to admire their finished work sprayed onto a roadside wall.

“Well, I’ve done the UFO and the bird of paradise and some of the masks,” she said.

“Sometimes I feel kind of lost and stuff, so I just thought of drawing a UFO and Papua New Guinea.”