Category: Blog

A movement, an accumulation of styles, a powerful public display of creativity or a social critique, Urban Art can be regarded from many different angles.

If you’ve ever walked the streets of Berlin, you were probably struck by the abundance of versatile artistic creations, which embellish the walls of the city. Proudly carrying the title of a “street art capital” Berlin is a city covered in art, from its pavements to the rooftops.

This week Ben Eine paid tribute to the victims of June’s horrible fire at Grenfell Tower with a new mural at the Village Underground in Shoreditch.

Following in the wake of this year’s hugely successful Nuart Aberdeen, Zap Graffiti were throwing their maiden festival, Contrast Mural Festival, in Liverpool.

Cities have soul and character; there are an undeniable charisma and vibe about them and, often, there’s a sort of personification of the city, somehow ‘speaking’ to us. Berlin is one city with a lot to say, expressing it’s voice through many kilometres of intriguing street art, urban murals, and graffiti.

Our friend Danila Shmelev just wrapped up a giant new mural on the streets of Odintsovo in Russia for the first edition of the Urban Morphogenesis Festival.

After three graffiti artists were killed by a train, our writer speaks to veterans of the scene – and enters a clandestine world of kings, tags, throw-ups and toys.

You can’t ask for a more colourful lens on the world than to view it through its street art. In any city you’re in, take a longer look at the painted, tagged, stickered or wheat-pasted facades around you, and you’ll get a story about a place — usually, a different story than what the local…

A few months ago, we paid a visit to the Motor City. Only a few years ago, Detroit was the biggest graffiti playground in North America and possibly the world.

Just over a week ago Edinburgh welcomed the latest legal graffiti wall, incidentally also now the longest in the UK, with a monumental jam at Leith Docks. The 330m smooth surface outdoes the current record held by Dundee’s legal wall (190m) by some margin, and promises plenty of exciting outdoor creativity in the near future.