Legal graffiti – tool for youth engagement or gateway to vandalism?

This is a feature from sister publication Community Aware that looks into whether legal graffiti projects can have a positive impact on communities…

As the sun dawned on Bristol City Art Gallery, the queue outside had already begun to snake around the metal barriers. Hundreds of people stood in the street, gathered behind a road block, in the vain hope of avoiding a lengthy wait to see the most popular British art exhibition of 2009. But perhaps the most startling aspect of the spectacle was not the size of the crowd but its diversity.

Instead of the usual mix of children on school trips, elderly couples and art students, the crowd looked like a snapshot of modern Britain. People of seemingly every age and ethnicity waited together, patiently but excitedly, for up to six hours, eager to spend the last bank holiday of the summer in a public gallery.

Strange then, that the show was being put on by an artist whose stock in trade is often thought of as the visual embodiment of ‘broken Britain’. Graffiti artist Banksy, a shadowy figure thought to be a native of the city, had secretly arranged to put on the solo show for just £1 provided the gallery’s CCTV was switched off and his identity was protected. The veil of secrecy was a reminder that although his commercial work now fetches six figure sums, the street graffiti with which he made his name is a criminal offence.

But how to reconcile this idea of graffiti as anti-social crime with the sight that greeted early risers in Bristol? While the street signatures (commonly known as tags) that blight towns across the UK have few fans, the type of bold, conceptual works created by Banksy and other street artists have led to graffiti gaining a surge in popularity. And local authorities, eager to regenerate areas and engage with the public, are taking note. The only concern is, do legal opportunities reduce tagging or encourage it?

Julie Freeman, manager of a company that collaborates with communities to create large-scale legal pieces, has been involved in the graffiti scene for years. She explained the difference between what councils, youth groups and schools ask Signal to do and what you are likely to see scribbled on a shop shutter. “As soon as you hear ‘graffiti’ then it’s naturally associated with tagging,” she says. “That’s just one tiny bit of the whole graffiti scene. What we do is involve entire communities in helping to take ownership over their outside environment and get them to help us paint murals and change the environment they live in.”

She explains that they are often brought in when changes are occurring in an area and asked to consult with residents. The artists then use street art to pictorially reflect the stories that they uncover and that way the community gains a sense of ownership of their environment. “And part of the reason we do that is to combat some of the tagging and illegal graffiti that happens in certain areas,” she says.

Since joining the London-based company almost a year ago, she has been involved in a number of public art projects and youth workshops. But although it’s not surprising that young people are receptive to the art form, does everyone in the community really get behind the work they create? She tells the story of one project designed to bring residents together that led to street art winning some quite unexpected fans.

“We did a big project in a place called Stanwell – a small village at the end of the Heathrow runway – and we involved all different sections of the community: primary school kids, teenagers classed as ‘at risk’ as well as people from the Women’s Institute (WI).

“They were quite hard to get on board so our artists went with the WI into their groups and they sat and talked to them and listened to their stories. And we got the youngsters from the primary school to interview the older people and to ask whether they would tell us a bit about what this place used to be like 50 years ago and whether they would like to see that depicted as a story on the wall. And they were like, ‘Yeah, that would be great’. So we incorporated their memories into the piece and they really loved it.”

Crime

PCSO Lorraine Moore, who is responsible for tackling problems like illegal graffiti in Peterborough, can see the benefit of such projects. Like Julie, she wants to crack down on the tags that have started to spring up and believes that increasing the pride that local people have for their area is vital.

To explain why, she points to the broken window theory; the idea that illegal graffiti, as a sign of crime and neglect, increases residents’ fear or crime while decreasing potential criminals’ fear of getting caught. The result is that low level disorder soon escalates, leading to more serious offences being committed.

For this reason she thinks it is beneficial that young people have a place where they can come and express themselves artistically without breaking the law. “There’s quite a few [legal walls] about in Peterborough,” she says. “The kids that do work on graffiti walls are really good at what they do and I believe that they need somewhere to actually do it – certainly if it does look nice and they do it properly.”

But just 60 miles away, in Nottingham, the council have announced a ban on all legal graffiti walls in the area and begun painting over existing sites. Like PCSO Lorraine Moore, they believe that signs of neglect are at the top of a slippery slope down to increased criminality. Unlike her though, they don’t discriminate between different types of graffiti on the basis of quality.

While they have stopped short of an outright ban on all organised mural projects, Council leader Jon Collins is unequivocal in his condemnation of what he sees as a social menace. “Graffiti is something that residents find annoying and offensive”, he says. “It is not feasible to say that graffiti is OK here but not there, so the city council is clearly stating that we will not tolerate graffiti anywhere in Nottingham.”

However, the move comes in stark contrast to the plans of Bristol council, owners of the gallery that hosted Banksy’s ground-breaking solo show. Having already pledged to protect any of the artist’s work found on council property, they are currently finalising a plan that will allow residents to vote on whether other illegal pieces are spared from the clean up crew.
“We have said informally that if it is street art that people like we will keep it, but we want to formalise it now into a policy,” says councilor Gary Hopkins, cabinet member for environment and community safety. “People want us to keep up the war against the taggers so we have had to work out a way to differentiate between the taggers and the artists”.
Photographs will be posted on the council website giving the public the chance to voice their opinions. It has already been done once before and, perhaps to the surprise of Nottingham council, it suggested a high level of public backing for street art. A Banksy piece, showing a naked man hanging out of a window to escape his lover’s partner, appeared on a council-owned building in 2005, sparking debate over whether it should be removed. The council set up an online poll and found that a massive 93% of those voting said they wanted to keep it.

Consequences

Julie Freeman is an avid supporter of the Bristol council policy and predicts that it will have a positive impact on the local environment. “People who are doing graffiti will think that suddenly someone is taking notice of the art work they are doing and the standard of graffiti will go up and people will stop tagging over things,” she says. And she believes the result will be more artwork that will improve neighbourhoods rather than damage them.

For Nottingham, however, she fears the worst. “They will find that they have a lot more problems than they’ve had in the past. The kids into graffiti aren’t just going to decide to stop. How are they going to express their creativity and let their voices be heard? You have to make compromises for what young people want even if you don’t agree with it. And that’s the trouble with some councils.”

Steve Stott, manager of Nottingham’s public realm team, disagrees. The unit he heads was set up with the intention of making Nottingham the cleanest city in England by 2011 and graffiti is firmly on the agenda. He is adamant that legal walls are like a honey pot to illegal graffiti and maintains that the local authority has the right idea. “The Council has considerable evidence which shows that both public areas and private properties/businesses surrounding sites where graffiti has been permitted may be prone to extensive tagging. This constitutes criminal damage,” he says, before adding: “This is not about stifling creativity; it’s about tackling criminal damage.”

Like everyone I talked to, Signal boss Julie is opposed to illegal tagging. However, she sees creative potential in the taggers and likens them to “trainee artists”. She believes that they are just lacking the guidance and the skill to fulfil their potential and express themselves artistically and responsibly. That’s part of what her company is about, she says. As well as teaching kids about perspective, colour and typography, the artists also guide impressionable youths in the right direction.

“When we show our work shop attendees the work we produce they are like, ‘Oh my God, this stuff is brilliant’ and then suddenly they want to be making stuff like that – they don’t want to be just writing their names.”

“And the way that our artists have all come up through the streets themselves means that they have a good rapport with the young people that they work with. Once they see that they are quite cool and they make this art work then they are more likely to copy them because they have good examples; role models. And they talk to them about how tagging other people’s property is not what you should be doing.”

But while everyone seems to be in agreement that tagging needs to be stopped, there are still those who doubt the value of legal street art. Julie, though, thinks the tide might be turning in graffiti’s favour. And as evidence she points back to that sunny Bank Holiday in Bristol. “The definition of graffiti is very important in the conversation and the term ‘street art’ is helping it to become acceptable. And because of Banksy and the fact he is in the mainstream and a cultural icon, that makes our job a little bit easier now. People’s perceptions are changing.”