Saturday, October 06, 2007

A more lenient London council?


Someone from London sent Wooster Collective this scan of a survey that is currently being conducted amongst local residents by Tower Hamlets (Brick Lane's and most of ESP's) Council.

It looks as if the Council is considering keeping and preserving some of the iconic street art that graces the walls of London's East End. Clearly all of this is a reaction to the growing acceptance of Banksy's work that lead to the Bristol City Council holding a public debate and asking residents to determine the fate of a prominent Banksy piece in Bristol.

It's an interesting approach that certainly shows a shift in how cities are now dealing with the public's growing acceptance of street art. However, if you look closely at the small thumbnail images the Council provides in the questions, you can see a nicely painted door by Eine, followed by a door full of tags. If you ask me, of course tags are gonna be found to be offensive to local residents. They should have showed more murals/pieces instead. A great example of how the government only seems to do things in half-measures.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, thats a cool change for the better hopefully. Although most the photos on the council's forms could be better, at least the idea is in motion now. I think its a great idea, and hopefully will encourage better graffiti and st.art.
PHESP.

Scribe said...

Great to see some discussion going on, anyway. You might be interested in this Brighton article too, about the council removing some "fake" graffiti from the front of a gallery.

Anonymous said...

I really really hope this works and we see a more lenient system for the artists to get up in a less risky way. Although I do know that if I was an artist who gets a letter of consent from the council, I would be making hundreds of copies and givin it to all my mates to use in their future "projects"!

Anonymous said...

Hey scribe, just read the article of the Portslade Massif in Brighton. Very interesting, how cleaners ae put into a situation where they have to make a hasty judgement. Can't blame them really as they were doing their job but it does hark back to the question of what is art? Good Post ESP!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...