“Searching for street art is a little like going on a safari,” said Blue Badge Guide Harry Clayton. “You hope that you will see the Big 5 but you can never be sure because the artwork changes all the time.”
I had met Harry earlier in the afternoon at Old Street underground station, in north-east London. Lying on the edge of the city boundary, Old Street is, as Harry explained, “where money meets ideas”. In recent years it has become home to Europe’s largest cluster of tech start-ups, which is why you’ll often hear locals calling it ‘Silicon Roundabout’.
Old Street is a lively neighbourhood packed with bars, live music venues, late night clubs, vintage markets and buzzy hard-to-get-a-reservation-at restaurants. It’s also home to what feels like the longest underground station renovation in London. Work on the tube station – that sits in the large roundabout in the heart of Old Street – started in 2019 and was due to finish in “early 2024” although work shows no sign of finishing.
The neighbourhood is also the gateway to some of the best street art in London and, shortly after meeting Harry, we began walking east on our very own street art walking safari.
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A brief history of street art in London
Table of Contents
Graffiti and street art started in the US, in particular New York where young people – boys in particular – started spray painting their names and nicknames around the city, tagging every harder to reach places in a bid to impress their friends.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, these kind of graffiti games arrived in Britain and London’s street art scene started. London teens began tagging their names on building walls. Also influenced by punk rock and skinhead subcultures, early graffiti included perusal political beliefs.
It wasn’t until the 1990s that graffiti art turned into street art (graffiti art being predominantly letters and street art being more design-led). It was during this period that Banksy, arguably the world’s most famous graffiti artist, began working, painting his now infamous stencils around his hometown of Bristol.
During the 2000s, London’s Shoreditch became increasingly popular with street artists with murals slowly increasing in public spaces. At the same time, the streets and buildings of Brick Lane became increasingly popular canvases for artists to showcase their works.
Today, the east London neighbourhoods of Hackney Wick, Shoreditch and Brick Lane are where you will find some of the best and most famous street art in London. Other neighbourhoods for spotting global street art include Camden Town in north London, Walthamstow in north east London, the Southbank skate park, and Brixton in south London.
Leake Street Tunnel near Waterloo station is another great place to spy street art and you can often see street artists at work (it’s one of the stops along the Tally Ho! Bike tour of London. You can even pick up a can of spray paint yourself and unleash your inner Banksy.
Visit London in September and enjoy the London Mural Festival. Held over nearly three weeks, the festival sees some of the world’s best street artists come to the capital to create over 100 murals around different themes. The theme for 2024 is ‘connection’.
London street art walking tour
It wasn’t long before Harry and I came across our first street art pieces. A short walk from Old Street underground station we came across a piece by artists AYO Blake, a London street artist specialising in portraits with African faces being his signature style. Shortly afterwards, we spotted the first of half-a-dozen works by artist David Speed, an aerosol artist known for his signature neon pink portraits.
“We’ll spot a lot of David Speed’s work on our tour,” said Harry as we turned into Rufus Street and nearly ran into Marco, a street artist working on a large mural on the wall of Artisan Coffee. As he worked his way through a variety of spray cans to create the image of a woman’s face on the brick wall, he explained that he had been commissioned by the coffee shop to create this piece of work.
“We struck gold there,” said Harry as we walked away. “Seeing a street artist at work is really lucky.”
It seemed that our street art safari was off to a good start.
London tour guide
This was not my first tour with Harry. Almost a year previously, I met the then recently qualified Blue Badge Guide at the Tower of London for a family-friendly tour of one of the city’s most famous sights.
An ex-history teacher, Harry was a fantastic guide, keeping my then 13- and 8-year-olds captivated with his stories of the resident polar bear who used to swim in the River Thames, the two young princes who went missing, presumed murdered, and the legend of the tower ravens.
A year later and Harry has expanded his repertoire, leading private tours around both London’s most celebrated sights as well as some less well-known attractions. His street art tour is one of his newer tours, a guided walk through the east end of London, its street art movement and its ever-changing outdoor art gallery. It’s proved particularly popular with families (especially those with teens).
Where Harry’s tour differs from some of the other street art tours available is that his doesn’t focus just on the art. Instead, Harry’s tour is an insight into this ever-evolving corner of London and includes lots of historical facts, colourful anecdotes and personal stories, pointing out significant landmarks and shops, as well as artworks, that have helped to define the neighbourhoods.
Where to find the best street art in London
One of the tricky things about London’s street art is that the canvases – the building walls used by local street artists – are constantly changing. Harry explained that there’s an understanding between artists that their canvas might be painted over from one day to the next meaning that, as a visitor, you can never be exactly sure what you will see.
After chatting with Marco we paused briefly in Hoxton Square where a four-metre-high bronze sculpture by street artist Stik stands called ‘Holding Hands’. The statue was unveiled in September 2020 and is a 3D version of the stick men figures he has become famous for. The Hackney-based artist funded the art work himself as part of his commitment to inclusive public art.
From Hoxton Square we headed further east, passing a brightly coloured head by French artist and muralist Thierry Noir. Based in Berlin, he’s widely thought to be the first artist to paint the Berlin Wall in the 1980s. Today his (legal) murals can be seen on Berlin’s East Side Gallery.
Next is an image by Chilean artist Otto Schade, more commonly known as Osch. Harry explained that Osch has two distinct styles, one of which is distinctly anti-war.
Soon, we’re spotting artworks on almost every street corner: another pink portrait by David Speed, a large ‘H’ by Helch and the word ‘Scary’ painted in oversized black and white letters along a red tunnel wall along Rivington Street by artist Ben Eine. Eine is known for his large letter murals and this one – an ironic comment on the association often made between graffiti and and crime – is one of the longest standing in London, having been first painted in 2008.
Also on Rivington Street are two original works by stencil artist Banksy. Protected behind perspex is Banksy’s piece “Designated Graffiti Area” and “His Master’s Voice”, both from 2003.
“Most artists know that their work is temporary,” explains Harry. “There’s a common understanding that another artist might come and use the wall or doorway that they have used to create a new piece. When it comes to Banksy, however, these are a permanent fixture.”
As our tour continued Harry pointed out a large building, part of a telecom company Colts, that is covered in street art, a collaboration by 16 different street artists including Mr Cenz. The building itself sits Great Eastern Street and New Inn Yard, opposite where Shakespeare’s original Curtain Theatre once stood. This theatre preceded The Globe on the Thames and was where Henry V and Romeo and Juliet were first performed. A statue of the Bard sits opposite where the theatre once was.
New and Old Street Art
“Let’s go down here for a moment,” said Harry as we turned a corner. “I’ve been told there’s a new piece to see.”
Sure enough, along the wall of a railway arch we spotted a large, rather downcast looking, pink bear holding a bouquet of flowers sitting along blue bleachers by the artist Luap.
“This wasn’t here the last time I visited,” said Harry. “Which just shows how the London street art scene is constantly changing.”
By now we were in the heart of street art territory and Harry pointed out works by Colombian artist Vanessa MG and the long-standing Roxanne of Whitby Street by Jimmy C.
As we walked along Brick Lane, past the famous 24-hour beigel shop and Dark Sugars, renowned for its rich hot chocolate, Harry pointed out another type of street art called paste-up.
Also known as poster art, this type of street art involves artists creating paper or printed images and pasting them onto public surfaces using wheat pastes. It’s especially popular in this part of town and, if you stop to look closely, it reveals so much more than simply posters hastily stuck onto a brick wall. Instead, these are fascinating social and cultural commentaries and should be seen as urban art in their own right.
Along one wall covered in paste-up art, Harry pointed out a trio of small broccoli sculptures painted in red, gold and pink.
“These are by Adrian Boswell,” said Harry. “Otherwise known as Broccoli Man.”
Nearby was Allen Gardens, a leafy stretch of park running alongside a railway line and a wall that provides the perfect canvas for up-and-coming painters to practice their huge murals.
As our tour neared its end we stopped to see a handful of London’s most famous murals. one side of a four-story building at then intersection of Hanbury Street and Brick Lane stands a large crane, by the Belgian street artist Roa in 2010. Next to him is a bearskin-hatted guardsman break dancing painted by Argentine painter Martin Ron in 2013.
We ended the tour almost where we began, with a mural by Stik. This one, “A Couple Hold Hands in the Street” sits on Princelet Street next to Brick Lane Mosque and is one of the artist’s most important works. The 2010 mural depicts a Muslim woman holding hands with a male figure depicted in Stik’s classic style and was created shortly after the attempted Islamic Extremist attack on the Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks.
It’s a fitting place to end the tour although in reality, we could have kept going for hours there is so much to see and I know that next time I visit there will be new artworks as well. I can’t wait to discover them.
How to book a street art tour
There are various companies and guides offering street art tours, including some led by street artists themselves. What I like about Harry’s tours are that he caters these private tours to your interests and can adapt them to ensure that anyone from toddlers to teens and even grandparents are kept involved and interested.
Harry Clayton is a qualified Blue Badge Tourist Guide, the gold standard for tour guiding in the UK.
Harry’s street art tour lasts 2.5 – 3 hours. For more details, contact Harry directly.
