Arcadia England

This week our intrepid students and faculty headed to the east end of London for our Street Art tour with Arcadia faculty member, Dr Richard Maguire as part of our series of free talks and tours with Arcadia faculty. These tours are available free to all students studying through Arcadia in England & Wales. 

This tour took in some of the street art in London's infamous East End.  The area around Shoreditch and Brick Lane is caught in a tension between ideas of gentrification and the traditions of urban working life. Street art re-imagines the streets, and allows us to see the grimy roads and hipster joints in a new way. The tour encourages us to not just look forward, but to look up to search for plastic mushrooms on top of buildings and to look down to see art so small it seems as if it's drawn for another kind of people. But most of all, this tour persuades us to look behind us and see things that were not there before. And as street art is so ephemeral the chances are that it won't be there tomorrow. The tour took in art by famous artists such as Banksy and Eine, as well as art that remains untagged and anonymous.

Check out the Facebook group for further Arcadia Explores this semester.