In September, the TDC Youth team in Whitehawk led on a Community Art Project to cover up some nasty graffiti on boards surrounding a Martin Homes building site on Whitehawk Road. The boards had been tagged with crude and racist words and images and had been flagged up by the local BHCC Housing Team. The property company, Martin Homes, were very supportive of an art project to improve the appearance of the boards and gave us a budget for materials and artist time.
Caroline (TDC Youth Manager for East Brighton), along with the Brighton & Hove City Council Community Engagement Team and a local artist met with Martin Homes to discuss the project and agree on 2 dates in September to get creative.
Day 1 was a graffiti art day involving a Brighton based graffiti artist Jode Masouri and young people from Whitehawk. The word Amazing which was used in the piece was a contribution from someone waiting at the nearby bus stop. As you can see from the picture – it does indeed look Amazing. Lots of local residents stopped by to ask what we were doing and all agreed that it was a massive improvement on the brown boards. This also gave us the chance to promote a continuation of the art project
A second day was planned for a few weeks later and this one was led by Ian Leaver who is a local mural artist and supported by Chris El Shabba from Due East ( a resident-led community group). It was great that this second day was led by local people and we hope to be involved again doing similar projects in other parts of town.
