Curated by David Remfry RA and art historian James Russell, the programme features a newly commissioned film from renowned artist Melanie Manchot, an experiential soundtrack produced by Bristol-based DJs, a haptic Beat Blocks dancefloor, the rarely seen ‘Blue Tent’ by Denzil Forrester, and much more. 

To give a taste of what to expect, JACK ARTS partnered with the RWA to infuse the city with artwork that captures the vibrant energy of the exhibition and invites everyone to come and take part. From ballet, Afrocuban stilt performance and salsa classes to exhibitions about the history of Jungle music, Dance Out has a space for everyone to explore what dance, music and self-expression means to them.  

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Community sits at the heart of Friendly Records. Since opening in 2016, the shop has grown from founder Tom Friend’s personal obsession into one of Bristol’s most loved music spaces. It started simply: he had too many records at home and not enough room – but the result has become something much bigger, with Scott Hendy joining Friendly Records in 2023 the shop and label gained another experienced music veteran having worked in Bristol’s Purple Penguin record shop, DJ’d internationally and released records as Boca 45 and been one half of Bristol band Malachai.

Friend’s background in music also runs deep. He worked in the art department at Heavenly Recordings, and then as an A&R man at DB Records, 679 Recordings and Island Records, helping shape careers for acts like Electric Soft Parade, The Polyphonic Spree and Ben Kweller. He’s managed bands, taught students, and opened an art gallery with Geoff Barrow. But the record shop idea was always there, quietly waiting.

Born in Somerset, as a teenager Tom would travel to Bristol to visit record shops – places that felt exciting, intimidating, and full of possibility. Pre-internet, they were everything: discovery, community, culture. It’s that feeling he’s tried to recreate. Friendly isn’t about gatekeeping. It’s about walking in, feeling welcome, and finding something new, whether you know what you’re looking for or not.

Bristol still shapes everything they do. The shop leans into its local scene, with support from artists helping spread the word. It’s not just a shop anymore. It’s a hub. A place where things happen.

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An apt contention given that since 2017 Aberdeen has hosted some of the world’s greatest figurative street muralists and abstract urban image makers, meaning there are visual treats almost at every turn. But the 2026 theme – dreamt up by festival founder, director and curator Martyn Reed – being POETRY IS IN THE STREETS meant it was the turn of words to blaze a trail, to burn brightest throughout the Granite City.

Amidst celebratory remarks and earnest thanks at the opening civic reception a six-year-old girl stole the show. Her poem wondering – after having been at school for a whole week already – why she ever had to go back again was amusingly poignant but, at the same time, suggested a rebellious touch that chimed impeccably with the vibe of this year’s festival.

On the evening of day one, the festival opened with a breathtaking spectacle. Visiting Robert Montgomery’s light installation sited in the deep end of the formerly mothballed Bon Accord Baths could only be described as a spellbinding experience. Eleven metres wide, five metres high, and titled: EVEN AFTER ALL THIS TIME THE SUN NEVER SAYS TO THE EARTH “YOU OWE ME”.

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When holding up a mirror up to each other, opportunities to engage in honest, vulnerable, exchanges appear. These moments ask if we are willing to collectively create spaces that values each voice, gives room for growth, and nurtures a sense of belonging. And it’s these spaces the youth-led creative force, Jukebox Collective carves out for emerging talent in Wales. Talent like Eddie, One84k, Momen and CH – the very artists and Jukebox Music Academy alumni behind Kollideoscope.

“It’s like four mirrors coming together, four colours coming together into a mirror to create something different”, is how producer and rapper CH begins to describe how Kollideoscope came to be.  Slipping in and out of the realms of grime, neo-soul, alternative rap and club- influenced production, the ten tracks in Kollideoscope take you to the epicentre of four distinct worlds colliding in every beat. Grabbing the mic after years in production, Eddie brings experiences that’ve passed through Guinea-Bissau and Portugal before landing in Cardiff to the table. With a background in classical music, One84k offers a desire to step outside of his comfort zone through newfound engineering and mixing skills. And the Sudanese Welsh artist, Momen, deftly infuses his experimental sound into this project.

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The latest addition to Brighton and Hove’s creative landscape comes in the form of POST, a photography and film studio launched by two people who have been immersed in the photography world for decades.

One of POST’s co-founders is Nina Emett, a documentary photographer and social entrepreneur whose work is intertwined with the charity sector – from taking on commissions for NGOs to co-founding refugee and mental health charities and launching her own photography social enterprise, FotoDocument. Designed as an “antidote” to the negative news cycle, FotoDocument champions and commissions visual media focusing on uplifting, impact-driven narratives and solutions to pressing global issues and includes an international women’s award. Fellow POST co-founder Simon Roberts is a practising photographer who focuses on “the social construction of landscape”, and how it relates to politics, economic conditions, and the “thorny issue of British identity”. He has also been an advisor to Emett’s photography organisations and a trustee of one of the UK’s leading photography charities, Photoworks.

Having both noticed a lack of support and spaces available to lens-based artists in the Brighton and Hove area, they decided to channel their joint industry experience into creating a new space that caters to artists’ needs and, crucially, can survive in the long-term. Its services include practical offerings like photographic facilities, equipment and studios, but they’re also passionate about fostering a sense of connection and delivering creative nourishment in the form of exhibitions, workshops and talks.

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Cinemas are sacred places – most of all the independent ones, which have if not the freedom then the gumption to embrace eclecticism. Taking this spirit to the nth degree is the Rio in Dalston, which happily indulges diverse audience tastes. On its programme you might find Oscar contenders, arthouse cult classics, independent films on London life, unique music documentaries, gems lifted from queer cinema history, and rarely screened horrors. It also offers a crucial outlet for film collectives, clubs, and festivals dedicated to specific regional and national film scenes; currently on the schedule are initiatives spotlighting everywhere from the Balkans to Iran to Japan. The melting pot that courses outside the cinema’s doors is well and truly reflected on the screen, too.

The variety of its programming stems from the cinema’s operational structure. The Rio has been running for nearly 120 years – making it the UK’s longest running independent cinema – and has been a community-led charity for the last 50. To celebrate the half-centenary, the cinema is celebrating its heritage in various ways, from a new plaque honouring its pioneering founder to the launch of RIO FOREVER, a special six-month programme bringing some of that history into the present. At the heart of the programme is a series of collaborations with influential creatives from the worlds of film, music, and art – among them Jarvis Cocker, Molly Manning Walker, and Asif Kapadia – who have been invited to choose a title previously screened at the Rio in the past 50 years for a new screening. The programme will offer a glimpse into both the Rio’s archives and the filmmaking tastes of leading artists and directors, all while raising funds for the cinema to ensure that legacy continues well into the future.

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There’s a familiar narrative around success: you leave, you outgrow the place you started, move to the city, and then further still – across oceans if you can – to build something new. For photographer Lloyd Pursall, that story once felt true. Raised in Barry, a coastal town in South Wales, his early ambitions were shaped as much by a desire to get out as they were by the creative foundations surrounding him. London offered momentum, and Los Angeles offered scale. But it’s only in returning home that the full picture has come into focus.

Pursall’s work has long centred on people and their ambitions, tracing struggle alongside the persistent pull of lost dreams, perseverance, and the Welsh notion of llwyddiant, a translation of “success” that sits quietly behind it all. After studying fashion photography at London College of Fashion, his career took him into international editorial, celebrity, and commercial spaces, leading to projects like To Live and Try in LA, a highly acclaimed photographic series capturing young creatives navigating the precarious optimism of chasing a dream next door to Hollywood. There, amongst musicians, athletes and filmmakers, he found a shared language: collaboration, persistence, and the belief that success is something built collectively as much as individually.

But beneath that global trajectory, Barry remained a constant, if complicated, point of origin. “My idea of success was getting as far away from home as possible,” he reflects. It’s a sentiment familiar to many who grow up in smaller towns, where opportunity can feel distant and identity constrained. Yet the further he travelled, the clearer it became that the foundations laid there were not limitations in the traditional sense, but acting as the very thing that made his work resonate.

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For the third edition of Festival City Stories, Edinburgh Festivals and BUILDHOLLYWOOD Scotland invited artist Mark Kirkham, also known as the Edinburgh Sketcher, to attend workshops and events from across the festivals’ work with local communities, organisations, charities and schools.

Working with each group, he captured their projects through a series of sketches, which were transformed into postcards for the participants to share their own stories and experiences.

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A decade ago, André Anderson made a book with five of his neighbours on St. Raphaels estate in North West London. Titled Authors of the Estate it contained writing and photography about the estate along with a step-by-step guide to being an author. He printed 1,000 copies and put one through every door. He was, to use his own phrase, turning council houses into publishing houses.

“I knew that if you frame things correctly, people who don’t even consider themselves artists can come together, and learn together, and actually make something together,” he says.

“I also wanted to create a type of environment whereby artwork comes out of it, but where the people involved are just everyday people. Where the moment feels like an event itself, with all the flair so it felt like a party – a cultural memory.”

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Back in 1995, War Child brought together some of the biggest names in music to record an album in one day. The result, HELP, raised over a million pounds for the charity, which had been set up to support children caught up in the Bosnian conflict. Fast forward to 2021 and a label, War Child Records, was set up to re-release four albums released by the charity between 2002 and 2009.

Each album saw artists covering beloved records, collaborating with other artists, or donating new songs. 1 Love was released in 2002 with a track list that included Sugababes and The Prodigy (the latter remaking The Specials’ ‘Ghost Town’). The following year saw Hope released, in response to the Iraq War, with exclusive tracks and covers from the likes of George Michael, Spiritualized, Beth Orton and Yusuf Islam. 2005’s Help! A Day in the Life celebrated the tenth anniversary of the original and in 2009, War Child Presents Heroes had a collaboration between Lily Allen and Mick Jones from The Clash and covers from Beck, Estelle and Franz Ferdinand.

Now, HELP(2) is poised to repeat that success. Recorded over one intense week at Abbey Road Studios in November last year and executive produced by James Ford, the project was unveiled via the surprise release of a brand-new Arctic Monkeys track. Alongside original recordings, the album features a run of standout covers, including Olivia Rodrigo’s take on ‘The Book of Love’ and Fontaines D.C.’s powerful reimagining of Sinéad O’Connor’s ‘Black Boys on Mopeds’.

Additionally, there’s an all-star band pulled together by Damon Albarn. Alongside vocals from Kae Tempest and Grian Chatten, ‘Flags’ also features Johnny Marr on guitar, Adrian Utley from Portishead, Dave Okumu of The Invisible, Seye from Gorillaz and Ezra Collective drummer and bandleader Femi Koleoso.

The post Help Comes Round Again first appeared on BUILDHOLLYWOOD.

“Not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour, for the lack of it.” ¹

Is it getting more embarrassing to be a human being? What’s another year taught us? Unspeakable cruelty isn’t the sole province of any one race, creed or ideology. Tick!

No doubt, it has always been this way, but today there’s just no escaping reports of conflict, abuses of power, mendacity or simply plain indifference to other peoples’ plight. And yet, there are sparks of resistance — those among us who seek to bring the world together with compassion and ethical concern. Courage, thoughtfulness and care — in other words, LOVE — is the only antidote to the bleak era we’re living through.

Inspired by the passionate few who face up to great adversity, injustice, and fear — and those who simply offer everyday support and encouragement — BUILDHOLLYWOOD has partnered with UNCLE to close out the year with THIS IS A LOVE PROTEST: a UK-wide street gallery running from 15 December to the end of January in support of War Child. The showcase features work from 21 artists, each responding to the righteous, brave, and liberatory power of LOVE, with original pieces spanning illustration, painting, photography, textiles, graphic design, mixed media, and text-based art.

For more than three decades, War Child has been driven by a single goal — ensuring a safe future for every child living through war. Please consider making a charity donation here — every penny goes straight to War Child.

We are deeply grateful to the hugely talented artists who have responded to this call — you can explore all their works using the index below. Each artwork is accompanied by the artist’s quote reflecting on the project theme and the piece they have created. Wishing all our friends, collaborators, and clients heartfelt season’s greetings.

“Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind.” ²

1 James Baldwin fr. Giovanni’s Room (1956)

2 James Baldwin fr. If Beale Street Could Talk (1974)

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New work by emerging artists Leyla Hussain, Finn Millar, Cara Murray and Liv Rodgers took over a range of unique formats, each exploring themes around V&A Dundee’s exhibition Garden Futures – considering how gardens and public spaces can act as platforms for social justice, biodiversity and sustainability.

Created over several months, with professional development support from V&A Dundee and BUILDHOLLYWOOD Scotland – including tours, talks and artist crits – the resulting work explores social and class identity, the Gaelic winter tradition of Samhain, the radical potential of gardens, and presents a monument for the Palestinian journalists and media workers who have been targeted and killed in the current genocide in Gaza.

The work was launched as part of the museum’s Upstart: Creative Careers Festival, with a special bus tour exploring the artwork across the city, featuring insights from the artists alongside interactive performances.

Image above: Cara Murray

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Bristol has long been a city of movement; of ships, trade and migration, but also of protest and resistance. Memorial Dance, created by artist and former Bristol Lord Mayor Cleo Lake with Nigerian-born visual artist BÓLÁRÌNWÁ, channels that motion into an act of remembering. Drawing together artists and dancers, elders and young people through the Decolonising Memory Project, it transforms the body into an archive and the street into a site of reflection, where history and healing meet through movement.

Memorial Dance was built through community workshops that welcomed dancers and non-dancers alike, while holding an African-descent backbone at its core. Two anchor masterclasses seeded the choreography with specific diasporic lineages: Bristol teacher Norman “Rubba” Stephenson, whose practice carries threads from 1970s workshops by Steel ’n’ Skin through to the city’s own ensemble Ekome, and Latisha Cesar, whose Haitian spiritual forms locate the dance within a wider Atlantic continuum.

Bristol’s cultural infrastructure is part of the story too. The former Inkworks, now the Kuumba Centre, and organisations like Artspace Lifespace map a long arc of independent spaces where Black creativity has organised, gathered and thrived; it was at an Artspace Lifespace show that Cleo first encountered BÓLÁRÌNWÁ’s work and invited him to collaborate. The project’s original spark also came from a very Bristol kind of pragmatism: at the Regenerations conference, choreographer Kwesi Johnson urged Cleo not to wait for permission to reframe the city’s monuments; use an AR app, write your own plaque, expose another truth. That insurgent energy runs valiantly throughout Memorial Dance to this day.

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Created by award-winning photographer Colin Moody and writer/musician Jasmine Ketibuah-Foley, the book captures five years of Bristol nightlife through striking photography, personal reflections, and conversations with artists, promoters, and venue owners. Their collaboration grew out of real nights on Bristol’s dance floors, or as Colin puts it, “our own mini tribe,” a shared act of love and protection for the spaces that make people feel safe, creative, and connected. 

In a fitting celebration, the book’s artwork was unveiled at the iconic Lakota, one of Bristol’s most beloved and enduring nightclubs, providing the perfect backdrop for this homage to the city’s nightlife. The collaboration with JACK ARTS to exhibit the work outside Lakota was a deliberate choice, returning the images to the streets and communities that inspired them. “Displaying the book on billboards makes sense,” says Jazz. “Our story belongs out there on the night.”

We interviewed Colin Moody and Jasmine Ketibuah-Foley, the creative duo behind Up All Night: A Bristol Nightlife Story. They discuss the passion driving their “love letter” to Bristol’s club culture and the power of art to capture community spirit. From dance floors to billboards, their project celebrates the city that never stops moving. 

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Inside, you’ll find Foundation.fm’s dialled-up sound, Karoline Vitto flipping fashion’s script, and Sgàire Wood coming through with fierce, future-facing perspective. There’s Corbin Shaw’s statement-making banners, Hak Baker reflecting on a life lived loud, and Jukebox Collective crafting joy and connection in Wales.

We also step into the worlds of Kaye Dunnings and Massive Attack, catch Jeremy Deller doing what he does best – bringing big truths to the street – and dive into the vibrant energy of the Royal Academy’s Brasil! Brasil! show.

And the cover? That’s Suede – one of our most recent Your Space Or Mine artists, bringing her energy to the page with her photo series, Everyday People. This book is all about showing love: to our cities, our communities, and the creativity that simmers just below the surface.

The post Street Sessions: Issue 1 first appeared on BUILDHOLLYWOOD.

It’s a fitting collaboration between Intoart and BUILDHOLLYWOOD, two organisations that reject the idea of art as something reserved for those who can afford white-walled gallery tickets or navigate institutional sliding doors. Making art accessible in public space is profoundly symbolic and implicitly political. It interrupts the city’s art-as-marketing landscape, challenges who is allowed to be visible, and insists that creativity belongs to everyone.

That sense of connection was first felt and found in 2024, when Intoart artist Andre Williams unveiled Let It Be Me in the pocket garden of Camberwell New Road, a bright, carmine coloured public sculpture commissioned by BUILDHOLLYWOOD a short 12 months ago. Andre’s work is invitational and vibrant, a conversational four word prompt of “let it be me” that asks passersby to reflect and ask the question; “why should it be me?”. In many ways, the artists answer the question by virtue of their work, using the billboards as a platform for artists to be seen on their own terms. “They’ll probably think about things they’ve made assumptions about when they see the work,” says artist Nick Fenn in reference to the public observing the billboards. “They might start paying attention.”

Andre’s Let It Be Me sculpture with Intoart and BUILDHOLLYWOOD has gone on to inspire this resplendent 25th anniversary series made up of 16 unique billboards, speaking to something deeper than accolades, and instead gesturing towards the urgency of access, visibility, and the right to be seen. “I hope people think, wow, that’s amazing, ‘Who are these people? Who are these artists?’” says Nancy Clayton. “In some galleries it’s always the same artists, but we are trying to break down the barriers.”

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In a powerful, community-led collaboration between Project ZAZI, OTR, and JACK ARTS, young people were given the opportunity to showcase their artwork on billboards across Bristol. Recognising the systemic barriers faced by young people from ethnically diverse backgrounds and the LGBTQIA+ community, the project remained firmly rooted in OTR’s mission to amplify underrepresented voices and create platforms for empowerment and visibility. The collaboration stood as a bold public celebration of identity, creativity, and vision.

To mark the launch, a celebratory event was held at Old Market Lawn – bringing together contributors, supporters, and the local community. The event honoured the young artists behind the work and highlighted the power of creative expression when young people are given the space, support, and recognition they deserve.

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“Magic” is a word that comes up regularly with photographer Dennis Morris. He felt it when he saw a TV for the first time as a child, when he encountered a box in the corner of a room that he thought could hear him speak. He experienced it again when he saw an image printed from a negative for the very first time. There’s a sense of wonder in those early moments in his life that still seems visceral all these decades later. But when it comes to his own achievements, it was never magic; it was tenacity. It was all Morris’s doing.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Morris moved to London as a child, where he was introduced to photography at the tender age of nine. By the time he was a teenager, he had begun to forge a career in photography, producing timeless, instantly recognisable images of 1970s musicians such as Bob Marley, the Sex Pistols, and Marianne Faithfull, as well as later music acts like Oasis and Radiohead, which appeared on magazine covers and record sleeves. He also worked as a designer and an art director at Island Records.

Many of his portraits show these musicians’ performative side: the pomp of the Pistols, the enigmatic drama of Marianne Faithfull. But his “fly on the wall” approach also uncovered their hidden depths – a pain or an uncertainty, perhaps. He has always wanted to show the three-dimensionality of people, a philosophy he also applied to his photographs of everyday people going about life, whether in his project documenting Black British life in Hackney, his intimate series made in Southall’s Sikh communities, or his poignant photographs taken when returning to Kingston.

First image: Babylon by van, London, 1973 © Dennis Morris

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The programme culminated in a compelling, multi-venue public exhibition. Highlights include a group showcase at the Martin Parr Foundation, an installation at the Royal Photographic Society, and a partnership with JACK ARTS to bring a visually striking city-wide poster takeover – featuring 51 large-format posters displayed across four streets in Bristol. The street-poster element served as our input into the project, contributing to a dynamic, accessible outdoor gallery experience.

Through diverse visual narratives – from punk and hip-hop to breaking, ballroom, carnival, and grassroots gigs – the project illuminates themes of identity, resilience, connection, and cultural memory, capturing the creative heartbeat of Bristol’s community.

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Moving fluidly across text, performance, installation, and image, Sodipo is a multidisciplinary force whose work interrogates and reimagines Blackness, transness, and diasporic identity. Her practice is richly layered, often drawing from archives both digital and personal, while remaining focused on what might come next for future generations. Having been shown, read, watched, and performed across countless galleries, institutions, and centres of excellence across the globe, Sodipo’s work has found a new home this summer in the UK, this time on city streets, marking a public illustration of what Pride represents in principle and practice for Sodipo and the communities she feels at home in.

Born in London and raised in Nigeria until the age of eleven, Sodipo’s sense of identity has long been shaped by migration, multiplicity, and the navigation of cultural space. More than physical place, it was the internet that served as her earliest landscape of creative re-imagining. “I was a Tumblr girly”, Sodipo laughs, “so I access a lot of archival material through the internet”. In this way, a ubiquitous household object, the flickering Wi-Fi router, becomes a kind of commonality, one that connects her to a broader constellation of Black life and thought. That little plastic box that acted as the director of many of our early millennial and Gen Z childhood antics remains a steadfast reminder of the vast chasm of knowledge we have at our fingertips; “I’m thinking about how we access history nowadays”, shares Sodipo. “I hold like 10,000 years on my computer, you know?”

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From the highway to Coachella stateside, to the BBC screen on British soil, Joseph Melhuish’s work is far reaching, now finding itself in London with a physical tilt to his typically digital practice. Working in collaboration with Creative Review and BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s Creative Studio, Joseph has dreamt up a striking two-part, three-dimensional billboard that experiments with form and subverts structure, delivering Listen To Your Heart, a piece of public art that invites curiosity and tests the limits of optimism.

Installed across two billboards, the upright digital screen features a blissed-out visage. Eyes shut, pursed smiley lips and fleshy tendril bangs, looking ever so serene in her oversize cans. On the adjacent billboard, a pair of hands rips apart a forty-foot-wide hoodie top to reveal pinkie-purple cardiovascular gore and a cute cartoon heart with a jack plugged into it. Somewhat freakily the headphone cable meandering between these two very special builds resembles an umbilical cord. Head and heart conjoined like a mother and child, expressing how lifesaving it is to listen to the beating music of our hearts.

Start to finish, BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s Creative Studio worked closely with Creative Review and Joseph to realise this ambitious, groundbreaking work – from idea generation and concept development through to production and installation. BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s Creative Studio’s operation is home to a dynamic team of artists, designers, set builders, prop makers, and carpenters based in a 4000 ft purpose built studio nestled in a leafy pocket of North West London.

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Following the success of their debut event, Drag in the Arcades, featuring local drag icons Victoria Scone and Jolene Dover, the team secured a permanent home in Cardiff’s Morgan Quarter. Since then, the Emporium has grown into a thriving hub for queer culture and connection. From standout events like Howl! in the Arcades (an LGBTQI+ comedy night) and Draglings (a platform for emerging talent), to inclusive gatherings such as Transition, which centres trans and non-binary voices, the space offers a wide range of community-focused programming. Their community series featuring free or low-cost events like craft circles, queer play readings, and speed friendshipping, underscores their mission to foster safe, joyful, and accessible spaces for all.

JACK ARTS partnered with The Queer Emporium this Pride Month to shine a light on the people behind the Emporium, those who have built a safe, vibrant space for the LGBTQI+ community in Cardiff and beyond.

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In this project, Shado Magazine and Amnesty International issue a call to artists across Europe to respond to the theme: “Protect the Protest.” Artists use illustration to push back against the growing narrative that frames protest as criminal, instead reclaiming it as a powerful and positive force for advancing human rights and social justice.

This comes at a time of rising concern over the erosion of protest rights across Europe, as governments impose harsher laws and increased restrictions. In response, Shado turns to the creative community to share bold, imaginative visuals affirming protest as a democratic right. BUILDHOLLYWOOD, in collaboration with Shado Magazine and Amnesty International, brings the five winning works to the streets of London, making their messages visible to the public and reminding us that protest is not only essential, but a necessary act of resistance.

Learn More about the Artists involved, and the story behind their artwork in the bios below.

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Every summer, for the last decade, GALA festival has turned a south London park into a three-day celebration of independence, community and underground spirit – drawing from a deep well of dance music histories. Initially a one-dayer in Brixton’s Brockwell Park, it’s since been taking place across three days on the last weekend of May on Peckham Rye.

The GALA origin story begins, though, in Newcastle. Co-founder Jonny Edwards was running a student night business and Giles Napier took a job flyering for him. Graduating to running club night Zap, for 1,500 electronic music loving students sealed the deal. ‘I fell in love with putting on those nights,’ he says, ‘seeing them do well, seeing the dancefloor light up. That’s where it started.’

Since the beginning, their festivals – they also run Rally in Southwark Park – have done more than just provide for the music lovers on the dancefloor. Over the last ten years they’ve ensured that local residents get discounted tickets; worked with community arts partners including Peckham Platforms and South London Gallery; and have raised over £40,000 for Southwark Day Centre for Asylum Seekers. ‘We want to contribute to a better landscape,’ says Giles, ‘not just setting up shop for three days. We want to be embedded, and to have a positive impact in the place we call home.’

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Michelle Hunter, Director of Programmes and Operations and the Designated Safeguard Lead at AudioActive cut her teeth in the music industry by way of the world-renowned Ministry of Sound in the early noughties. Michelle’s own story began trying to sleep with the sound of next door neighbour blues parties, a bassline that soundtracked her childhood and followed her to the parties she went to put on herself later in life. “Those blues parties were my first understanding of community and music coming together,” she shares, “it was always about belonging”. That feeling of a neighbourhood coming together to shake legs on a make-do domestic dancefloor extended into a life-long love affair with music and community, two facets of Michelle’s practice that continue to travel in parallel.

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In this issue, we’ll take you on a journey through some of our most impactful campaigns, from Camden Market’s 50th Anniversary mural that brought together local artists to celebrate five decades of creative legacy, to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter showcased across multiple cities with projections, paper-and-paste, and creative builds. You’ll also discover how we transformed The Sandbox for MALIN+GOETZ’s milestone birthday celebration.   

This zine captures the magic of our cities, all through the lens of our creative work. 

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Creativity and community sit happily side by side. Bobby was instrumental in the rise of hip hop and production duo Frankie Stew and Harvey Gunn (100 million+ streams) as well as 2024 rising star RUBII. He launched The New Society Radio back in 2018 and was a senior producer on Brighton’s first youth-led Breakfast Show ‘The Rising’ which ran on Platform B during the pandemic. Before that, he created his streetwear brand and YouTube channel Tésty, came up alongside Rizzle Kicks in their earliest days, and collaborated with Chase & Status and Jordan Rakei through his early work with Elli Ingram.

Back in 2017 the two aspects became explicitly interlinked when Bobby met grime’s primo public intellectual, Elijah, off the train at Brighton Station. The latter had been offered a role as Associate Artistic Director of Lighthouse, later becoming known outside UK music for his ground-breaking Yellow Squares – themselves appearing on BUILDHOLLYWOOD billboards in 2023.

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The program kicked off with a deep dive into proposal-building techniques by James Allen, followed by focuses on various aspects of photography, including editing, color grading, lighting techniques, and practical shooting sessions. Renowned photographer Martin Parr provided invaluable feedback and shared insights from his own remarkable career, inspiring the next generation of image makers.

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The street-level showcase developed in partnership with JACK ARTS offered a unique glimpse into the vibrant and ever-evolving artistic landscape of modern Wales, highlighting the diverse perspectives and talents that are shaping the country’s creative scene. The project provided a platform for six selected Welsh photographers to showcase their work in the heartland, allowing them to express how Wales has personally and creatively influenced their creative journey in “a powerful act of visibility.” – Taiye Omokore.

The outdoor exhibition followed Clwb Creatives REFRESH / RETOLD event at Shoreditch Arts Club on St David’s Day which shone a spotlight on contemporary Welsh creativity and talent.

“We want young people in Cardiff to look up at these street posters and feel inspired—to know that a career in the creative industries is possible and within reach. We want them to know their stories and perspectives are important, and there is an audience that cares about their craft. Above all, we want to encourage and give hope to the next generation to chase their creative dreams” –  Clwb Creative Cymru

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To reimagine an image that doesn’t feel representative is to reimagine what already exists. Tiger Bay, home to one of the UK’s oldest Black communities, offers a deeper understanding of Welsh identity, one that isn’t always reflected in the expected mainstream representations of Wales. With their office rooted in the community centre at the heart of this pocket, Jukebox Collective’s Strategic Director Lauren Patterson highlights the significance of the project in the landscape of Welsh creative practice. “These images haven’t been created before,” she says, emphasising that these visuals shouldn’t be seen as a “challenge,” but rather as a creative interpretation of tradition: “This is Wales”.

The collaboration, inspired by the iconic Welsh hat, a 19th-century symbol of national pride, saw students from the Jukebox Academy rework this traditional piece with guidance from Welsh costume designer Ffian Jones. The result was a series of visually striking, culturally resonant interpretations brought to life through Bleak Fabulous’ lens, now displayed across Swansea and Cardiff on BUILDHOLLYWOOD billboards. Set against the muted greys and whites of Butetown, the vibrant colours found in the costumes are a reminder of the project’s impact, recognising how the past has always been present, alongside the ever evolving identities and communities found in the well-renowned Tiger Bay.

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In the first year of the collaboration between Edinburgh Festivals and JACK ARTS Scotland, we commissioned emerging illustrators from Edinburgh College of Art to bring quotes of participants from the festivals’ projects to life, and presented their beautiful posters across the city. 

This year we developed the project further, inviting Edinburgh-based photographer Ellie Morag to attend events and workshops across festival projects and gather stories from people involved in these partnerships. 

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ShangrilART is led by the team behind Glastonbury’s iconic Shangri-La, where large-scale billboard art has long been used to convey powerful messages. At its heart, ShangrilART is dedicated to supporting artists by making work accessible beyond galleries and institutions—into communities, streets, and people’s homes. The belief that art is an experience and a crucial tool for public awareness drives the ongoing collaboration.  

Lost Horizon, with its deep-rooted values of community, creativity, and cultural diversity, serves as the perfect collaborator to host this evolving outdoor public gallery. 

 ‘In 2025, I had the privilege of curating a project at Glastonbury with the incredibly talented Amelia Troubridge. Her work resonated with me so deeply that I knew she had to be the one to launch our collaboration. Lost Horizon is the sister project to Shangri-La, and a cherished year-round venue in Bristol. These two spaces are more than just places—they’re movements, deeply committed to amplifying the voices of artists across every medium.’ – Kaye Dunnings, Creative Director

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“Brazil is home to the largest Japanese population outside of Japan”, shares Fernanda Liberti, one of the artists featured in the BUILDHOLLYWOOD collaboration, “ it has the biggest African population outside of Africa, with more Lebanese people living in Brazil than there are Lebanese people in Lebanon”. Her own Syrian and Brazilian heritage speaks to the rich cultural complexity of Brazilian migration, with artist Gustavo sharing his own anthropological understanding of the very human history of migration. “Nations are built because of people that come and go”, he says, with his project in collaboration with artist JC Candanedo exploring the diasporic identity found in the Brazilian delivery driver population in the UK. “We can’t live without these people”, JC shares, “they have completely changed the way we live”.

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It was a very difficult decision but from more than forty deeply felt, assiduously researched and for the most part diligently executed designs, ten were selected for reproduction and display as street posters. Helping give voice to the concerns of Walthamstow’s young adults is a privilege and brings to the fore important issues such as: caring for the planet and all its creatures; respecting one another; challenging injustice. But there emerged a very strong recurring theme throughout the artworks and that’s of people taking both individual and collective responsibility for their lives and communities. If there was one overarching message it was a mature and ambitious one: to be the best person you want to be.    

A whistle-stop tour of the ten selected works follows… Lili’s ‘Creativity’ poster is a riot of intricate detail. At the same time, it’s bold and eye-catching enough to work well as a street poster. Music, visual art and design, whatever your creative obsession, Lili’s advice is to immerse yourself in what you love. ‘Keep Moving Forward’ is Dillon’s positive slogan. Their artwork is literally rays of sunshine bursting through a verdant forest. It’s a bold, resonant reminder not to sweat the small stuff, but look beyond everyday stumbling blocks and keep your dreams alive. 

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There’s something more to Old Spitalfields Market than the scores of people browsing table tops and shops through daylight hours; there’s a resounding echo of the East London rag trade, and a history that weaves its way through South Asian migration and localised craft. Glance up to the rafters this autumn and you might catch a glimpse of “Bidrohi”, a resplendent collection of work from three remarkably talented British Bangladeshi and Bengali artists, namely; Ace Rahman, a multi-hyphenate walking the tightrope between digital and traditional practices, Mohammed Z Rahman, visual artist and writer exploring the socio-political through dreamscapes and the domestic, and Puer Deorum, interdisciplinary artist and curator navigating radical imagination, polychronic experiences, and non-linear realities through their practices of performance, photography, and set design (to name a few).

“Bidrohi” as a collection speaks to the legacy of migration, something that Mohammed has explored throughout his catalogue of work; “I feel like stasis is not the norm – there has always been movement of people,” he shares earnestly, “I think I’m trying to normalise, or validate this kind of creolised identity of Bangladeshis in Europe, and their wider histories and interactions with other diasporas”. This feeling of liminality and difference is critically articulated through each artist’s work, with a candid mix of street photography, self-portraits, and domestic scenes caught in paint each depicting a shared but unique interpretation of South Asian migration, by way of the East end.

When asked what “Bidrohi” means and the significance of this choice for the collection, Ace shares that the title references a poem by Kazi Nazrul Islam, a well-known Bangladeshi revolutionary poet that the three artists all felt connected to. “I personally feel that the poem and what it stands for is the essence of what it means to be a contemporary queer Bangladeshi artist in the modern age”, Ace shares, “it’s about standing up for your people and your land, and for what’s right”, something that each of the artists commit to unwaveringly.

Another organisation that has found their home in the East End by way of South Asia is Oitij-jo – “they’re a foundational hub that really supports this movement of British Bangladeshi artists”, Mohammed shares, a space which Ace also occupied during their first artists residency which, coincidentally, was facilitated and curated by Puer. Despite their distinct practices, the three artists appear to share a commonality beyond their respective canvases, speaking of each other’s work with fondness and interest, and demonstrating the importance of kinship in collaboration, as well as in ancestry.

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BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s one-of-a-kind cultural venue is now home to an architect’s dream, a dynamic space dressed and designed to respond to Beyond the Box’s brief of “Expressions of Resilience”. The three young architects who won the design competition have dismantled the very bones of the proverbial box and rebuilt it to reflect their lofty architectural ambitions, bringing resilience head-to-head with rest in the belly of an incongruous 1 Quaker street.

The space is an ode to resilience, solidarity, and creative expression, with Taja, Lily, and Akif’s work taking inspiration from the East End roots that they find themselves creating in. All hailing from the area, the designers have worked with Beyond the Box and BUILDHOLLYWOOD to create an environment built for the vast array of people who will experience it. Informed by neurodivergence and the profound impact of protest in the face of global atrocities, the space is a lyrical ode to people-powered resilience, the importance of honouring difference, and the vital need to design beyond the automatic archetype.

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Founded in 1991 as alternative magazine for style and culture, Dazed became a lightning rod for cultural provocation, and grew into publishing powerhouse Dazed Media. Thirty years on, amidst the turbidity and social isolation of a pandemic, Dazed Club was launched to the public – a time when connectedness was needed most. In their three years of operating, the club has continued to champion radical fashion and youth culture, as set out during their heyday in the 90s, with a vanguard of next generation writers, artists, stylists and image makers. Through exclusive events, opportunities and competitions – including this very one – Dazed Club has proved time and time again that community is the crux of culture, and that togetherness is conducive to creativity.

Round two of the Dazed Club x BUILDHOLLYWOOD competition celebrates crowds, collectives, communities and what they mean to the individual. The collaboration welcomes said connectedness and asks the ‘Clubbers’ to “Show us your scene!” Shortlisted submissions were overlooked by the following panel: Fashion Director Imruh Asher, Another Man’s Editor in chief Ellie-Grace Cumming, Photographer Sharna Osborne, BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s very own Marketing Director Khaly Nguyen, and Dazed Club’s Creative Director Jack Sunnucks.

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Living with his parents and four siblings in a close-knit family environment, Ilori developed a deep appreciation for togetherness, a value that continues to resonate in his projects. “Affirmation is one of the biggest things we were introduced to when we were young,” Ilori explains. This foundation of positive reinforcement, along with his parents’ emphasis on self-contentment and cultural pride, has profoundly shaped his design philosophy. His work celebrates his dual heritage and the joy of belonging, offering audiences a visual language that bridges cultural and emotional experiences. 

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His music, brimming with raw honesty, has been his way of narrating life since the release of his 2017 EP Misfits. This project was a turning point for Baker, marking the first time he shared songs he’d written on the guitar—an instrument that had come into his possession after winning it in a prison raffle.

That guitar became a vessel for his evolution, helping him transition musically from a high-energy, Channel U-approved Grime MC in Bomb Squad, into the folk-inspired “G-folk” sound that Baker is now known for. His subsequent albums, Babylon (2020), Worlds End FM (2023) and more recently his latest EP Nostalgia Death (2024), have only solidified his presence as a musician who refuses to be boxed in. Each release has seen his sound become more layered, and more complex, but always anchored in storytelling—stories that only Hak can tell.

However, Baker’s most recent release with his name on isn’t music at all. It’s a film—Hakeem—an intensely personal documentary directed by James Topley and Ivo Beckett of DEADHORSES. The film was premiered at BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s event space The CarWash in the heart of Shoreditch, with an intimate screening and Q&A hosted by CassKid, during which, an emotional Hak Baker added further detail to what is already a close-up look at his life on and off stage.

The post Hak Baker on Hakeem, the revealing documentary that was five years in the making first appeared on BUILDHOLLYWOOD.

On August 25th, the legendary band transformed their hometown into a large-scale canvas for climate action with Act 1.5—a pioneering, low-carbon event that aimed to set a new standard for how festivals and gigs could operate in a world facing ecological collapse. Like anything capable of creating worthwhile change, the festival—and its art installations—did not come without challenges, be they financial or logistical.

Integral to the event’s success was Kaye Dunnings, Creative Director of Glastonbury’s radical Shangri-La field, who brought her expertise in merging art and activism to the forefront. Her involvement went beyond curating a visual spectacle; she helped shape Act 1.5 into a climate rallying cry – using the streets of Bristol as a platform for celebrating activists, and a large-scale gallery of politically charged works at the event by artists like Kennard Phillipps, Darren Cullen, and Ella Baron. Working alongside Massive Attack and BUILDHOLLYWOOD, the team’s collaborative vision aimed to deliver a message as bold as it was necessary.

“There’s a history of street art in Bristol,” Kaye explains. “It’s part of the fabric of Bristol, and it’s always been political. It felt right to bring that energy into this event because that’s what Act 1.5 is—political, urgent, and deeply connected to the city.” Through installations scattered across the city and the festival grounds, the project connected Bristol’s rich history of rebellious art with the urgency of climate activism.

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It’s something of an understatement to say that 2023 was a big year for Ezra Collective. Their unexpected win at the Mercury Prize generated not only the memorable and highly joyful image of a whole-band bundle when their name was declared but also an acceptance speech that placed their success in a community context, shouting out their youth club, Tomorrow’s Warriors, alongside friends and family. It was a very Ezra moment.

They’re topping off 2024 with the fruits of the past year’s labour – a third album written backstage and on tour buses and then recorded at the famous Abbey Road studios. Dance, No One’s Watching combines core Ezra ingredients of jazz and dub, hip hop, hi-life and salsa; worldwide dance music, Londonised. This is big welcoming dancefloor energy, with enough balm-songs to take you home afterwards – and to pick you up the next morning.

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We’d watch Derry Girls together and Trisha would be reminded of what it was like when she was growing up, with the presence of army officers everywhere. But they were young and kind of took the situation for granted, they’d not known any different. For the most part young people were busy focussing on their own lives. I mean, because she was living in a mainly Protestant area, she was somewhat shielded from the worst of it. But she did say there was a 9pm curfew, after which you weren’t allowed out. And huge metal gates were erected at the end of streets, they were locked at night so even if you went out you couldn’t go far.

It was when Trisha was making work later in the 1980s, after she’d left Northern Ireland to study for her Fine Art degree at Portsmouth that she began to reflect deeply on her childhood, what she and others experienced. The atmosphere of oppression, fear and constant surveillance by an occupying power.

The post An interview with curator Brenna Horrox about an affecting gem of an exhibition: ‘Each Little Scar’ at Filet Gallery is a crucible for transformative experience and thinking. first appeared on BUILDHOLLYWOOD.

JACK ARTS Scotland partnered with Ponyboy to present a takeover at Glasgow Green showcasing stunning new portraits of some of their regular performers ahead of their latest Club Kid event, featuring: Babyjaii, Miss Cabbage, Dill, Huntress, Lourdes, Maya Jaye, Pixie Chanel and Zulaa – created by photographer Kate McMahon.

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A Continual Farewell is a classic story of romance, betrayal, tragedy and, of course, sex & drugs & rock & roll – all told through 13 years worth of beautifully crafted love letters.  At the heart of it, the man of letters himself was one of the great figures in the history of Mancunian music and British culture.  Anthony H (Tony) Wilson was a Granada TV personality, the presenter of iconic punk/post-punk music show So It Goes and one of the creators of Manchester’s most influential record label Factory – home to Joy Division, New Order, A Certain Ratio, Durutti Column and later Happy Mondays.  On the receiving end was “Lins”, Tony’s first wife Lindsay Reade, who he met in May 1976 just before his “epiphany” seeing the Sex Pistols at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall.

The letters tell the true story of their courtship, their stormy marriage, their divorce, their subsequent clandestine liaisons and their eventual reconciliation before Wilson’s early death at 57 in August 2007.  Along the way we’re given access to the private and romantically poetic thoughts of Anthony H as he tries to balance his television career with the rise of Joy Division, the suicide of Ian Curtis, the success of Factory Records through New Order and Factory’s culturally significant by-products, the Hacienda club and eventually Madchester.

During the course of their marriage which, by these accounts, was rocky and plagued with jealousy from the start, it becomes clear that Tony’s old-fashioned approach to their relationship fuels Lindsay’s insecurities.  All five directors of Factory Records were men even though Tony used his and Lindsay’s money to fund early releases, including Joy Division’s ‘Unknown Pleasures’: “Tony and I never had children but we did give birth to Factory”.  In her commentary, Lindsay writes that “as Tony’s lover I felt like a goddess but as his wife, a doormat”.  Later in the marriage she says she’d “continued to be a household slave which was utterly unappreciated by him”.  And her jealousy takes hold when Blondie make their TV debut on Granada Reports  in November 1977 performing ‘Rip Her To Shreds’.  Lindsay writes of Debbie Harry “she was the most beautiful creature, super talented and Tony clearly worshipped her”.

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Displayed across billboards throughout London, Birmingham, Manchester & Bristol, the campaign juxtaposes said bias with positive portrayals of Black girlhood that highlight the innocence and vulnerability Black girls are usually not afforded and the widespread misrepresentation of Black girls within the media. The campaign enlisted Black British female photographers Aicha Thomas and Jade Reynolds-Hemmings to transform the perception of Black British girlhood through visual storytelling.

Creators Eboni Lamine and Martha Omasoro commented on the project, saying: “Adultification Bias occurs when adults perceive children from ethnic minority backgrounds as being older or more mature than they are. It is a systemic issue that is unfortunately an inherent part of the Black British and global experiences. With Let Black Girls Be Girls, our goal is to create a campaign that educates society on the deep-rooted impact of Adultification Bias on Black girls and afford every Black girl the innocence and vulnerability of childhood, not marred by race”.

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Deller’s work celebrates art’s life-changing powers: to spark attention, pose questions, call out malfeasance, provoke ideas and emotions, promote discovery and cock a snook at power...

“Art is a way of staying engaged and in love with the world. It is also a form of magic, its alchemical power transforming reality, if only for a moment, making the mundane profound. It does things that are not logical and can trick us. It can be deeply absurd and even stupid at times.” And, when it takes the form of a poster declaring ‘Thank God For Immigrants’, it can prick the conscience of a nation.

Produced by Deller together with his design partner Fraser Muggeridge and made specifically to be displayed in windows, this poster originally appeared in public, April 2020. During this period the UK was in an extended Covid lockdown. There was a profound feeling that NHS and other key workers, many of course immigrants, were keeping the country afloat in the direst of circumstances. More specifically Deller’s said, “The idea partially came from the people I had hung around while making (a film documenting protest in the wake of the vote for the UK to leave the EU) ‘Putin’s Happy’ (2019), people who had anti-immigrant views and whose lives because of Covid were possibly being saved by immigrant healthcare staff. Does someone’s opinion about immigration change when an immigrant saves their life?”

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Originating and delivering street-side messages and images that inform, inspire, intrigue, or simply put a soothing smile on the faces of passers-by is a huge thrill. It also carries with it responsibilities both to collaborators and publics alike. But we know our cities and the communities who dwell there.

Alongside our commercial work we have been curating and hosting what could be described as the country’s biggest ongoing creative project on the street, Your Space Or Mine. In this issue, we spotlight some of the most inspiring contributors and partners within the music, art, fashion and culture scene including: Bevan Agyemang, Sister Midnight, Magnus Westwell, Nabihah Iqbal, and The Welsh Ballroom Community.

We conclude with highlights of our recent work, featuring Adidas, Tate, the Scotland Women’s National Team, Broadwick Live: Drumsheds, and Books Are My Bag.

This zine takes you on a journey that shows the imagination and commitment we put into our work.

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For five decades, Camden Market has represented creativity, subculture and rebellion in London. Now a complex network of interconnecting markets, Camden Market started life as a temporary, weekly arts and crafts fair behind iconic music venue Dingwalls in 1974. Today, it’s the largest market in London, open all year round and drawing in 250,000 visitors a week.

Camden Market has always been intertwined with the music culture of the area. With venues like The Electric Ballroom, The Underworld, the Roundhouse and The Dublin Castle in the vicinity, over the decades the market grew with the local music scenes. Fashion influenced music and vice versa, with the clothes on sale at the market representing the alternative spirit of Camden.

To celebrate 50 years of the iconic space, Camden Market partnered with BUILDHOLLYWOOD on a one-of-a-kind mural to showcase its vibrant past, present and future. BUILDHOLLYWOOD curated the artists and produced the project from start to finish, they also created artwork for billboards currently dotted around Camden. Inspired by the five colourful decades of the market, tracing its humble beginnings through its music-filled history to the tourist destination it is today.

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Art Not Evidence is a movement working hard to redress the use of lyrics as evidence that lead to miscarriages of justice, a non-profit organisation led by a broad coalition of youth workers, academics, lawyers, journalists, musicians, and music industry professionals holding the courts, police, and prosecution to account. The prejudice and racist assimilation of rap lyrics and music videos speaks to a grossly misinformed assumption that artists are more likely to be related to criminal “gang” behaviour, an insidious trope that has made its way through the courts of justice for years, long before the advent of drill, as a historical and deep-rooted discrimination against music of Black origin.

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Walthamstow FC has become a template for talented young players, attracting unrivalled coaching offering in a nurturing environment. Buildhollywood have partnered with the team in sponsorship, aiming to inspire further success.

Figurehead John Sullivan is an ardent coach with a legacy of both success and developing talent. His unwavering commitment and personal sacrifices have laid the foundation of an environment where kids flourish. Working alongside him are a team of Academy coaches at the height of their craft, including some from Premiership teams which brings professionalism to the team. The coaching team is now further complemented by the presence of Jérémie Aliadière, an ex-Arsenal player and member of the legendary 2004 Arsenal Invincibles team.

In our conversation with Sullivan, Aliadière, and a selection of the team’s players, we spoke candidly about their involvement with the team and its personal impact on their journeys. Particularly notable were the players’ accounts, offering insights into their footballing paths, from their initial steps in the sport to the deep bonds forged within the Walthamstow family. Their stories echo the ethos of unity, development and kinship that defines Walthamstow FC.

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Monumental and expressive, the painterly portrait by Case Maclaim (aka Andreas Chrzanowski); Cbloxx (aka Jay Gilleard) created their signature aerosol magic and mystery; HERA (Jasmin Siddiqui) delivered a truly towering artwork that nevertheless communicates care and tenderness; KMG’s bold, beautifully pared-down characters at the airport transformed non-descript buildings into visual clarions; Mahn Kloix introduced another of his ‘contre-feux’ figures that seek to give a voice to whistle-blowers, refugees, activists and the like; Millo (Francesco Camillo Giorgino) combined breath-taking detail, urban energy and subtle allusions to myriad hidden stories; Neil “Shoe” Meulman brought his distinctive ‘calligraffiti’ to the festival; Wasted Rita’s faux street signage seeded the city with poetic, wistfully critical comments and artist and muralist Molly Hankinson had the singular honour of marshalling Aberdonian ‘kids’ (aged 9 to 99) in making the mother of all chalk floor drawings.

Such are the new visual delights and provocations added to the ever-changing Nuart trail of public works. Weekly tours of the art continue throughout the summer months but as the curtains came down on Nuart Festival’s core weekend of films, lectures, presentations and panel discussions, it seemed a good idea to catch up with Nuart Festival founder and director Martyn Reed and Nuart Plus co-convenor and Nuart Journal editor Susan Hansen.

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This partnership amplifies the inclusivity of the festival: by extending these projects from the gallery spaces into the streets, the art comes to the audience, rather than the other way round. Part of marginalisation is the way some groups have to work harder to reach culture, so part of successful inclusive practice is to lessen this extra labour. Delaine Le Bas’ Declaration of human rights extends her wider exhibition Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding, at Tramway, Glasgow. The artist presents a sickened Mickey Mouse alongside all 30 human rights in the UDHR, which the 2005 Conservative government wanted to take away from Romani people. Delaine wants her mixed-media approach to create ‘conversation[s] with as many people as possible’. The reiteration of this textile piece into poster form reaches across Glasgow, bringing a wider range of people into these conversations about Romani histories. The poster form, combining text and image, popular culture and law, also makes Delaine’s complex research and extensive exhibition punchy and instantly impactful: they stand alone as complete work, as a slice of the Tramway exhibition dropped into 8 sites across Glasgow.

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Across the following four years anam and its network have grown, developing opportunities and projects for emerging musicians and artists – including collaborations inspired by the Scottish environment, multi-artform events presenting music, dance performances and live interactive visuals and limited-edition artist commissions for their online shop.

As striking imagery from their previous projects rolled out across our Glasgow sites, we caught up with directors Michiel Turner, Ben Deans and Brèagha Charlton to find out more about anam creative, their championing of emerging Glasgow-based artists and their advice for early-career creatives looking to explore ideas.

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The programme is split into four ‘Design Districts’ of Graphic, Digital, Product and Illustration; with an impressive roster of speakers including Jessica Hische, Annie Atkins, Louis Henry Mitchell (Sesame Workshop), PES, Aurelia Durand, Pav Grochola (Sony Pictures Imageworks) and Sue Murphy (Coca-Cola). From industry icons to emerging voices, BDF highlights the diverse array of talents and topics shaping the design landscape.

At JACK ARTS, creativity drives our every move, making our partnership with the festival all the more relevant: ‘We love working with Jack Arts – they’re true supporters of grassroots creativity and understand the importance of speaking to an audience in an engaging way. We’re stoked to have them back on board as a Main Partner this year, and love seeing our BDF branding come to life on the streets of Birmingham (& beyond) thanks to their analogue expertise.’ – Luke Tonge, BDF Director

PROCESS: a series of actions or steps taken to achieve a particular end.

The festival’s theme brings our own practises to the forefront, JACK ARTS’s process is engaged in design from the very start. From initial concept discussions with culture clients to brainstorming solutions with our Creative Studio, our team bring design-led ideas to life through paper and paste, captivating billboards, installations, and festival experiences.

We were onsite at Birmingham Design Festival with our Jack Arts our branded coffee cart enjoying the process!

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With Arthur the dog sitting just out of shot beside her, Katharine Hamnett appears as if out of nowhere on the screen, captured in a bright room with a lit cigarette in one hand, periodically shifting in position to accommodate the sleeping hound to her left. “He has a dog pass, you see”, she shares, “so he can come everywhere with me, even to the Tate”. This kind of loyal company feels reminiscent of Katharine’s unwavering commitment to justice, her dogged determination for seeing things through properly, and her persistent hounding of political heavyweights to listen to the people, and to act accordingly. 

It’s clear to all that Katharine Hamnett has a remarkable number of accolades to her name; from winning the first ever British Fashion Awards to renouncing her CBE on account of the Palestine crisis, her accomplishments appear to align wholeheartedly with her strong moral compass. A recent post on her instagram shows Katharine dressed in a black T-shirt with the words “DISGUSTED TO BE BRITISH” proudly emblazoned on the front, capturing her speaking a few words to camera before swiftly binning her CBE. “I’m not the only one disgusted to be British, apparently”, she comments when we discuss it in our interview. “We sold a tonne of those T-shirts”. 

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On the edge of Liverpool’s Georgian Quarter, once an affluent neighbourhood of grand townhouses and gardens inhabited by the city’s prosperous Victorian merchants and traders, lies Concert Square – now a hedonistic playground of bars, djs, live music, karaoke, students, football fans, stags and hens… everything can be found here, and anything goes. The drinking, the dancing, and the dressing up. Some make it a weekly affair, some avoid it completely, some simply pass through on their way home; running a gauntlet of debauched revellers passing from bar to club to chippy and back again.  

There to capture scenes from this Scouse ‘bacchanalia’ is John Johnson, who has been photographing countless lost nights in Concert Square and its surrounding streets for over a decade. 

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Transforming our venue spaces at 1 Quaker Street, Shoreditch, Pirate championed their mantra of ‘showcasing the sound of tomorrow,’ by inviting guest DJs, plus residents and headliners for a one-off event that was free to those who registered.

Over the course of three days, The Sandbox hosted over 100 DJs to the event, each playing a 15-minute slot in the custom booth, covered by multi-angle cameras to capture promotional content for the participating artists. Emerging DJs from Pirate’s burgeoning music community were encouraged to apply for a slot – shining a light on the brand’s grassroots ethos. Headliners included frontrunners from the underground electronic scene, including re:ni, Scratchclart and Angel D’Lite, who offered up extended sets.  

Friday saw The CarWash transformed into an intimate gig venue, as Harleighblu, Good Health Good Wealth, Shaun Sky, BINA and, winner of the BBC’s UK Rap Game, LR Loose performed to a receptive east London crowd who were treated to more-than-music, with access to a bar and bespoke merchandise from the event.

Taking the Pirate experience outside of studio walls, the activation was completed by colouring the surrounding streets red and white with a bespoke postering campaign – driving client brand awareness in this key creative hub of the capital.

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The concept behind Secret 7” is simple. 7 musicians provide a track, each of which features on a limited edition pressing of 100 7” vinyl records. Meanwhile, visual artists from all over the globe, from household names to rising stars, contribute unique sleeve designs. The record sleeves also will be shown in a free exhibition at NOW Gallery in London. The artists’ identities? That’s the secret – at least until the record is in the hands of the buyer. 

To support the auction, we’ve launched a billboard campaign across the streets of London and Brighton, spreading awareness of this unique and beloved initiative, which helps to support War Child’s goal of ensuring a safe future for every child affected by war.   

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Beginning in the 1980s, its founding members, who go by the aliases Frida Kahlo and Käthe Kollwitz after the great women artists, have produced spectacular posters that confront the shortcomings of some of the biggest museums in the world. In 1989, their screenprint of Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get Into the Met. Museum?, which featured a painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique modified with a gorilla mask, stated with staggering clarity the state of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s modern art collection, where ‘less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female’. Other posters recounted, with the Guerrilla Girls’ trademark satirical bite, the abysmal collections of commercial galleries in New York that primarily represented white male artists.

Their influence on the contemporary art world is immeasurable, and many art enthusiasts go so far as to call them ‘art world royalty’. A term that is perhaps too antiquated for the Guerrilla Girls’ taste, whose goal has always been to democratise art, away from billionaires and museums who concertise ideas of taste and quality based on their private collections. Their anonymity, which began as a safety measure to protect their members from the vitriol of the art world, is now their superpower, shares Frida. “I think our anonymity intrigues people and draws them in. As we are artists, the masks also ensure that our message and politics aren’t obscured by what people think of our personalities and our art.”

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A conversation with Becky Tong, the maestro behind foundation.fm Records, and Alice Vyvyan-Jones, the orchestrator of the airwaves as Station Manager, opens up the vibrant composition that is foundation.fm. Born out of necessity, this radio station is not merely a broadcaster but a built-up platform for underrepresented, non-binary, queer, and female talent in music.

Rooted in Peckham and now flourishing in the revered Young Space in Haggerston, f.fm has become a testament to the power of community – the real kind, not the buzzword. The sense of belonging is encapsulated in the unofficial motto, “When people leave foundation.fm, they never truly leave.”

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The first piece of work, created by a group known as Hiber Nature (Sihan Cai, Noam Dee, Elena Inoue, Ametx Meneses Gonzalez), pulled together photos of green spaces–scans of hands grasping ivy, a bare tree alone in the woods–along with nature-themed poetry. Designed as a way of bringing light into the dark days, the project is a powerful reminder that there is green to be found, even in East London. The poem centres on the idea that, even as the leaves disappear, green ivy remains.

Sitting alongside it is a project by Butt Srsly (April Paice, Finley Gilzene, Alfie Barnes, Jenna Rubenstein, Millie Ghey), a group that formed at LCC and now wants to proceed as a serious collective. “This was the first time we worked in a group setting creating something together, which was the coolest part of this process,” they tell us. Like Hiber Nature, Butt Srsly’s work is more than photography, combining disciplines to convey their messaging. While photography is central to their project, they are also influenced by textiles, fashion, metalwork, and other elements. For this piece, they created a wearable sculpture of balloons, making the body look hypnotic and grotesque. “We had Fin photographed wearing the sculpture, but the images itself were its own separate thing alongside the performance element. We combined elements together that created a whole piece,” they tell us.

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Philip had been working with Kate Taylor on a temp job with the British Council, so they decided to start the festival together. They put on a four day festival, utilising his burgeoning connections with filmmakers and accepting submissions via VHS. They put on bands and other events alongside the screenings, and after a few years, it was enough of a success to change their name to London Film Festival and expand to venues like the Soho Curzon cinema. Now in its 21st year, the festival is Philip’s full-time job.

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From giving instant support on the ground to providing long-term educational programmes, their work and its impact can be seen and felt in the likes of Gaza, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ukraine, Bosnia, and anywhere in the world where conflict breaks out. Free from states and governments, they are driven by a single goal – a safe future for every child living through war.

Those familiar with their work, or perhaps their name at least, might not recall where they heard first the name ‘War Child.’ For the Head of War Child Records Rich Clarke, it was as a teenager, listening to his beloved Radiohead – one of many household names to donate music and more to the War Child cause via the historic compilation album Help.

‘Music has always been ingrained in the DNA of the organisation,’ says Rich, whose job description sits on the unique cross-section of the music industry and humanitariansim. From the big stage of Royal Albert Hall to the use of music as psycho-social support for children dealing with trauma, the remit of War Child and it’s record label is almost as big as its impact.

A collaboration with BUILDHOLLYWOOD will see War Child continue to effectively spread their important message across posters and billboards across the country – a message that has always been shared by whatever means necessary.

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We’re always keen to showcase artists’ voices and spread important messages, so we were excited to get the chance to collaborate with Tate Britain on a mural to celebrate their new exhibition. The exhibition, Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990, will be on display from November 2023 until April 2024. Featuring over 100 women artists, the exhibition is the first of its kind, bringing together a wide variety of mediums including painting, drawing, sculpture, performance, film and photography. 

According to Tate, the exhibition “explores and reflects on issues and events such as: the British Women’s Liberation movement, the fight for legal changes impacting women, maternal and domestic experiences, Punk and independent music, Greenham Common and the peace movement, the visibility of Black and South Asian Women Artists, Section 28 and the AIDs pandemic.” There is a diverse range of artists featured, many of whom have been left out of the traditional art world and have never been shown in this setting before. 

To celebrate this landmark exhibition, we partnered with Tate on a public mural in the heart of Camden. We sourced the space and commissioned the artists including Hannah Dickins, also known as Disco Dickins, to design the Camden mural, working with five emerging London-based artists to develop a collection of protest placards painted under the arches. The works, by Anka Dabrowska, Alice Hartley, Esme Lower, Zhou Ning and Olivia Twist join protest slogans supporting women’s rights taken from archival material in the exhibition. Responding to themes like protest, power, LGBTQ+ activism and women’s rights, the mural is a powerful distillation of the exhibition.

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In an interview for Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour Tish Murtha’s daughter Ella explained her mother’s first camera – found dumped and broken – was a weapon. A way of deterring creepy posh, middleclass kerb crawlers from stalking the girls and women of Elswick.

Catching up with Paul Sng director of ‘Tish’, a documentary about Murtha’s marvellously evocative, socially enmeshed and engaged work, he used the same word, “Her camera was a weapon, she used it to combat what she saw as the effects of Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberalism, government policies that left a generation behind and that continue to have an impact on subsequent generations.”

Sng became aware of Murtha’s black and white photography around 2013, “One of the first images that really captivated me was a picture of Tish’s brother Glenn jumping from the first floor of a derelict house onto a pile of mattresses. I remember doing that in my childhood in the 80s in southeast London. It’s just a great photograph. Everybody at the scene is looking at Glenn captured mid-air, and you’ve got one of Tish’s other brothers, Mark, who’s holding this dummy, and everyone, including Mark, is looking at Glenn except the dummy, who’s looking at Tish. I don’t know whether this was deliberate or not but it’s just amazing.”

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2023 marks the third edition of The Photographers’ Gallery New Talent (TNT) programme, where six photographers are awarded with an online exhibition platform for their project, a mentor each and a grant to support their artistic pursuits. JACK ARTS have partnered with TPG to provide further support and exposure for these artists by displaying work from their projects on a series of billboards across London.

This year’s winners are Igor Chekachkov, Weiyi (Margaret) Liang, Cynthia MaiWa Sitei, Cian Oba-Smith, Robbie Spotswood and Ruudu Ulas. Following an open call, they were chosen by artist Hoda Afshar and Karen McQuaid, senior curator of The Photographers’ Gallery.

What unites their work is subject conviction; sharing a strong visual language, coherent concepts and powerful themes. The notion of identity and experience – whether it be the individual’s own, reflecting on the identities of others, or a shared identity – is showcased brilliantly throughout the projects.

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“I texted a mate when I saw them and said – and this sounds ridiculous – it feels like being a pop star. Something you’ve done has been plastered all over the walls. I never thought I’d experience that,” says Turner, who has worked for the band as a writer and press officer on and off for the last 30 years. “I’m always one step removed. I see posters for bands I work with. I see a Chemical Brother’s poster and I feel proud because I’m part of it, but the book – it’s weird. It’s a very warm feeling.”

Paused in Cosmic Reflection positions the band as the centre of a hyper-visual world. Turner went into the Chemical Brothers’ archive in their south coast studio to select iconic images, flyers and posters, and there’s a bespoke cover designed by their long-term artist Kate Gibb. Design duties went to filmmaker and visual artist Paul Kelly (Finisterre and This Is Tomorrow). It had been out for less than a fortnight when Rough Trade Books named it #3 in their top books of the year after Jeremy Deller’s Art Is Magic and Thurston Moore’s Sonic Life memoir.

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It’s an invitation to find out more about a new community-generated cultural space. And beneath the artwork is a powerful story of making space and dreaming big, which led earlier this year to not-for-profit co-operative Sister Midnight acquiring a ten-year rent-free lease on The Brookdale Club, a disused Working Mens Club in Catford, in the London borough of Lewisham. It will be the first community-owned music venue in the area and it is led by three women under 30 years old: co-founders Lenny Watson and Sophie Farrell, and musician Lottie Pendlebury of Goat Girl.

The plan is to turn the currently derelict building and private yard into a 300-capacity venue, a community lab, a bar, workspace and kitchen with upstairs studios. Whilst all of the above is dependent on planning permission, one aspect is already in the world – Sister Midnight FM broadcasting under the tagline ‘from Catford to the world’.

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It’s a difficult time to be a recent graduate, particularly in the fashion industry. Along with all of the other financial and social challenges, students have had to deal with the effects of the pandemic on their studies. Many lost a full year of socialising and face-to-face education, and are having to find innovative ways to make up for lost time. Even without that extra hurdle, finding support and work opportunities in an industry so often reliant on contacts and clout can be tough for artists and designers. Curtain Road Collective is one group’s answer to those problems. Formed of nine recent graduates who met on their fashion course, Curtain Road Collective gives those emerging designers room to play without the structures of a traditional fashion house.

The designers all have different skills that they bring to the collective, and the way it works allows them all to have different jobs and come and go as they please. It offers a way for them to get support from one another while still being able to work independently. In their final year, when they had to present their collections, they knew that they wanted to do something unusual that reflected their avant garde pieces. BUILDHOLLYWOOD wanted to help, so they stepped in to offer their brand new event space,The CarWash in Shoreditch, giving Curtain Road Collective full access to the space, letting them exercise their creativity and showcase their unique, imperfect pieces. As part of this exciting partnership, BUILDHOLLYWOOD also provided posters that wrapped around the space to promote the show.

We chatted to Benjamin Ingham, Rosie Chesters, and Mariam Parra of Curtain Road Collective about their history, the show, and what’s next for such a talented group of young designers at the start of their careers.

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Mollie Balshaw and Rebekah Beasley established Short Supply shortly after graduating in 2019, aiming to support artists who feel a lack of support and community after leaving art school. Since then, the organisation has gone from strength to strength, collaborating with Islington Mill, SOUP, Manchester Pride, Manchester Art Gallery, the Institute of International Visual Arts and the Whitworth Gallery among others, all while battling a global pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis, and the ongoing precarity around arts funding in the UK.

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The Royal Academy of Artists is undoubtedly at the heart of the arts and culture scene within London and further afield. For over 250 years, they’ve been championing artists of all ages and nurturing a platform for the next generation of talent to grow from. The Young Artists’ Summer Show, having just turned five, is an open submission exhibition or UK students from 4-19.  

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JACK ARTS Scotland teamed up with some of Edinburgh’s leading festivals to create Festival City Stories, a series of posters platforming stories from their year-round work with local communities, designed by emerging illustrators from Edinburgh College of Art.

Our accompanying film, ‘Backdrop to the Festival City,’ captures Edinburgh’s ever vibrant streets, following a day to night in August – filmed and edited by Tao-Anas Le Thanh accompanied by Edinburgh Makar Hannah Lavery’s poem ‘Dawn Chorus’ , with a soundtrack by Sarya Wu.

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Through the sheer amount of ways to interact with Blind at The Age of Four – the album, the paintings, the performances, the exhibition, the billboards – you can learn a lot about the beauty of life’s abstraction, the importance of making art and culture accessible, the artist in question’s childhood and, maybe even your own experiences. 

Growing up in an area of Cambridgeshire he describes as ‘the middle of nowhere,’ Jack Warne’s childhood is timestamped by spells of blindness. Caused by a rare, hereditary disease called Thiel–Behnke dystrophy, his experience of the condition, and the way he interprets the world as a result of it, is as integral to the all-encompassing project as the name would suggest. 

Blind at The Age of Four is the debut album from the producer and fine artist, but it’s more so a world that he’s been building since he moved to London. GAUNT not only creates crunchy, electronic textures in music, he also puts them into a painted, full collection of warping, physical and digital art that will be exhibited at 39 Gransden Avenue in Hackney throughout September and October.

Header video by Jack Warne

The post How going ‘Blind at The Age of Four’ inspired musician and fine artist GAUNT’s debut album and exhibition. first appeared on BUILDHOLLYWOOD.

“We’ve been at We Out Here since the start and what really stands out is the community feel and the family values says Don’t Be A Creep (DBAC) co-conspirator Maude Churchill. “We used that as a way of diving into the issues.” 

The issues are ones that relate to safer spaces – concepts which were front and centre of this year’s festival season and which are flowing into club culture more generally as the nights draw in and evenings out becomes more venue-centred.  

“It’s house rules!” says DJ, art director and DBAC founder Ruby Savage. “Like at home when there was a pen and pad in the kitchen with your mum’s notes on it – do this, do that, do the dishes by the time I’m home. It’s that idea. We run a household together, we run this space together, we’re a family.”

Header photo by Hannah Burton

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In the early 1990s Slowdive reigned supreme. Their sonic trademark of glow-drenched, reverb-soaked guitars created huge emotional worlds, inhabited by fans worldwide. The five-piece split in 1995 after three critically-acclaimed albums on the iconic Creation Records – and reformed in 2017 with the epic Slowdive.

Their fifth album, everything is alive, began with vocalist and guitarist Neil Halstead playing around with modular synths in his Cornish home. “That was the direction he started in,” says bassist Nick Chaplin, “but unfortunately for him, when everyone else gets in the room it all tends to go back to the more regular Slowdive Sounds. There’s a bit of an influence of both. I think it’s turned out pretty well.”

It’s an understated perspective on the big sounds that Slowdive deal in. It’s evocative music, full of late night tenderness and strung-out early morning atmospherics. The sound, says Chaplin, goes right back to their earliest recordings. “Back in 1989 we were influenced by people like The Primitives and Jesus and the Mary Chain: short pop songs and noisy guitars. Rachel and I were goths when we were teenagers, so we had that atmospheric side to the music we liked to listen to. When we came up with ‘Avalyn’ – the almost instrumental track on the first EP – we all looked at each other in the studio and said ‘OK, this is not The Primitives anymore’.”

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The theme of artist and furniture designer Rio Kobayashi’s upcoming show is Conviviality: ‘the art of living together’. While it’s his first “solo” show, it’s actually a big, unique collaboration with some of his closest friends and greatest inspirations – among them, Flavia Brändle, Peter Pilotto, Walde Seife, James Hague, Keita Takemura, Åbäke and more. The show will be part of this year’s Brompton Design District at Cromwell Place, and Kobayashi will be showing some of his fun designs, including new work. He’s known for pieces that play with the possibilities and boundaries of furniture – a table shaped like a fish, shelving with a face, and Japanese-inspired screens among them.

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Turner Prize-winning artist Lubaina Himid CBE has been inspiring conversations around the country with her touring Arts Council Collections exhibition centred around women’s experiences of the urban environment. JACK ARTS worked with the organisation and Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery to translate the exhibition’s message onto the street while it was showing in the city by showcasing a trio of artworks Himid selected from an open call; they teamed up with the Arts Council Collection again for a new phase of the project as Found Cities, Lost Objects opened at Bristol’s Royal West of England Academy.

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The illustrated introductory talk about ways to approach the design brief touched on all the obvious advantages of a poster campaign: in general, its potential for immediacy and relative ease of production. In terms of visual features that help a poster ‘pop’ there were, of course, considerations as to bold, surprising imagery and lettering; inventive and meaningful juxtapositions; mimicry and/or subversion of classic ad. campaigns or extant street signage; experimenting with scale; breaking expected design conventions – sometimes doing the opposite of ‘good’ design can produce a really great design. Also there were discussions regarding the attitude or spirit of a cut-through street poster. Thinking about what ‘tone’ is best to address passers-by, whether that be through shock, humour, inducements to feel compassion, empathy, concern… Participating students keenly addressed all the above and much more.

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It’s no secret that Saffron’s work is needed. With ‘less than 5% of the music tech industry… comprised of women, non-binary or trans people’, and as ‘less than 1% of these are people of colour’, the organisation has been on a mission to ‘change those stats through meaningful, long-term, and far-reaching projects’.

Both in-person and online, Saffron’s courses, workshops, and mentorships have seen over one thousand participants get involved and are consistently oversubscribed. One of their most popular offerings is Mix Nights, a DJing course which has enabled 41% of graduates to go onto paid gig bookings; 34% of their radio course graduates have secured their own residencies. Saffron has created safe spaces in the hope of nurturing underrepresented talent in the industry – by giving people the essential room to learn and build confidence.

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“We’ve always said that we just want to help bring new momentum to the Edinburgh creatives. All we’re trying to do is make some fun things happen and bring in the local community with different artists to have a good time. That’s what life’s all about really”, he explains. Collaboration and support is at the heart of this creative network. “When I introduce people to The Edinburgh Collective, I just say ‘Yo, The Edinburgh Collective, all we do is just make cool shit happen.’ And very often, that gets the message across quite quickly.” 

For the partnership the collective have made their mark on a mural in the poster space led by their Art Director, Lauren Browne, presenting what they do best – creative collaboration. The mural will promote their summer Garden Party at the Pavillion Cafe, involving an artists’ market and live music. Over the course of the week, five local artists will each work on a panel on the mural, showcasing not only their annual Garden Party event, but exactly what the network is about. “It’s definitely something that Fraser has taken the lead in here. But I think setting new standards on all fronts of professionalism is important. Asking ourselves how can we help artists as an organisation and encouraging them to do what they love, providing them with opportunities to be the best artists they could possibly be.”

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He started training in Bristol and then when the pandemic hit decided to bring ballroom to Wales. He and co-director Tayo Sanwo have built a thriving collective with support from The Impeccable Haus of Tisci, who have appeared on HBO’s Legendary TV show. “It’s amazing how something can be birthed during such a crazy time,” he says as we celebrate WBC as part of Pride Month. “Now we’re really thriving. There’s a beautiful Welsh scene and we’re doing so much already.”

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As we’re partnering with Art Night to support them on the streets of Scotland (alongside Dundee’s Street Advertising Services), we chatted to Artistic Director Helen Nisbet about the changes this has brought about for the festival, and teamed up with the curatorial team – Elizabeth Ann Day, Becca Clark and Jamie Donald – for a shoot in the city.  

Since starting in 2016, Art Night helped to develop arts engagement in the English capital with new commissions and works being shown in unusual, unexpected, and carefully curated locations with major cultural partners. From Westminster, Whitechapel Gallery and Walthamstow to the South Bank and Battersea Power Station, 2021’s mid-pandemic iteration of the festival saw them take first steps outside of the city, to UK-wide locations like Eastbourne, Birmingham, Cardiff, Skye, Derry, ‘and crucially… Dundee’ (including a partnership with BUILDHOLLYWOOD that manifested Guerrilla Girls’ The Male Graze as a national series of billboards).  

Now in its sixth year, 2023 will see the festival breaking new ground with its first programme to be held completely outside of London. Travelling to eastern Scotland, Dundee will host Art Night when it occupies the city on the 24th June 2023. With ten commissions by local and internationally celebrated artists occupying both civic and public spaces in the city, the festival will run alongside Inwith – showcasing a cross-section of Dundee’s impressive and varied arts and community programming. Now, Art Night ‘champions the possibilities of decentralisation.’  

With this year’s festival including work by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Emma Hart, Inefficient Solutions, our own previous collaborator Nabihah Iqbal, Tai Shani, Saoirse Amira Anis, Richy Carey, Lucy Mckenzie, Heather Phillipson, and Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon, they will occupy locations like the Arthurstone Community Library, Greenmarket Car Park, V&A Dundee, RRS Discovery, Baxter Park Pavilion and more. With a curatorial effort like this, Art Night enables people to interact, explore, and engage with their city in a way they normally wouldn’t. Buildings take on new purposes, locations earn new utilisations, and the area feels cast anew.  

To find out more about the developments for the festival and the promise this brings for its future, we spoke to Artistic Director Helen Nisbet ahead of 2023’s edition. 

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As one of the music industry’s calendar highlights, each year brings a raucous programme of fresh talent to The Great Escape in Brighton – something certainly worth celebrating. The festival has become the go-to for fans and industry wanting to spot the next big thing, with the variety of intimate, independent, and just plain fun venues in the city providing the perfect setting to catch artists in before they really hit the big time. 

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The building has an eccentric and colourful history that matches the new musical histories being generated seven days a week since it opened in January 2011. Tucked underneath Brighton train station, it was previously used as a horse hospital and formed part of the taxi rank when such transport took place in horse and carriage. “I think it’s GDS’s eccentric history that gives it such a unique vibe and feel,” says Megan Thompson, programming and productions manager at Green Door Store. “It’s whole sort of secret, hidden away under the railway station vibe.” 

The venue, which fits in 170 music lovers for live shows and 300 people for club nights, is explicitly welcoming. The bar is always free entry and each week there are regularly free gigs and cheap club nights. In the week of The Great Escape, Megan takes us through the front door and into the heart of this locally beloved DIY space.

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During the summer of 2021, London-based multi-hyphenate artist and founder of Sports Banger Jonny Banger took over the streets of London with Billboards stating ‘ILLEGAL RAVES ARE NOW ILLEGAL’. Now, two years later the London-based multi-hyphenate artist has once again partnered with BUILDHOLLYWOOD for a second offering of his UK street takeover. This time, however, the collaboration is also courtesy of photographer Gareth McConnell and features imagery from the two artists’ latest project – a dreamy, psychedelic-style zine.

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Bonjour is a Queer-run workers’ co-operative in Glasgow’s Saltmarket with the intention of prioritising underrepresented groups in the local LGBTQ+ community. The bar, club, and space is one meant for celebration and safety – hoping to centre the Queer euphoria everyone deserves to feel, while encouraging mutual support among its members. 

In the current climate, it’s not easy to sustain an independent venue – the cost-of-living crisis has already caused plenty of DIY ventures to close or take undefined hiatuses. Bonjour has weathered a multitude of storms thanks to the pandemic, local infrastructure issues, and hugely increased running costs – but is determined to keep being the invaluable space that it is.

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Founded in 2003, the London Short Film Festival has now spent two decades platforming both British and international short film, existing ‘to spotlight a multiplicity of filmmakers, visual artists and creatives, across intersections and with a commitment to peripheral voices’.

For grassroots arts organisations, times haven’t exactly been easy in recent years – what with the combination of cuts to funding, spiralling costs, and lost earnings through the pandemic – but LSFF persists, with its city-wide January 2023 festival bringing together ten days of short films, live events, workshops, panels, Q&As, and multidisciplinary curation. 

Ahead of its opening, we brought London Short Film Festival’s expectedly artful posters onto the streets, taking over sites in the north, south, east, and west of the city. Pulling together evocative stills from filmmaker Andrew Kötting’s festival trailer, and Edward Sogunro’s vibrant but soft-edged graphic design, in 4-sheet and takeover form, the campaign brought the essence of the festival directly into London’s landscapes. 

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The recently published Home Is Not A Place collaboration between Johny Pitts and T.S. Elliot Prize winner Roger Robinson is a richly layered, heartrendingly poignant odyssey exploring Black communities in Britain through a tour of towns and cities around the U.K.’s coastline.

As Booker prize winner, author and inclusivity advocate Bernardine Evaristo has suggested, repeat visits, dipping curiously into this beautifully produced book bears – literally at times – untold bounty. But it’s also worth engaging with patiently, cover to cover, encountering texts and imagery as they appear in this extraordinary travelogue.

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A collaborative and immensely creative partnership between composer Bobbie-Jane Gardner, and Academy award-nominated filmmaker and photographer Brian Cross (also known as B+), Music of the Unseen is a project that set out to celebrate the far-reaching contributions composer-arrangers Charles Stepney and David Axelrod have made to the world of music, hoping to give them the credit they haven’t always received. Through studio albums, singles, and later, sampling, each artists’ unparalleled bodies of work have permeated through genres and settings to become seminal pieces. 

Stepney’s and Axelrod’s impressive influence remains often unknown or unacknowledged in cultural history – hence Gardner and B+’s decision to sensitively reimagine their works and pay tribute to them through a live show series. Performed in November 2022 at Manchester’s Stoller Hall, The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and the London Southbank Centre, Music of the Unseen saw Gardner and B+’s own artforms come together for ensemble interpretations of Stepney’s and Axelrod’s music, with live visuals; strings, percussion, and wind; experimental film; and curated DJ sets by pioneering selector Marc Mac, adding to the cohesive presentation of their back catalogues and derivative music that followed.  

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This year marks 75 years since the ICA’s inception, established by a disparate collective of artists in 1947. From then until today, it has continued to platform, produce, present, and commission vital new work in visual arts, film, music, performance, and digital art, working with many figures seminal to each practice. Now, to showcase its inspiring anniversary programme – and signal a new era for the institution – we’re working with them on a year-long partnership that will celebrate and put word of the series out across the city.

The ICA’s position at the centre of London’s contemporary culture has been enduring. Its reflection on that time will rightfully be ‘forward-thinking and future-focused’, marking its first programme under the leadership of new Director Bengi Ünsal. Truly multi-disciplinary, it’ll include a takeover by queer techno night club platform INFERNO, R.I.P. Germain’s first solo exhibition at a UK institution, visiting film festivals and newly curated series, long-term education partnerships with Dazed Club and the London College of Fashion, and a music series featuring gigs by Black Country New Road and Deathcrash – and that’s only a fraction of what’s planned.

Alongside the dynamic event series, a major fundraising auction in partnership with Sotheby’s, a new digital journal, a new podcast series, and a rebalancing of its programme to cover performance, music, and night-time programming as well as its thriving visual arts, film, and education programmes, our partnership will give the ICA’s new concepts a platform on the streets of London.

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A tone of apprehension, even foreboding is introduced by the pulsing heartbeat and faint chimes over the opening credits. The sound amplifies with the first image: a close-up of a young black girl’s face. Her expression is impassive, matter of fact, detached. Only her face is in focus in a wider shot showing the young athlete stretching out on the gym floor, the rest of the room is a distortion of colour and angular trampoline legs. It’s an arresting and disconcerting opening scene that’s further fraught with tension by the first line of the film’s spoken voice over: “Are you able to express yourself and be proud that you are part of Commonwealth and feel accepted?”

A young black male is filmed in the same spot. His expression, like the girl’s, is deadpan, stony. This is in stark contrast to what we hear while he executes his own warm-up routine. A woman’s voice recounts an horrific – if not unusual – instance of her being racially and sexually profiled as a child: “My aunt came to parents’ evening and [the class teacher] advised my aunt that I could go and get a job in a factory, and I’ve got good child-bearing hips.”

As further examples of racism are spoken of on the soundtrack both young athletes continue their floor work. Bennett mirrors our discomfort at what’s being said by extreme changes in our point of view. From above we see the young lad performing a back flip, he jumps but we catch his landing from beneath a trampoline. There’s a close-up of the girl gymnast wringing the aching tension from her fingers and palms meanwhile a child’s voice faltering declares, “I don’t really understand.”

Again, from a high vantage, we see the girl do a 360 degree twist. It’s a cute move, she’s a little unbalanced on her landing. On the soundtrack racial politics are specifically referenced for the first time. We cut to the boy performing the same 360 jump but by contrast he’s seen as a distant silhouetted, shadowy figure surrounded, hemmed in by walls and crash mats. This transition to a dark, constrained physical space underlines what’s being said about the UK government’s propensity for shadowy control, using the Commonwealth as way of keeping a hold over its former colonies.

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Visiting concepts like power, safety, belonging and navigation, it takes inspiration from the plentiful depictions of women in urban areas – through advertisements, statues, public imagery and much more – and the subconscious messages these communicate, asking what this means for women in terms of value, safety, or being welcome in spaces and places.

Alongside the exhibition’s showing at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, we partnered with the Arts Council Collections to showcase a trio of artworks on the streets of the city, making its message more visible and accessible among local communities. Chosen by Lubaina Himid CBE, vibrant, contemplative and thought-provoking works by Leah Hickey, Helen Grundy x Round Lemon, and Haseebah Ali, took over our sites and forged new connections between the gallery and the street.

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He is renowned for documenting the city’s richly diverse visual arts and music scene for many years. The access he was granted by artists and bands and the inventive images arising from those opportunities vouch for the trust and respect Dimmick’s subjects have for the photographer.

Likewise, portraits featured in the current street display – Two Sisters, Woodlands (1981), Mr Wong, Woodlands (1982), Family with Baby, Woodlands (1981) – suggest a deeply humane and empathic connection. Dimmick’s depictions of Glasgow’s communities explore vivid aesthetics, cultural diversity, as well as a sociological and psychological fascination. They deftly achieve what photography and art historian John Tagg has described as ‘both the description of an individual and the inscription of social identity.’

There’s an intriguing aspect to this 2022 archival art trail across the city in that the contemporary display sites either feature in Dimmick’s original photograph or are close by to where he took the pictures. Tying together the past and the present, the displays were celebrated by art walks with the photographer, reflecting on his images and practice in-situ. By means of that comparison we’re able to witness the urban environment in a state of variously paced but constant change. The image 1 White Street, Glasgow (1996) is a subtly textural and tonal composition of an otherwise unprepossessing corner of the city. Its only ‘remarkable’ feature is the hand-painted lightning strike on a street-level dummy window. Nowadays the same building is a garish purple and orange estate agents with a lurid commercial notice where the graffiti bolt used to be.

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This modest material intervention threw up a whole new field of inquiry for the artist. It led her to radically question how we view these spaces and the different ways we see the people that variously inhabit them. The artist has written, ‘Ideology is at work in this sport. Gymnastics has been used as a tool of propaganda, of control, of patriarchy and of nationalism. Defining what bodies should look like, what perfection is, what the human ideal is.’

So much sport imagery focuses on moments of triumph: a sprinter’s torso nudging the finish line, the dramatic heavyweight KO, a soaring slam dunk… In Nkosi’s work, by contrast, drama is played down. Faces are anonymised and it’s this anonymity of Black and brown countenances that invites us to look harder, to inquire further. Body shapes, the kit they’re wearing, the figures’ relation to each other and their surroundings all afford a contemplative array of mutually dependent shapes, colours and gestures. Rather than an unquestioning promulgation of sporting prowess Nkosi’s imagery admits the teamwork and supportive interaction on which success (and a good society) depend, ‘At the same time as lauding Black excellence can we also allow them vulnerability? Can we allow them rest? Can we allow them to be part of a community? Can we allow them to be human?’ Her first solo show, the 2020 exhibition titled ‘Gymnasium’ at Stevenson gallery in Johannesburg was both visually beguiling and subtly thought-provoking.

In her Olympic Channel podcast Nkosi told host Ed Knowles, ‘I have all these questions about sport and also about the art world.’ She refutes the idea that racism is on the wane globally because Black athletes across numerous sports have become icons. Yes, they are celebrated and adored. Nkosi suggests, however, what this hero/heroine worship doesn’t negate, alleviate or even begin to address is casual or systemic racism. The prejudiced stereotyping and othering of Black athletes persists even while they’re feted.

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It’s not so common to see the same for women. Despite women’s integral roles in, well, every industry you can think of, society’s structure has meant that all too often those leading figures get overlooked – or worse, written out of history altogether.

In 2018, City Hall began a joint-venture project with Tate Collective called LDN WMN. Kicking off 100 years after women won the right to vote, the collaboration looked to pay tribute to some of the capital’s most influential figures via a series of free artworks and installations, all created by women or non-binary artists. It came as part of the Mayor’s #BehindEveryGreatCity campaign, and included pieces paying tribute to Mary Seacole, Noor Inayat Khan, and Olive Morris, by Heather Agyepong, Manjit Thapp, and Rene Matic respectively. Somewhat delayed by the COVID pandemic, now, the project’s final commission has been unveiled – paying tribute to Dr Beryl Gilroy.

Dr Beryl Gilroy moved to England from what was then British Guiana in 1952, and as part of the Windrush generation, battled through the overt discrimination of her time to “study Child Development, become an acclaimed author, respected broadcaster, and Camden’s first Black headteacher”. As a pioneering writer and ethno-psychotherapist, her achievements and contributions to education and development cannot be understated. Her career is often, and fairly, considered revolutionary. Dr Gilroy remains an inspiration today, while her memoir Black Teacher is somewhat of a rediscovered classic – re-released in 2021 with an introduction by Bernadine Evaristo, the book is “testament to how one woman’s dignity, ambition and spirit transcended her era.”

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Buildings and structures in city spaces don’t have to be bound by their original purposes. There is ingenuity in looking at an empty room, seeing beyond its present state, and conceiving of ways to reinvent it with an injection of art, music, theatre, people, community, activity, or perhaps a combination of the lot. Whitechapel Gallery’s Nocturnal Creatures series does just that – with annual takeovers of its ever-changing, east-central London locality, pushing art out from its four walls to the community just beyond them.

The festival’s 2022 programme spanned immersive film, music, performance, art, DJ sets and, of course, a bouncy castle, once again accessible to all for free. Within walking distance of the Whitechapel Gallery site, new works premiered by Jennie Moran, Emma Talbot, Janette Parris, Jasleen Kaur, musician and broadcaster Nabihah Iqbal, filmmakers Baff Akoto and Patrick Goddard, and theatre company Cardboard Citizens, also joined by pieces from Henry/Bragg and An Untold Story, Assemble / House of Annetta, and London Voices, all carefully curated and placed in consideration of the landscape around. Alongside them, AGOSTINO and Touching Bass’ Errol Anderson and Alex Rita assumed DJ duties, providing perfectly paired sonics to set the scene. Sited within the House of Annetta, St Boniface Church, Toynbee Hall, the Hickman, Aldgate Square and the Bishopsgate Institute, the night successfully achieved its aims of setting imaginations alight with experiences you can’t have anywhere else.

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Tearing up the classical music rulebook since 2011, The Multi-Story Orchestra was born in Peckham, giving the traditional multi-instrument concept a contemporary refresh. Removing it from its archetypal grandeur, and re-situating strings, brass, and wind within a multi-story car park, it was an intuitive pathway to drawing new audiences, providing a creative outlet for the community, and giving the artform newfound life.

The Multi-Story Orchestra’s home is Bold Tendencies, an innovative SE15 arts organisation based atop Peckham Multi-Storey Car Park. With the group being made up of both professional musicians and young adoptees, the intention has always been to “bring powerful and meaningful music to life”, believing that “creating the best art means involving and valuing absolutely everybody” – it’s a project that works with, and for, its immediate local community.

Produced with a group of inspiring Peckham teenagers, its most recent piece, The Endz, comprises spoken word, rap, and songs derived from the writers’ lived experiences of social inequality and the gang culture that can accompany it. It’s “their story, their words, their music.” Following a pair of friends torn apart by violence, the modern-day story of friendship, heartbreak, and loss took shape after the tragic and untimely death of one of their friends.

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The scope and pace of technology have enabled us to be electronically connected with vast numbers of people at all hours of the night and day. But if we can communicate with people from all over the world at the touch of a button, then why are so many people still feeling chronically isolated?

The experience of modern life can feel dislocating, especially throughout the lockdowns over the last few years. As access to communal space was quite suddenly denied to us and businesses, offices, and many public places closed indefinitely, we missed the bodily magic of being in the same space as other people. Siloed in our homes and unable to meet up in any communal way, we were denied so many of the important everyday interactions we perhaps took for granted before. Connecting remotely is no substitute for being together.

As the world reopens its doors and we are once again able to mix with one another again, we felt it was more important than ever to celebrate community in all the forms it takes. To launch the ongoing partnership between BUILDHOLLYWOOD and Dazed Club, we decided to stage a takeover project occupying billboards across London, Bristol, Sheffield, and Manchester, and we put out an open call inviting members to “Show us your club! After years at home, clubs of all kinds are more important than ever as a place to find community – whether that’s an actual club with dancing, or mushroom hunting with a group of friends, or a collective finding purpose through their work. Getting together is our act of creativity. So show us your club! The work can be anything visual you like – either what your club does, or your club doing what they do – we just want to see you’re up to, and put it on posters.”

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ReGo means “to put aside our ego and go again and again through a continued process of change both in oneself and in society.” With this as a starting point for Our Story in the Making, the cross-disciplinary project has come to embody collective action as it unites London College of Fashion students with East London-based brands, all in the aim of affecting positive social change. Having seen the negative impact of knife crime on the local community, the project’s intention was to counter the problem through fashion and creativity.

The idea was to repurpose knives from amnesty bins alongside other urban waste as inspiration for (and to be utilised within) clothes, accessories, and jewellery. Co-created by young people from East London and local brands Michelle Lowe-Holder, CQ Studio, FibreLab, and The Reclaimery, they’ve engineered the transformation of objects of potential violence into something beautiful. ReGo intended to “connect creatives across disciplines with the aim to illustrate to young people how they can control the direction their lives take by leveraging the power of fashion, making, and storytelling to shift the prevailing narrative around youth violence.”

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At first glance it appears to be a sort of cartoon memento mori, a visual whistle stop tour reminding us of all the vices that’ll ensure we shuffle off this mortal coil sooner rather than later: booze (99.9% ABV… Eek!), fags, debt, drugs, screens, fast food, (un)happy pills and more.

Amidst the frenzy, in the centre of the work, there appears to be a tablet computer with a hand hovering over options to select a virtual experience (which, we are assured, ‘Feels Just Like The Real Thing’). Hiking, Drinking or Drawing, anyone? And then, whatever you feel about the potential excitement afforded by these activities there’s a disturbing proviso. The hand apparently poised to make the choice is, erm, compromised somewhat. The index finger is lopped off. It’s also been severed at the wrist. The radius bone is sticking out. Ouch, it looks nasty! Oh, and on the back of the hand there’s also an open mouth. It appears to be screaming.

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In response to the young people they work with from the communities around Grenfell Tower, West London charities One Vibe and The Harrow Club have created the single West Side Story. As the horrific event reaches five years since its happening, the song looks to provide much-needed reflection and remembering for lost loved ones and be “testament to the young people’s own indomitable spirit despite such difficult circumstances.”

West Side Story’s production comes from renowned DJ and producer Toddla T, and features up-and-coming artists from in and around Ladbroke Grove – Sophie DeMasi, Double C, S-Town, MsBambii, 23Trill and G2 Slime. Their joint efforts have made the song “a collective voice of unity, resilience and strength”. We’ve partnered with One Vibe to platform the release on the streets of West London – as well as providing street space, we had our very own (West London native) Steven Wiggins photograph the imagery for the release, and helped to design its artwork.

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Coco sees themselves as standing apart from the crowd. Being black, queer, non-binary, and neurodivergent, they have often felt a lack of representation in, or inability to relate to, leading figures in mental health, in the creative worlds, or even in broader society. After their own mental health struggles became a catalyst, Coco created a platform – Talk to Coco – that would be an online safe space. They set out to ensure that other people who identify differently don’t endure similar things on their own.

Uniting their work in creative writing and activism, and providing an uncompromising listening ear for people to share their thoughts, feelings, or experiences with, Talk to Coco is now making sure that people who reach out to them always feel understood and accepted. Coco’s honesty, openness, and deep-running empathy has enabled them to become a stalwart of the mental health awareness world. They’ve since come to run creative writing workshops, speak on panels, and collaborate with huge global organisations like Amazon and Yahoo on the issues they’re proud to platform.

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Early works – Broken Wall 1 and Preludes – appear to both create and enquire into the precarity of and atmospheres associated with particular spaces. These interventions seem to ask, ‘How does dismantling the fabric of a wall (revealing the stark contrast between the pristine surface and interior gubbins) or introducing variations of light via suspended material change the way think about and bodily relate to interiors we presumed to know?’

The subtle amalgam of found materials in a later work like Untitled (Sink) evince, again, a measure of insecurity. We’re not sure how sound the construction is and so are invited to engage with it tentatively. The work comprises a pair of rickety table-like structures: one, horizontal and topped with a smudged transparent sheet and the other slightly slanted and wrapped in a material covered in small blue flowers.

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As a project that’s both public art and an environmental message, Breathe:2022 with Dryden Goodwin reinstates an earlier 2012 work of the same name, now updated to be at home on Lewisham’s streets today. Created alongside London air quality scientists, the work underlines the urgency of conversations around air pollution. Featuring over 1000 enlarged hand-sketches of local people who bear witness to the impacts of poor air quality in the borough (and city beyond), the sets of drawings form photo-in-motion sequences that show people labouring to inhale and exhale.

Invisible Dust approached us to install Dryden Goodwin’s piece across Lewisham – in the “choked underpasses of busy bridges” and on the Old Town Hall in Catford. As a piece that’s grand in size and scale, Breathe:2022 is imposing and thought-provoking. Occupying prominent spaces in the centre of Lewisham, Hither Green, Forest Hill and Catford, it will raise climate consciousness in the borough, with an events and engagement series running around it. As Invisible Dust notes, “Breathe:2022 asks us to both stay with the claustrophobia of ‘fighting for breath’ but begin to look upwards and outwards, towards the possibilities of community action and a clean air future for all.”

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Nightlife spaces can be shrouded in mystery, protected in order to keep the communities that inhabit them both safe and close. Often founded by those with marginalised identities, they’ve long provided a place for self-expression to be nurtured in full spirit – making them cultural hotspots and touchpoints. And, unfortunately, these spaces don’t tend to last forever – which makes their documentation all the more special and vital.

Taking over in the late 1970s and through into the 1980s, New York City’s disco and dance subcultures gave life to now-legendary spaces like the Paradise Garage and Studio 54, which became home to some of pop culture’s most famous faces. In hindsight, those eras were launch points for today’s dance, club and art culture – so have been rightfully revered and storied ever since.

As now-veterans and contemporary leaders of that scene, Simon Dunmore’s Defected Records and its Glitterbox imprint wanted to pay tribute to that foundational time in NYC. Collaborating with photographer Bill Bernstein, who was a central figure in capturing the energy of those nightclubs, Glitterbox and Defected pulled together the exhibition Last Dance. Showcasing a selection of images curated by David Hill Gallery in London, including exclusive pieces never before exhibited, it took up residency at Defected HQ’s newly launched exhibition space.

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With the Conservative government’s recently passed Nationality and Borders Bill, the UK’s hostile environment policy continues to advance, making the immigration process evermore difficult to navigate. For people escaping war, conflict, and a lack of safety in their own countries, it means that displays of solidarity and support once they reach Britain are more valuable than ever.

Having gone through the asylum system herself, Comfort Etim was motivated to set up a safe space for women in similar situations, and started her Liverpool-based football team, Comfort Angels, in the process. Working with the support of Amnesty and the LCFA, the sessions started small, and have grown to have a group of around 30 women regularly in attendance. Comfort’s initiative and persistence empowered her to find and cultivate a community of her own, in a time of potential isolation.

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Devoted to the Cardiff scene for over 15 years, Minty is a bona fide expert on the city’s venues, local artists and hidden gems. His passion for Welsh music culture spans from the country’s many legendary artists right across to the grassroots. Attending gigs and shows for sport, he’s been able to develop Minty’s Gig Guide as a bible to the local scene for Cardiff natives and tourists alike, wanting to share the very best that the city has to offer with everyone who can experience it.

As the 6 Music Festival arrived in Cardiff in early April 2022, Minty was the perfect person to collaborate with to spotlight the event programming in the city. The Minty’s Gig Guide team worked alongside 6 Music Festival to produce an interactive map that would showcase the weekend’s packed listings, alongside the bridging Fringe Festival organised by Creative Wales and Cardiff’s own local venues and artists. The beautiful illustrations of the individual venues come courtesy of Alex Waeland, facilitating the accessibility and vibrancy of the map, encapsulating the essence of each featured spot in fantastic watercolour.

To platform the collaboration, we worked alongside Minty to bring Minty’s Gig Guide to the 6 Music Festival onto the streets of Cardiff. Taking over the full spread of our Custom House Street sites, the poster displays showcased Waeland’s illustrations of each festival venue and put the spotlight on the city’s music scene for all to see.

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Founded by spoken word artist Emmanuel Nwaohai, SPK ABOUT IT is a voice-over agency disrupting a noisy industry with a brand-new approach. Using its expertise in the field, and impressive network of performers and writers, SPK ABOUT IT is able to “champion authentic voices and diversify the voice-over space”, with “a community of spoken word talent from different walks of life”. Nwaohai’s aim was both to help young poets know the worth of their talent, and help brands to hone in on the real experiences, stories and passion that gives life to a tone of voice.

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Eminent multimedia artist Yoko Ono has been flying the flag for peace for a long time. For too long. But she is steadfast in her devotion to stopping violence and conflict, so in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is once again lending her voice and platform to the anti-war movement.

This time around, she’s teamed up with CIRCA (experts in art and culture with purpose) and Serpentine. Yoko has provided her word-dominated artwork IMAGINE PEACE, set to be sold in print to raise money for the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund. All of the proceeds from the prints will be given to the charity – while the artwork continues to interrupt metropolises by its daily display on some of the world’s most prominent digital screens, in the centres of London, Seoul, Melbourne, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Berlin, Milan, New York and Rome, showing every single night in March.

We’re honoured to be working with Yoko and CIRCA to supersize IMAGINE PEACE on the streets of London in paper and paste form, taking the words far and wide across the city. By using our sites to showcase the artwork, it will reach out and share Yoko’s message right within London’s communities – in Dalston Junction, Shepherd’s Bush, Commercial Street and Sclater Street around Brick Lane in Shoreditch, and Southwark’s Blackfriars Road, amongst many other spots in the city. We’re also working alongside original flyposting experts UNCLE to take Yoko’s message to some of the super-central, hard-to-reach places where it certainly ought to be seen.

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Having received universal acclaim, Life Between Islands “explores the work of artists from the Caribbean who made their home in Britain, alongside other British artists whose work has been influenced and inspired by Caribbean themes and heritage.” Centring around the formations of community and identity, it celebrates visionary artists, photographers, designers and creatives who have altered the course of British culture and transformed contemporary society through their practices.

Designed as a community-orientated extension to Life Between Islands, our pop-up street gallery with Tate Britain is taking over our billboards, as well as buildings, spaces and places across the capital, sharing newly told stories about London’s Caribbean communities and cultural heritage. It highlights cinemas, markets, clubs, libraries, community centres and restaurants – inviting passers-by and those intentionally exploring the route to hear the voices of people who have loved, used, and perhaps had their identity and work shaped by, the locations featured.

Stories from the likes of Steve McQueen CBE, Hew Locke, Grace Wales Bonner, Neil Kenlock, Wyn Baptiste and Ingrid Pollard cover Ridley Road Market in Dalston, Crystal Palace Farm, the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton, Notting Hill Carnival’s Trini Hall, Alexandra Palace, Matchstick Piehouse in Deptford, and many, many more community spots, taking inspiration from English Heritage’s Blue Plaque scheme with over 40 stories and sites to explore.

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From 1^st-6^th March 2022, specially commissioned works for Bristol Light Festival will premier alongside pieces making their city debut, in carefully curated locations on the streets – filling the city with creative light.

2019’s edition included interactive and immersive works, and this year’s programme is set to feature much of the same – with installations and experiential light art pieces to explore. Created by international names, local artists, and Bristol-based collectives, like Squidsoup, Lucid, and Designs In Air, each one has been tailored to its location – filling varied urban spaces with colour, ambience and new potential for enjoyment, showcasing the city in a different light, highlighting both its landmarks and lesser-known spots.

To introduce 2022’s Bristol Light Festival to the city, we worked alongside Bristol City Centre BID to bring its joyful, bright pink logo to the streets, filling our sites with light-flooded artwork. To accompany a takeover of our West Street sites in Old Market, we also constructed a head-turning creative billboard – with a giant, illuminated, 3D version of Bristol Light Festival’s logo, bringing the art to the streets.

The logo was created by local photographer André Pattenden, who manipulated and created light art to form the vibrant and dynamic heart shape. He then echoed the work around different spots in the city, producing incredible shots through the middle of a night to tease this year’s festival launch. We spoke to André about his creative inspirations and processes, life as a photographer, and work for Bristol Light Festival, ahead of its programme beginning in March.

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BUILDHOLLYWOOD are excited to be supporting one of Britain’s most celebrated contemporary artists. In a typically low-key appraisal of his new show being exhibited simultaneously in Paris and Glasgow the artist has said, “It’s good to see what’s been under my bed all these years.”

The exterior walls of The Modern Institute’s Aird’s Lane Gallery in Glasgow are currently blitzed with posters that point to censorship. The original black and white Parental Advisory label was introduced in the US in 1984 after pressure from, amongst others, Mary “Tipper” Gore. She co-founded the ‘Parents Music Resource Centre’ whose stated aim was to increase parental control over the access of children to music deemed to have violent, drug related or sexual themes via labelling albums, CDs and cassettes with ‘PARENTAL ADVISORY EXPLICIT CONTENT’ stickers.

In 1985 the American musical virtuoso and arch non-conformist Frank Zappa – even before the Recording Industry Association of America officially adopted the sticker – printed a satirical advisory message on his ‘Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention’ album covers to protest at the PMRC’s political activities. The message read: “This album contains material which a truly free society would neither fear nor suppress.”

You get the distinct impression that Jeremy Deller is more ‘Team Frank’ than ‘Team Tipper’. Plastered alongside the black and white iterations of his Aird’s Lane ‘WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT’ posters are pink, green and orange fluoro versions of the same message. The original warning labels, of course, achieved the opposite of what they set out to do. Acting like magnets for curious minds, the stickers were a sign of challenging, transgressive works you should be paying attention to. So it is with Deller’s multi-coloured street installation/invitation to view his near 30 year survey of ‘Prints & Posters 1993 – 2021’. This show is an understated tour de force.

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Bringing swathes of the world’s foremost leaders to the city (and the media coverage to boot), the event had enormous significance, bridging connections between international delegates and dignitaries, and equally, providing a global meeting of activists, campaigners and lobbyists. With collaboration as a key aim in order to tackle the increasingly concerning effects of climate change, the conference was set up to be a pivotal point in the global battle against it – with more hinging on the decisions than ever before.

With so many voices in Glasgow looking to get heard, we wanted to platform those from the immediate community too – so we teamed up with #OurDearGreenPlace to bring art by local schoolchildren to the streets of the city. Using our space to provide the perfect backdrop to the COP conference and the climate protests around it, we wanted #OurDearGreenPlace’s ongoing environmental project to continue and magnify its impact within its own locale.

As part of a scheme commissioned by Glasgow City Council’s Education department, SWG3’s Yardworks took up the mantle of helping students express their opinions on pollution, plastics and climate change, all through the medium of art with the help of local artists Molly Hankinson and Michaela McManus. #OurDearGreenPlace resulted in bright, bold and emotive environmental designs, speaking for a planet being increasingly harmed by human pollution. During COP26, the designs were right at home on the streets of the city – alongside huge protests and demonstrations with similar messages.

The artworks featured an array of different designs, including a tearful planet earth, candid words about preventing plastic pollution in the sea, endangered and anthropomorphised sea creatures, and snappy and emotive slogans – hopefully motivating the city’s residents to adopt more eco-conscious behaviours; campaigners to keep up their fight; and perhaps even conference delegates to listen, empathise, and act accordingly as a result.

Displayed on our drums throughout the city, the #OurDearGreenPlace artworks are evocative, apt and equally endearing, capturing the spirit of young people and their desire to look after the planet they’re growing up on. As a generation that could bear the brunt of decades of environmental damage, their passion for preventing climate breakdown is tangible and understandable.

We were delighted to play a part in bringing #OurDearGreenPlace to the street to showcase the work and campaigning being done locally before, during and after COP26 – to hopefully help the fight for a brighter future for our planet.

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Taking place on Saturday 16^th October, the event’s fourth edition is set to be packed with gigs, live interview events, Twitter listening parties, record store activities, special album releases and reissues, and huge bespoke programming across BBC Sounds.

Jointly arranged by the BPI and the Entertainment Retailers Association, the event brings together the UK’s recorded music community, celebrating the nation’s industry in all its forms. As National Album Day’s outdoor media partner, we’re helping to bring the day’s celebrations to the streets of Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Manchester and Sheffield, with poster displays taking over sites in each city.

For 2021, the focus is on women in music. Looking at pioneers of pop, present-day legends, and passing on the baton to future talent, it’s all in the name of reaffirming the truly integral role women play in the music industry, as songwriters, producers, cultural influencers and recording artists alike – with Joy Crookes, Ray BLK, Laura Mvula, Sharleen Spiteri and Kylie Minogue as ambassadors.

For National Album Day, our street posters across the country will be facilitating an interactive album trail experience that invites fans to learn about 10 iconic albums by female artists. Popped-up by a QR code on each poster, the trail will include records such as Solange’s A Seat at the Table, Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, and Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black – alongside exclusive testimonials by album experts, and a great competition to win exclusive National Album Day merch.

We’re proud to be supporting National Album Day on the street as it unites so many of the moving parts of the music industry, all in honour of one of music’s most loved forms – and can’t wait to get involved in the fun this weekend.

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Chefs in Schools, a charity set up in 2018, are campaigning for schools to sign up to a School Food Charter, and for the government to adopt recommendations from the National Food Strategy. These will ensure that children in primary and secondary schools across the country are fed more nutritious, freshly made food, targeting broader health concerns, and considering the problem of food poverty in the process.

Backed by huge names from the food world, including Prue Leith, Tom Kerridge, and co-founder of Leon Restaurants Henry Dimbleby, the Chefs in Schools campaign calls for the public to Give a Sausage about the food on kids’ plates. Pointing out that despite years of campaigning, many meals still don’t meet recommended standards for nutrition, Chefs in Schools suggest that kitchen staff should be invested in, valued, and highly trained, allowing people who have a passion for food to pursue it with a school kitchen career.

Designed by legendary creative agency BBH London, the vibrant campaign artwork was created to catch the eyes of parents and kids alike on the street, using cartoon-style illustrations and graphics to convey the vital end emotive message in an upbeat and accessible way. We’ve dedicated space to the campaign on streets right across London, spreading Chefs in Schools’ vital words throughout the city.

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Having seen how poetry became a tool to facilitate closeness and unity throughout the pandemic, this year’s National Poetry Day is unleashing the power of the poem onto the streets of Sheffield, Glasgow, London, Bristol and Cardiff, with street-side poster displays of poetry in each city.

As the biggest, mass celebration of the artform, the yearly National Poetry Day continues to demonstrate the beauty of uniting people in appreciation of the written word. As they say themselves – “It starts conversations, encourages a love of language – and best of all, it’s open to absolutely everyone to join in.”

The poems selected for display in each city have been penned by renowned local writers. Marvin Thompson’s ‘May 8^th 2020’ brings a sombre, vibrant meditation on death to the street-side in Cardiff, while Caleb Parkin’s ‘Shrinking Violets’ provides Bristol with his mind-bending metaphors. Warda Yassin’s ‘Weston Park’ takes to the streets of her city Sheffield, while Peckham’s Caleb Femi stirs the streets of his neighbourhood with ‘Thirteen’. In Glasgow, Imtiaz Dharker’s ‘Choice’ reflects the name of this year’s National Poetry Day theme, and shares intimate and intricate thoughts on motherhood.

Using our sites in the heart of each city, we’re bringing the poems straight to local people – with tear-away notepads attached to each site making copies available for passers-by to take home. Broadening access and awareness, it means the poems will be experienced not just by the people who witness them on the street, but also the family and friends they might choose to share the words with.

We’re delighted to be working with National Poetry Day to reach out and enable people who may not typically engage with poetry to enjoy, discover and share each piece. As poetry is one of the most beautiful and illuminating ways to explore identities, it’s an invaluable way to bring about closeness, understanding and empathy after enduring a time period of pervasive separation.

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Lewis started the project with a zero to one hundred grid of ages on her studio wall and over three years proceeded to substitute the numbers with portraits of local individuals. Some subjects came recommended, a couple self-selected, mostly it was a case of Lewis spotting a person she liked the look of and persuading them to take part. And despite her infectious enthusiasm for the project and proven record of making remarkable photographic essays it wasn’t always plain sailing. “Who’d be interested in me?” said Dave (79) on being invited to take part, “Why would anyone want to look at my photograph?”

Alongside a career working as an editorial photographer One Hundred Years is Lewis’ third major personal project following the much admired One Day Young and Hackney Studios. This latest work is reaching the public through various iterations. One Hundred Years is a sumptuous and engrossing book published by Hoxton Mini Press and the entire series has also been installed at Britannia leisure centre in East London. A selection of thirty portraits grace the walls of Shoreditch Park Surgery. On Regent’s canal, behind the Lewis’ studio, seven three metre tall prints can be viewed from the opposite towpath. Lewis said she’d calculated that seventy-two thousand people had walked past these works in the last few months and added “The way you look at them, how you feel about the portraits can change depending on what mood the viewer’s in, what’s going on with the sky that’s enveloping them.”

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While their final-year experiences are no better or worse than any previous graduates’, they are undoubtedly different – so, naturally, their degree showcase was reimagined to suit their times – leading to the birth of the Homemade Grads concept.

Inspired by the students’ abilities to think beyond the four walls of their homes, Homemade Grads redefines what a degree showcase can look like. Using one of our billboards in the heart of East London to link to a specially designed, interactive AR experience, the QR code pops up a gallery of student work that you can navigate through as you move around the space. Working alongside a website with exhibitions of projects and final pieces, it creates a graduate show that’s both physically experienced, and digitally constructed.

The creative thinking behind the concept is representative of the students’ incredible abilities to problem-solve and think outside the box over the past year. Out of necessity, all of their work has been “homemade” – but clearly not bound by the confines and limits of lockdowns. With learning situated online, it encouraged the class to foster dynamic relationships with each other and the wider creative community, broadening their horizons and making the best of a trying time.

We’re delighted to be supporting this medley of makers, designers, creators and writers on the streets of London, placing innovative creativity in the heart of the city – right where it belongs.

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Representing the charity’s broader aims of inspiring social change and bringing together the arts and culture, the call out came as part of a project to provide space for queer and trans artists on the streets. The chosen artwork has been displayed on sites in London, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Sheffield and Cardiff. Alongside the artwork, the street posters were designed to include QR codes linking to activation pages for each artist, introducing calls to action in support of causes close to their hearts – firmly linking inspiring art with social justice.

Providing the space for LGBTQ+ artists to occupy the streets can help to empower the communities the artists represent. Beyond that, it’s also an opportunity to inspire direct action that prioritises the needs of marginalised people, works towards equality, and aims to eradicate discrimination and prejudice.

Queercircle’s founder, Ashley Joiner, says of the open call, “Occupying and taking back public space is a crucial and empowering tool in instigating positive change. Through their artworks and the campaigns they’ve chosen to support… [the artists] are advocating for social justice and calling on the public to action transformative change.”

After much deliberation, the judges – artist Evan Ifekoya, Artsy’s curatorial director Gemma Rolls Bentley, Queercircle’s founder and director Ashley Joiner, and BUILDHOLLYWOOD’s very own Emma Clackson – chose pieces by Bex Wade, Kgotlelelo Bradley Sekiti, and CJ Reay from Black Lodge Press.

Bex Wade is a London-based documentary photographer, who captures protests, Pride, expressions of otherness and outrage, and moments of solidarity. Kgotlelelo Bradley Sekiti is a South African multidisciplinary artist, reflecting explorations of queer identities through self-portraiture, text and video. Black Lodge Press is a North Yorkshire-based print and micropublishing platform with radical roots, inspired by punk culture and anarchism.

The chosen artists’ pieces covered a spread of different formats and when sat side by side, create a beautiful, impactful, defiant street gallery accessible to all, uplifting LGBTQ+ visibility in cities beyond Pride month. As Bex Wade has noted, “Visibility does not equate to security” – so the activation pages and advocations for important social justice causes that accompany the artwork are intrinsically linked to each artists’ practice, and unify the project’s aims.

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Inspired into existence by one of the most difficult years in recent memory for health and care workers, they’ll be creating bold, bright and colourful scrubs for people to buy and send to a care home or hospice of their choosing. For its launch, the project has joined up with Grey London – and we’ve partnered up with them both to bring Happy Scrubs to the streets.

The social enterprise is the brainchild of Harry Wright, a young entrepreneur who began his professional life as a ballet dancer, but made a bold step to explore different passions through mentoring platform OKO. There he met his future business partner, Dave Evans, who helped him to prioritise his passions for creativity and helping others.

Grey London and Happy Scrubs have kickstarted the new venture by enlisting a number of artists to create unique and joyful artworks in their distinctive styles, with each piece being inspired by the project. The resulting works, by Morag Myerscough, Rude, Supermundane, Marcus Walters and Murugiah, will be displayed on our sites in Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow and London, ahead of a fundraising auction for the project where the pieces will be available to buy.

In amongst all the PPE produced for hospitals over the past year, care homes relying on donations of scrubs have missed out – so it’s Happy Scrubs’ aim to give back to them, as a thanks for their dedication and dependability throughout the pandemic. We’re delighted to be helping them to spread the word on the streets.

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For this year’s edition, we’re taking a commission by American feminist art collective Guerrilla Girls to iconic locations, countryside spots and seaside towns from 18^th June to 18^th July.

Entitled The Male Graze, it’s an exploration of deplorable male behaviour in the art world, with a particular focus on British artists and collections. Manifesting as a national series of billboards alongside a website and live event on 26^th June, it’s been prepared in partnership with galleries and institutions from across the country.

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The piece features five powerful, frenetic drawings of heads by Smith, captioned by Wagner with a characteristically humorous ‘haiku’: “I Shall Live in the Now, Starting Tomorrow!”. An appropriate declaration for the challenges we’ve all faced in the past year, it also explores recurrent themes from both artists’ work, examining the dimmer recesses of the human condition with an undertow of ironic humour.

Of the exhibit, Smith and Wagner said, “It really is synergy, the inspiration from both of us, two minds sharing visions and finding our own way to share. It’s like the Coen brothers or Gilbert and George – but with much smaller budgets than the former and more laughs than most artists enjoy.”

Curator Martin Gray noted that, “The powerful, yet delicate beauty of Roderick’s imagery has extraordinary presence, which combines with Sam’s darkly insightful humour, to create something memorably poignant, that plays with your head like a great song… The prints are housed in polished coverings that merge reflections of the ever-changing rhythms in the surrounding environment with the artwork itself. As the city darkens, the work is backlit, projecting its message out into the street like a row of faces inside curtainless windows or a mirror to yourself… Street art continues to be a powerful way of engaging with a wide audience and promoting the work of emerging and established artists.”

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Alongside them, we’re launching an open call for artists’ work that draws public attention to demands for radical change – with chosen works to then be displayed on selected sites of ours around the UK, in London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Manchester and Sheffield.

Looking to take Queercircle’s approach to the streets, the callout seeks responses to the Bell Hooks quote, “There can be no love without justice”. Encouraging LGBTQ+ artists to take an intersectional approach, work is eligible for submission whether it covers issues on an international, national or local level, with winners being shown in July.

Submissions close on 16^th June at 6pm – find out more and enter for yourself here.

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Nurturing talent and inspiring artistry, indie record shops have become the spiritual home of many bands, DJs and artists, and we’re certain the music industry wouldn’t be the same without them.

To launch Record Store Day’s 2021 poster campaign across the country, we’ve partnered up with them for displays on our sites in Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow and London, coinciding with our music photography street galleries for our Your Space Or Mine project. Independent record shops are a lifeblood of the music industry, so in a year that’s proved detrimental for so many, we wanted to provide them with the platform they deserve. Catch you in the queue.

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Held at Protein Studios from the 20th to 23rd May 2021, we partnered with the exhibition to raise its profile with displays on our sites across London. It’s the brainchild of Tom and Will Butterfield, a response to being abruptly cut off from their creative outlets when the pandemic and ensuing lockdown began last year.

After coming up with the concept and designing and building the original timber chair in 19 days, the duo managed to recruit an impressive line-up of creatives to work on the project. The exhibition will feature designs by Joe Lycett, Morag Myerscough, Brandon Carlton, Es Devlin, Sabine Mercelis, Jean Jullien, Ashley Williams and Nicole McLaughlin to name a few. You can view the full list of contributors and see each chair on the project’s website. With a relatively simple brief – “reinvent, reimagine or redesign your chair with an older person in mind” – the chairs are a nod to the work done by charity Age UK, “connecting collaborators with those experiencing the isolating effects of the pandemic most deeply.”

19 Chairs want to thank Age UK and Resourcing Racial Justice for the vital work they’ve done over the past year, so in parallel to the exhibition, each chair will be auctioned off to raise money for the organisations. The project’s core mission includes supporting those badly affected by the pandemic, uplifting advocates for social change, and beyond that, to shine “a positive light on the arts sector in these challenging times for the creative industries”.

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With support from Hackney Council, Your Future Worlds sought to document the opinions of young people from the local area, looking at their hopes for and expectations of the area’s future. The project predicts how Hackney might evolve using the voices of its own community.

Originally intended as part of a physical exhibition, the project had to adapt to the pandemic – and so it was fitting for it to take to the streets it sought to explore. We were delighted to partner with Eastside and Syrup to showcase Your Future Worlds on billboards and sites in and around Hoxton, with a vibrant colour palette to perfectly pair with the surrounding areas.

While the project included the voices of a number of Hoxton locals, a few snippets had to be chosen to encompass its broader concept on the street. Spot ideas like, “There’s lots of opportunity here. You can start small but go big in Hackney”, representing Your Future Worlds’ wider themes: that the future of Hackney is changing, green, creative, ours, and much, much more. You can browse the project in full on the Your Future Worlds website, with voice recordings and graphic interpretations of the collection of ideas.

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A subsidiary of the Royal College of Art and part of a collaboration with contemporary curators Gasworks, we partnered with the mind-bending project, providing space for the distribution network to take over sites throughout London.

Acting as a commentary on capitalism and modern lives lived to excess, Fulfilment Services Ltd commissioned artworks created in response to an “alter-fulfilment narrative”. The resultant pieces – by Arvid&Marie, DNA, Florence Jung and Frank Wang Yefang – display “a rethinking of capitalist logistics disguised as the mechanical supply chain of fulfilment”. It’s a chain that we all know and are beginning to question more – particularly in response to climate concerns and following on from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Connected by their unifying theme of “corroding existing networks of dissemination”, the commissioned artworks cover varied topic areas, with commentaries on surveillance, elitism, big tech and much more. They are ultra-contemporary in style, utilising textural and dimensional graphic design, anti-utopian text messaging and stark and blatant compositions to create eerie imaginings that feel other-worldly, but are very much grounded in reality.

The project utilised the streets and our billboard sites as impactful gallery space in Wandsworth, Tower Hamlets, Camden, Lambeth, Lewisham and Greenwich. You can also view the full curatorial programme on their website.

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Curated by the Fashion Minority Report, a body highlighting and seeking to remedy the lack of diversity within the fashion industry, the festival will include intimate in-person and online events, with panels and fireside chats centred around opinion-formers and cultural pioneers from the Black community. As well as that, there’ll be workshops led by Black creatives, and a free-to-view photography exhibition – The Power Of Black Identity.

We were delighted to partner with Power Of Festival and Nikon to launch a competition for up-and-coming Black British photographers, with the winner having the chance to showcase their work in the photography exhibition at the festival and as a street gallery on one of our poster sites later this year. In the meantime, we’ve been raising the festival’s profile on London’s streets with billboards and displays on our sites across the city.

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The entirely crowdfunded exhibition celebrates the many people from different walks of life who came together at a time of unprecedented hardship to look after one another. Karishma Puri, the artist behind the project, was inspired to capture the images after establishing Covid Mutual Aid in Kentish Town. A WhatsApp-based community group, it was set up for neighbours to support one another and overcome isolation. “It was clear people were facing acute challenges. But I was also aware of a growing hope and community spirit. So I set out to capture this energy and resolve with my camera,” Karishma explains.

Jack Arts are delighted to be collaborating with Isolating Together to transform our poster space across Camden into a street gallery to support the project. Other displays will include community spaces and local shop windows. Each location was carefully selected from among the most meaningful venues in the area. The centrepiece will be displayed across a 14 metre wall at Number 19, the home of community action in Camden.

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United by a shared commitment to emerging artists, they are joining forces to award £60,000 in production grants for new commissions in artists’ moving image and film. A total of seven grants will be awarded for the production of new works as part of Image Behaviour 2021, the ICA’s annual convening dedicated to experiments in artists’ moving image. Artists awarded these grants will then present their new works as part of Image Behaviour 2021, as well as through Dr. Martens’ digital platforms and on Cinema 3, the ICA’s new online platform.

In support of the project we have partnered with the ICA to rollout a poster campaign to build awareness around the open call, this will be followed up with a street gallery to showcase the winning entries later this year.

Visit the ICA website for more information.

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We are delighted to be partnering with Choose Love by donating our poster space across the UK to build further awareness for their Choose Love shop, which is the world’s first to sell real products for refugees and displaced communities. Every item represents a similar product or service provided by one of the organisations they support around the world. When you buy an item at Choose Love, they get it to where it’s needed most. Please do visit https://choose.love to support them.

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The idea for the campaign came from creatives Nathalie Gordon, Amy Fasey and Jacob Hellström, who contacted artists of different genders, sexualities and nationalities to contribute original pieces of art for the Museum to be sold at an online auction with all proceeds going back to the Museum in a bid to keep it open.

The Vagina Museum operates on a fully inclusive basis and is proud to be an LGBTQ+ and intersex ally – it was paramount that the people approached to work on this campaign (and the work created) were representative of that. In the end, 58 artists created unique pieces based on the vagina. From embroidered textile banners from Millie Sewell-Knight to line drawing of public hair from Mr. Bingo to gold leaf covered clay casts of the clitoris from Merissa Hylton to a queer self-portrait from Ezra Smith, the breath of original pieces available is truly unique.

We’re delighted to be partnering with the Vagina Museum to celebrate it’s re-opening by donating our poster space. A selection of the beautifully evocative artworks are now being featured on our sites across London.

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We had the pleasure of interviewing Secret 7” co-founder Kevin King about the incredible project, how it’s grown over the years and find out what’s next.

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We are delighted to support the Alt-D movement and bring their digital exhibition to life – showcasing a collage of 83 Edinburgh Art School graduate works onto two of our Meadowbank poster sites. The street level display showcases an impressive host of artistic specialisms and aims to increase accessibility and present the works to a wider audience in a safe and distanced way.

We commissioned BA Photography student Josephine Berry to capture the campaign artwork for us.  Project led by Jody Mulvey, assisted by Amber Brown, design and graphics by Thea Bryant and Beth Harle. (2020 graduates) Check out the full digital exhibition online: alt-d.online

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The exhibition features some big-name visual artists and writers: Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, Turner Prize-winner Jeremy Deller and German fashion photography luminary Juergen Teller. Its focus, though, is defiantly humble. Many of the contributing artists and writers have chosen to portray family members, friends, or people in their local communities. Often disarmingly intimate, each portrait – whether originally rendered in paint, charcoal, photography, collage, or with language – is vividly imaginative and emotionally compelling in its own way.

We are delighted to be the media partner for this inspiring exhibition and have now extended it off-site with portraits presented across several of our billboards on selected streets all over London and other cities throughout the UK including Birmingham, Brighton, Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester and Sheffield.  Everyday Heroes is open September – November. Find out more here.

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Over 800 impressive applications were submitted, ranging from poetry to photography to makeup looks. Their esteemed judges managed to narrow that down to just 47 pieces that reflects the vibrancy and diversity of the capital. Londoners will be able to view selected entries alongside the works that inspired them, on our billboards in Camden, Hackney, Haringey, Islington, Lambeth, Southwark and Walthamstow.

All featured works respond to a range of much-loved artworks from Tate’s collection, including Sir John Everett Millais Ophelia 1851-52, John Martin The Plains of Heaven 1851-3 and John Simpson Head of a Man (Ira Frederick Aldridge?) 1827, currently on display at Tate Britain. Wassily Kandinsky Swinging 1925, Ibrahim El-Salahi Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams I 1961–5, Sheba Chhachhi Urvashi – Staged Portrait, Gulmohar Park, Delhi 1990 and Guerrilla Girls from Guerrilla Girls Talk Back, Dearest Art Collector 1986.

The work spans mediums, moods and themes: from a photograph of sandwiches dripping in paint to a painting of a man who is half-skeleton to stunning portraiture to floral dreamscapes. The pieces are diverse and intriguing, showcasing the incredible talent from London-based artists that might otherwise have gone unseen.

The billboards will be up until August 21 and will be accompanied by takeovers across Tate Collective’s social media channels. More information on the artworks can be found here.

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26 students were selected to work on the final stage, and with the guidance of designer Craig Oldham, their artworks have been developed into a folio of posters, which we are showcasing on the streets of Manchester in a city-wide intervention. The posters are displayed as 4 sheets on our street-side frames, as well as on two large format billboards which feature a specially designed collage of all 26 final artworks.

We are so inspired by the final artworks, which were a broad, diverse range of styles and mediums and are excited to have the opportunity to use our poster sites to highlight the wealth of emerging local talent.  By showcasing the students work around Manchester and the Art Gallery we have provided the opportunity for the young artists to make a statement within their city and place their art directly into the environment where they have drawn inspiration.

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Camille’s design is rooted in the campaign’s creative concept, which was developed by ad agency Truant London, who devised the idea of the maze as a means of visualising the barriers that young people can face in escaping homelessness. The concept presents education as the route out of the maze and encourages viewers to find out more and donate to the fund. A sum as small as £23 is enough to get a young person an hour of specialist employability support and put them on the path to a fulfilling future. For every £1,200, EYH can support a homeless young person into an education or employment pathway which will transform their life. Camille Walala then applied her distinctive aesthetic and sense of colour to the brief, designing a striking, hopeful and characteristically positive poster.

The outdoor campaign will appear on 60 of our poster sites across London, with a further 60 across Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh Glasgow, Manchester and Sheffield. It hopes to encourage the public to donate to support EYH’s Employability Fund, helping get homeless young people into work and education.

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As part of our partnership, we’re also teaming up with non-binary visual artist Soofiya, who will take to stage at the festival to discuss ‘Finding Your Voice Through Non-Conformity and Politics’, with a spotlight on their recent work on LDN WMN. Find out more and book your D&AD Festival tickets here.

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We have been spreading the word on the street, joining forces with Advertising Week Europe on an outdoor campaign to promote the big event. The posters are up on our sites across the UK – everywhere from London to Birmingham, Edinburgh to Manchester.

As part of our partnership with Advertising Week Europe, Emma Clackson our Strategy Director will be doing a live interview to discuss the power of print posters on the street – join her at the networking area at  11.30am, March 21.

Find out more and book your Advertising Week Europe tickets here.

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