The Canopy Community Hub building in Grant Thorold Park had a large expanse of shutters, which, once the venue closed each day were black, daubed with graffiti, drab and gloomy. The corner of the park around the building had people loitering in the evenings and was generally unappealing.
A major art project was undertaken to paint all of these shutters in a way that brightened up the building and the area and made it brighter and more appealing. This was an example of a designing out crime (DOC) exercise. By adding some art focus to the building and also involving the local community during the painting project, the intention was to make the community fee more connected to the building and the area and, in turn, to reduce the chances of offences occurring in the area.
We’d previously had great success with this type of project with a major urban art painting project during the Safer Streets West Marsh programme. There, a challenging pedestrian underpass was painted and re-connected the community to an unloved space.
This approach was repeated in East Marsh with the shutters project.
A local East Marsh urban artist, Lynsey Powles, was engaged to do the painting with permission of the Council building owners and the tenants – the Canopy Community Hub and the Forest School.
Shutters were painted with the Forest School theme with plenty of animals for the children to find – as well as a few safer communities messages.
As well as the shutter painting itself, the artist held ‘space painting’ sessions in the park near the building over the summer to directly engage local children and young people with the spray-painting style of artwork and to connect them with the artwork being introduced to the building.
Further art sessions were held on a regular basis at the Artist’s studio nearby to encourage connection to art with some of the local young people.
To date feedback on the artwork has been extremely positive and it has remained in good condition, free of additional, unwanted graffiti! Lots of young local young people have had a chance to engage with arts activities.
This area of the park currently feels less problematic after a range of connected improvements to the hub building.