I Love Norwich

The Word on the Streets

27/07/16

 You can tell how lively a city is by what you see on the walls around you. Gwarn, have a look. Terry Pratchett pretty much nailed it as ‘the city’s way of telling you, if not what was on its bubbling mind, then at least what was in its creaking heart.’ Sure, there’s an awful lot of tagging and speedcocks out there which doesn’t really say much to anyone other than ‘look at me’, but there’s also plenty of other artistic endeavours that do make us pause, whether it’s a weeing stormtrooper or one of my personal favourites ‘I like nonconformity, but only if you don’t’. The ones I really love though are the austerity graffiti that’s dotted around various streets.

Studies of graffiti (no, really, people do this and get paid for it) show that during times of upheaval and uncertainty, there is an absolute surge of public graffiti. So it turns up more in Austerity Britain, in both the First and Second World Wars, and even the English Civil War. In places you might not expect, either. Grab yourself a crappy £3 LED torch and get down to Norwich cathedral. Just opposite St Luke’s Chapel there’s a little recess and if you shine your torch across (not at) the surface of the wall, something bloody amazing happens. Graffiti from hundreds of years ago, scratched into the stone. Mostly initials and dates, and an awful lot of it is from the days when the country was in complete turmoil. Which might sound familiar…

It’s just what people do, when they’re a bit concerned about what the future might hold. It’s quite tempting to leave something behind to let people know you were here once. Whether that’s your initials carved into stone, a spraypainted bitchy little dig at the government, or even just a sweet little illustration to make people smile. We can expect to see an awful lot more of it appear around the fine city in the future, of all varieties. Get out there and see the street art for yourself. And I haven’t mentioned Banksy once…oh.