Facades in Glasgow
are understood as a canvas;
For this reason, the Scottish city has decided to embrace the feelings of its urban artists with a colorful project that champions this controversial form of creativity in the heart of the city.
Its tall buildings in the center do not leave you indifferent.
Street artists decorate the city
with the approval of the city council
, enforcing their slogan of "People Makes Glasgow", visible from every corner.
The mural "St. Enoch, mother of the patron saint of Glasgow", made by the artist Smug, which decorates the façade of a building in Glasgow (EFE).
It is a way to attract the street art that began to populate the city's streets since 2014, says the person in charge of the council's regeneration area, John Foster, who directs the "City Center Mural Trail" project. City center").
"The initiative is taken by the artists, who approach the city council with the concept, identify a potential space and together we explore the opportunities," explains Foster.
That process includes identifying the building owner and obtaining permits, such as a planning project.
On a walk through the heart of the city you can find up to
fourteen of the almost thirty
graffiti murals that are officially part of the project.
The graffiti "Honour the roots", the work of Fearless Collective on the occasion of COP26, which decorates the façade of a building in Glasgow (EFE).
"We try to offer as much creativity as possible," says the person in charge, who highlights that the themes are diverse, although
nothing about politics, religion or football is accepted
. We try to stay away from these issues due to the potential discredit for the city, whose population is divided between
Catholics
, who tend to be
Celtic
Glasgow fans, and
Protestants
, who support Glasgow
Rangers,"
says Foster.
"Other than that, the sky is the limit,"
Foster says.
According to the city council, the initiative has had an overwhelmingly positive response and has even sparked interest from "different parts of the world to develop similar projects, such as San Diego and Newburyport, in the United States, or Dundee and Nottingham, in the United Kingdom.
A city with a lot of art
There are artistic pieces and murals throughout the city, says Jenny Benson, owner of a tourist agency that offers walking tours of the town.
Glasgow is an arts city anyway and having street art gives people culture, things to do, children access to art, he points out.
One of the 30 graffiti that decorate Glasgow.
Some are changed by others every week.
"The murals reflect and explore the passage of history through the streets of the Scottish metropolis. From its origins, with the representation of two precious pieces by the artist Smug of the founders of the first settlement in Glasgow, Saint Mungo and Saint Enoch, to a mural commemorating the passage through the city of the indigenous community on the occasion of the last COP26 Climate Summit," explains Benson.
The Saint Mungo mural is the sixth most uploaded photograph to the Instagram platform in the United Kingdom, according to the e-commerce website "I want Wallpaper."
Benson's company, who recognizes that "there are people who don't like having murals in the city," offers daily 90-minute tours with visits to at least ten unique graffiti, Jenny points out, since the walls
change every week.
Another of the famous graffiti in Glasgow.
"I think murals are art and
they beautify the city
, they have something to say," says young Glasguan Ashia Campbell.
"
They are beautiful, they illuminate the place,"
says a couple of Welsh tourists, who highlight one that has stuck in their minds", that of the "older man with a hat, talking to a small bird" (a robin), in reference to the Saint Mungo mural.
EFE Agency.
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GML