Graffiti is a controversial art form, as it often goes hand in hand with vandalism, popping up on buildings, walls or structures without permission from the owner. However, graffiti can be beautiful. It is a form of art that can’t be owned or bought in the same way as other mediums, and professional street artists can produce stunning pieces that brighten up urban landscapes. Artists such as Banksy have made a name for themselves by producing impressive art, which often has political or social themes (or sometimes, just looks very impressive).
When you think of street art in England, you are most likely to imagine the streets of London, or Bristol, home of Banksy. Both of these major cities have impressive graffiti tours, and Bristol in particular is absolutely covered in graffiti art, from endless tags and aerosol scribbles to huge multi-story murals. After a recent trip to Bristol, I developed a new appreciation for the merits of street art, and have compiled a list of the coolest spots in Birmingham where you can check out incredible pieces, closer to home.
When Banksy’s mural raising awareness for homelessness first appeared in the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham secured its place on the national street art stage. The piece appeared in December 2019, and features two large reindeer in black and white, appearing to pull a bench behind them. Bansky uploaded a video depicting Ryan, a homeless man, laying down on this bench, surrounded by bags, mirroring the traditional depiction of Father Christmas. Emotionally moving and socially relevant, the artwork has become a permanent fixture in the city, attracting tourists to sit on the ‘Banksy Bench’. Check out the clip on Banksy’s Instagram page here.
Unsurprisingly, the epicentre of Birmingham’s street art scene is in Digbeth. Known for being the arts centre of the second city, Digbeth hosts the annual High Vis culture festival, a hotspot for brand new and exciting street art. Digbeth also hosted the City of Colours Street Art Festival, one of the largest celebrations of graffiti and urban culture in the UK. The festival involved over a hundred street artists working their magic, and though lots of the art has been lost, the surviving pieces are a wonderful tribute to Birmingham’s art scene.
One such piece of work is by Broken Fingaz, and appears on the corner of Lower Trinity Street and Adderley Street. Though the piece has faded since its initial appearance, it is still intact and looks immensely cool – worth a visit if you’re in the area. The mural contains three pieces: ‘Haifa’, ‘Trauma Relief’ and ‘Every Day Life’, in Broken Fingaz signature bright colours and vintage style. Below are pictures from the City of Colours festival – we’ll leave it up to you to go and spot the mural in person to see how it’s holding up!
This corner of Lower Trinity Street and Adderley Street is a great spot to check out for a whole range of cool graffiti art, as it is home to Dead Wax Digbeth, the live music and vinyl bar which has been kitted out with some of the most impressive street art in the city. The outer walls have been taken over by a giant mural from Gent48, one of the city’s most prolific graffiti artists. With vibrant colours sprayed over a previously monochrome black building, the piece is visually captivating, and the restaurant itself does some spectacular pizzas. If you’ve headed that way on our street art tour, a beer and a slice at Dead Wax is well worth popping in for.
Dead Wax is not the only venue to allow, or even encourage graffiti murals on its walls. The Roxy Ball Room has some awesome murals on its front, and Nortons Pub Beer Garden is a fantastic place to stop for a drink or two while staying on track during your street art tour. The King Kong Guinness Mural is a fan favourite, properly embracing Brummie lingo and attitudes. On the corner of Fazeley Street and Andover Street, a former public house is laden with street art, as it was a key venue at the High Vis Festival. Frankly, I’m tempted to call up the street artists involved and ask them to give my place a graffiti makeover!
Elsewhere in Digbeth, on the Bordesley Street/New Canal Street corner is a car park, backing onto walls and a large former wholesale clothier. This is a prime hotspot for both cool graffiti tags, and larger, impressive murals.
Just down the road, in the Allison Street Car Park, is a delightful mural from renowned UK street artist, Phlegm. Welsh-born and Sheffield-based, Phlegm’s pieces are scattered across the country and are easily recognisable for his distinctive style. Simultaneously childlike and menacing, his murals feature black and white characters, not quite human, and not quite recognisable as anything else. Often with elongated limbs, his characters are usually pictured in motion, with each piece of art demonstrating some kind of narrative in a single frame.
The Allison Street mural is no exception, featuring a character that looks to be part cat, part deer, part fish and part man, with scales and a wrinkled face, who has emerged from watery depths to rescue people who are drowning. The combination of the unknown and unsettling with the folktale-esque is very typical of Phlegm’s artistic style and certainly brightens up the Digbeth car park despite its monochrome palette.
A different kind of ‘street art’ that you may spot on your travels is sticker art. Check out the lampposts and signposts in and around Birmingham, and the wider UK, and you’re likely to see lots of quirky art pieces, in peelable form. In Brum, Tempo33’s ‘Acid Face with a Brace’ is a common sight, both in sticker form, and spray painted on walls and buildings. A talented artist who featured in Birmingham’s street art festival, we love Tempo33’s fun and daring pieces. Does this face look familiar?
We’ll round off this list with an absolute classic venue for Birmingham street art: The Custard Factory. Former home to Bird’s Custard, and in recent years a centre for Digbeth’s art scene, the Custard Factory is home to a wealth of exciting and impressive graffiti pieces.
Recently, Robbie Jeffcott, acclaimed local artist and contestant on Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist of the Year, has paid tribute to Birmingham legend Ozzy Osbourne, with a charming mural located in Gibb Square. As a huge part of the notorious Three B’s of Birmingham (that’s Black Sabbath, Bulls and Balti Triangle for non-locals, though we’d also like to add ‘Bab’), we’re delighted to see Ozzy in pride of place. (Black Sabbath fans may also rejoice in the mural of the band between The Anchor Pub and Digbeth Coach Station!)
Other pieces in the Custard Factory include Justin Sola’s ‘Voodoo Queen’, Dan Kitchener’s impressive building-climbing mural, and Midlands-based artist N4T4’s female face, painted for High Vis Festival.
A piece that gained a whole lot of attention was the giant mural by Andy ‘Title’ Mills, also at the Custard Factory, commissioned to tie in with the opening of the Odeon Luxe cinema at Broadway Plaza. The piece, which took 35 hours to paint, depicts Odeon’s long-lasting connection to the second city, stretching from 1930 to the present day.
It features Birmingham-based actors from the Star Wars movies, including the late Kenny Baker who starred as R2D2, and Bournville’s own Felicity Jones, who played Jyn Erso in Rogue One. It seeks to pay tribute to Conroy Maddox, branded ‘The Bohemian from Balsall Heath’ and also depicts the Beatles, with images of Paul McCartney and John Lennon, the founder of Odeon who opened his first modern, art-deco Odeon cinema in Perry Barr in 1930, rounds out the mural.
We’ll only show you a few snippets from this piece, as it really is worth seeing in person. Or you can Google it. But don’t do that, definitely go and see it before its gone.
Hankering for more Brummie graffiti? We don’t blame you. Some other hotspots to visit are Fazeley Street, the Digbeth Branch Canal towpath, Floodgate Street, or any carpark, railway tunnel or disused building/wall in Digbeth.
Here’s another gallery with some pieces of Birmingham Street Art, because there really is too much to see in one outing:
One of the exciting things about street art is how often it changes. Whether the paint fades, sun-bleached over time, chips away, is tagged over, or an entirely new mural is painted over the top, graffiti is quick-changing. Here today, gone tomorrow, the Birmingham graffiti art scene is tricky to stay on top of, and on your next canalside walk, you may just spot a brand-new piece by one of the evasive but incredibly talented street artists who frequent Birmingham’s walls.
If you head out to spot some of the awesome pieces we’ve listed above, you may arrive at your destination to find that they’ve vanished. That’s okay – in Digbeth, street art is present in abundance, so wherever you turn, there will be something new for you to check out.
