London Calling

Working with Global Street Art to absolutely kick start the London Mural Festival 2024.

Way back in February, we’d suggested creating a gigantic map of London that could be used to highlight and pin point the other artistic murals being created around the Capital. The idea was born, and soon ‘Angry Dan’ was brought in to create and develop the map from hundreds of suggestions of ‘what makes the London, Londoners love?’ Of course the tourist sights are there, but so too are the cafes, pubs, hidden gems and long lasting memories. Its a London populated by places that people have loved, removing all the boring bits. Angry Dan started drawing, and we started searching for a site - and that’s not as easy as it sounds.

You’d think finding a large flat space in London would be fairly easy - its a big city after all. Somerset House, Battersea Power Station, Wembley Stadium, The Shard at London Bridge, all suggested, all measured and checked out and all turned down for various reasons. Most were too expensive to hire, and some fully booked up 12 months in advance. The final setting of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park was only chosen in July, and even 4 days before install was potentially going to be ruined by the weather. (more of which later)…

The install was an epic saga all of its own. Starting at 8am on Saturday, the tarmac was swept clean, and the working area generally chalked out. Buckets of wallpaper paste were applied to the ground and the paper sheets laid out and positioned side by side. Over a hundred gigantic sheets were needed to be laid out, and matched up. By early afternoon we’d covered about a third of the map and were finding issues left, right and centre… And we were running out of paste. By 4pm, half of the map was completed…

After several trips to Tool Station, Screw fix and B&Q, the supply of all wallpaper paste had been purchased in the surrounding area, so sorry if you’d decided to do some home DIY that weekend. We’d beaten you to it for glue. By 8pm it was getting dark, and still there was more to do. South East London finally took shape around 10pm and the map was complete…. until…. a torrential thunder and lightning storm.

At 6:30 am on Sunday, I was awoken by text messages from site. The map was ruined. The rain had washed a corner away and it was in a wet soggy heap. The day was ruined…. or so we all thought. Luckily, and unbelievably, the soggy sheets were peeled apart and rearranged into lines again and the map was saved - by fluke, by luck, by perseverance.

Angry Dan set up shop by10am, the public started arriving, curious and intrigued by the map that had sprung up in their midst…

The mural festival had well and truly begun.