Community takes battle against graffiti into its own hands

Members of Brighton's North Laine Association could have gone to the beach on a sunny Saturday in April.
Cleaning up the graffitiCleaning up the graffiti
Cleaning up the graffiti

It was one of the hottest days of the year, with temperatures rising up to 26 degrees, but instead of enjoying an ice-cream on the beach the group of five stood in the shade of a closed-down furniture store, watching the paint dry over fresh graffiti tags.

You can still see the outlines of the tags on the walls, bruising black and blue under a thick coat of white paint.

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Chris Hayes, a 53-year-old community trustee, has just finished the first of many paint-jobs like this one.

The wall before the clean upThe wall before the clean up
The wall before the clean up

“Completely covering the wall and leaving a blank canvas is too inviting,” he said, nodding towards the fading marks. “This gives the message that this is futile.”

He says that the graffiti around North Laine, particularly at both Gloucester and North Road, has become unacceptable.

The message this cleaning action leaves is that these areas are now protected by the community.

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Chris said: "Tagging brings an area down, art brings it up. I think leaving a bit of art gives the message that this isn’t against people who come to do art.”

A lick of fresh paintA lick of fresh paint
A lick of fresh paint

Some residents believe graffiti is okay as long as it is artistic and tasteful, but that tagging should be punished – although the distinctions between the two are not always clear.

The key difference is street art is sanctioned by the council and graffiti tagging is not.

Many street artists sign their full names (or leave Instagram links) at the bottom of their works after they are finished, whereas taggers often avoid leaving names or else use wild style (a style of graffiti which is very difficult to read) to disguise their writing.

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The North Laine Association left a single graffiti piece depicting a young girl to show that artwork in the area would not be removed.

A spokesperson for the North Laine Community Association said: “It is a way of bringing the community together that we all feel very strongly about.”

A meeting attended by more than 70 people was held in February to address the tagging spreading through North Laine.

The spokesperson said: “It’s great that everyone is happy to help. You know we can’t rely on the public services anymore, so you have just got to take action.”

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The group of five who spent their Saturday afternoon cleaning up graffiti said Travis Perkins gave them a 25 per cent discount on white paint as thanks for clearing the graffiti in the car park.

Despite the £92,500 budgeted by the council to remove graffiti, this paint has come out of the pocket of locals like Chris.

Recent estimates put the clean-up costs for graffiti in the UK at more than £1bn.

The London underground alone spends £10 million per year to replace glass vandalised on the tube.

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According to breakdowns of government spending, more money is spent on removing graffiti than on primary school education – and more than twice as much than we spend on the fire services.

This money only covers public property however, and does not take into account private businesses, like the Post Office on North Road, or Clarkes, Costa Coffee and CrisElli on Bond Street which have also come under attack.

CrisElli store manager Ellie Dore found herself borrowing a ladder from Costa Coffee across the road to take down graffiti scribbled on the shop’s front sign one morning.

Ellie said: “Our side bit and our back window get done all the time, this is the first time we’ve had something on the front.”

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Private property laws in the UK class graffiti as criminal damage, with a maximum sentence of up to ten years imprisonment in cases where the damage is greater than £5,000, but this does little to quell the tide of graffiti flooding over Brighton.

For now, it falls on the community’s shoulders to paint over the graffiti.

The North Laine Association has already deterred would-be taggers in Friedrich Gardens and is now planning to make a routine of marking out areas to be protected by the community.

This will involve regular trips back to the car park to see how much of their work has been undone overnight – and so the sun sets on Saturday night, leaving the five to celebrate the start of what is likely to be a very repetitive journey.