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Nottingham

anon@indymedia.org (Its got to change) | 02.05.2013 14:55

On a walk into our city centre and back today, on a beautiful sunny day, I witnessed a couple of things I felt like I could not ignore. Neither could I act at the time. Why?

 

The first thing was that the Council Graffiti Teams were out in force battling "enviro-crime" (i) as street art has been branded. I witnessed them cleaning off a discreet stencil I have admired many times as I walked past it of a 'street angel' that was on the abandoned auction house on Mansfield Road.

This attitude of street art being criminalised regardless, without question, seems to be prevalent. In a recent conversation with a local spray artist it was revealed that many of the 'legal allocated' spots that street artists have previously been 'allowed' to use have been taken away. A little research revealed that this has been the case for a few years (ii). This spray artist told me about an occassion when he was innocently spraying an art piece on the side wall of the Sycamore Centre in St. Anns when John Collins suddenly emerged from some hobknobbing he had been doing inside and promptly told the young artist to "stop vandalising HIS property." Now there are a number of problems with this exchange. Firstly, community centres do not belong to John Collins, they belong to the city and therefore the people of Nottingham. Secondly this was one of the spaces that had previously been 'legal' to paint and now is not. How can they take away an artist's imperative to create like that?

The second thing I witnessed was an even more insidious atrocity. It may sound typical however it shook me deeply to witness it. The scene was a street beggar being harrassed by two CPOs (Community Support Officers.) Council cops. Plastic pigs. They had this poor women at the side of the very busy Clumber Street. They were photographing the piece of cardboard she had written a message on to communicate to passers by the need she was in. Is this our council's front line response to rising poverty? To police it?

At what point do we stand up and say enough is enough!? At what point do we stop 'taking orders'? How are we going to look after ourselves, our families, our friends, our communities against the rising poverty created by the onslaught of "austerity measures"?

I don't have these answers. None of us do right now. Thats why we need to start working together to build our communities to be strong enough and resilient enough to start working out some solutions.

 

(i)  http://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1709

(ii) http://puregraffiti.com/art/2010/03/legal-graffiti-banned-in-nottingham/


anon@indymedia.org (Its got to change)
- http://nottingham.indymedia.org/articles/5636