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D*Face after dark, a beetle with no name and a graffiti museum on Réunion
Street Art Weekly is our new column on the walls going up around the world and the artists painting them. This week: D*Face after dark in Madrid, a beetle with no name in Oakland, and a graffiti museum on Réunion.
A Clear Coat for Captain Mike
The Mersey tests everything that faces it. This week, Captain Mike got his armour: an anti-graffiti and UV coating to protect BREZAUX's mural at The Master Mariner through the stormy season and the years ahead. Here's what went on the wall, the specialists who helped us do it properly, and the funders who made it possible.
Better than random
Something has shifted in the public conversation about New Brighton's walls this week. We do not need to pretend otherwise. It is worth restating clearly where we stand.
Where the Old Town Meets the New Walls
Two New Brightons, one walk. We're partnering with Fort Perch Rock Events and Wallasey Days Gone By on a new tour led by historian Tony Franks-Buckley, joining the town's darkest Victorian stories with the murals of the OpenAIR Gallery in the Victoria Quarter. Fridays in January, starting with a New Year's Day special.
The bins, the boxes, the bollards
The bins are rusting. The boxes are tagged. The bollards are chipped. Wirral Council is spending £138,480 to replace 330 bins over three years. Twelve cities across the UK and Ireland have taken a different route — they've painted them. Here's the case for what a Wirral pilot could look like.
Why so sad, Wirral?
New figures put the Wirral near the top of England's depression tables, with roughly one in four adults in New Brighton diagnosed. We've spent years putting colour back on these streets. Now we're going out to ask whether any of it has made people feel better.
A shopfront to be proud of
A small card shop on Victoria Road, a networking group that funded it from raffle tickets and £25 memberships, and an artist painting his first full shopfront. This is how the OpenAIR Gallery grows.
The man the starlings wait for
Kenny Dunn has kept New Brighton’s streets clean for over ten years. Every morning, half a dozen starlings walk with him along the promenade, waiting at his feet when he stops. This month the London artist Dotmasters painted him on a wall.
The good morning bench
Eleven o'clock on a Saturday morning in Vale Park, and I have never seen so many dogs sitting so nearly still. Cain's bench is in place at the top of the hill, the town raised 161% of the target to put it there, and the money left over has gone to the dogs still waiting for their homes.
Written out of the plan
Wirral is drawing up the document that will shape this borough until 2045. It doesn’t mention New Brighton once. Here’s what we’ve told them — and how you can tell them too.
What a wall is worth
Eight years ago you could stand on Victoria Road at two in the afternoon and hear your own footsteps. Today the average sold price in CH45 is £248,894 — sixteen per cent above the old 2022 peak — and Wirral has just posted the third-highest house price rise in England. Not all of that is the murals. But a good deal more of it than most people think.
Two Stars, and the Long Habit of Letting Go
New Brighton came 108th of 118 in the Which? seaside survey — two stars for the beach, one for things to do. We could argue with it. Instead we read it, honestly and all the way through: where the scorecard is fair, what forty-seven visitors never saw, and what it would take to stop being the end of the line.
A Tribute to MARTIN PARR — and how New Brighton can make it Happen
A new mural and public programme celebrating Martin Parr and The Last Resort — created in collaboration with the Martin Parr Foundation.
New Brighton Creative Futures is developing a major new public artwork honouring one of Britain’s most important photographers — Martin Parr — and his landmark series The Last Resort, made here in New Brighton.
New Brighton Is Already the Cluster Government Is Asking For
When government talks about “hotbeds of creative excellence”, “clusters of cutting-edge creative businesses” and “replicating success through place-based investment”, it is describing New Brighton almost word for word.
Thank You for Shaping the Future of the INSA Mural
A little over a week ago we opened a simple question to the town: what should happen next with the INSA mural on Victoria Road — restore the original, or invite INSA back to create something new? We didn’t expect the level of response we got.
The Future of the Insa Mural: Restore or Reimagine?
Insa’s mural on the Post Office building is one of the defining pieces in the OpenAIR Gallery. It’s scale, colour and presence set the tone early on for what Victoria Quarter could become.
But time has caught up with it. The surface is failing in multiple areas and the wall now needs proper repair and a full repaint.
So this is a real decision point.
Recognition That Belongs to a Community
I was honoured to receive a Wirral Award. It carries my name, but it does not belong to me. It reflects the work of New Brighton Creative Futures and, more importantly, the people behind it. The artists who have committed their talent to the town. The volunteers who have given their time. The supporters, donors and sponsors who have backed the idea and helped turn it into something tangible.
Reanimating New Brighton
Over the past few days we’ve been quietly working through boxes of history.
Victorian promenade scenes. Wartime photographs. Art Deco posters. Seaside postcards. Faded images from the 60s, 70s and 80s. Moments captured in silver nitrate and ink, then left to sit still for decades.
We took those photographs and, using generative AI, began to bring them back to life.
Not as a gimmick. Not as a filter. Not as a one-click trick.
The State of the Art
There are winters in New Brighton when the sea feels like a neighbour. And there are winters when it feels like a judge. This has been one of the judging ones.
Something is growing in New Brighton
February is usually about Valentine’s cards, supermarket roses and predictable gestures of love. But this year, something else is happening in New Brighton.