Monday, April 22, 2019

Free, fun Amazing street art, statues and murals, outdoors in the sun or sheltering underground


Where is street art which you can see for free - or join a walking tour for a small fee or donation in good weather? The places which spring to my mind are:

UK London's Amy Winehouse trail and Camden; Brixton; Croydon. Bristol and Banksy.


Brixton mural from Wikipedia.
Big Splash, on Glenelg Road (London, SW2) by Christine Thomas, assisted by Dave Bangs and Diana Leary – 1985.

BRAZIL Rio de Janeiro's slums or favelas transformed in rainbow colours.


Praça Cantão, 2011


INDIA - the Mumbai makeover, painting slum houses into street art and happy homes. (Mumbai, previously called Bombay.)

POLAND Wroclaw has a trail of tiny not even nearly knee high statues, 20-30 cm. Most are on the ground, a few higher up or even overhead.

e23 August 2017
SourcePhotographed during 2017 IFLA Conference, Wroclaw, Poland.
AuthorPhotographed by Bobby Bothmann.
Muzeum Poczty i Telekomunikacji, ul. Krasińskiego 1, I piętro 

USA Philadelphia's mural trail

Singapore
In Singapore one of my favourite streets for colourful buildings is Waterloo Street.
Waterloo Street, Singapore, for colourful buildings. Photo by Angela Lansbury. The bright yellow of this building, with the green shutters is immediately obvious. Look up and you can see the pink of an HDB skyscraper behind on the left, and blue and white on the right. Copyright.

Where do you work or live? In the yellow building. In the pink building. In the blue building.

Over in Chinatown the traditional houses have coloured tiles and co-ordinating flowering trees. Notice the green tiles with embossed patterns. the salmon pink wash, with deeper contrasting lines. the white window shutters with the white fretwork above. the double doors are white with wavy edges and orangey salmon pink lines. The tree is green and white.
Chinatown traditional house. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Many of the modern government built housing blocks, called HDB, are in bands of colour.
If you are lucky, the block you are visiting has a different colour or design or murals of flowers so that children and adults and strangers can quickly identify it.

If the weather is bad, you might have to take a tour of the underground stations.
Singapore has art on underground stations such as Newton.


UK and London Underground

Sherlock Holmes on Baker street station underground platform. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.
Baker Street in London, UK, has a platform featuring Sherlock Holmes.

Who and where is this? It must be Victoria station, London, England.
Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Fun for tourists, and transform the lives of those who live there.
Fodor's travel picks 12 cities, starting with:
Dublin,
Glasgow,https://peoplemakeglasgow.com/things-to-do/city-centre-mural-trail
and several more destinations, including: Melbourne, Mexico City, New York, New Orleans, Paris and Rome. Enough to keep you busy for a year.

Useful Websites
The Effect on the community - a TED talk.
https://www.ted.com/talks/haas_hahn_how_painting_can_transform_communities
Places for tourists to visit.
https://www.fodors.com/news/photos/these-12-cities-are-home-to-the-best-street-art-on-earth
Philadelphia mural walking tours
https://www.muralarts.org/tours/
https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/arts/mumbai-slums-get-colourful-makeover

Underground stations and railway stations
https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/01/my-favourite-humorous-artwork-on-newton.html

TRAVEL AND TOURISM
Singapore Airlines
singaporeair.com
visitsingapore.com
visitbritain.com
visitbritain.org
visitlondon.com
incredibleindia.org
visittheusa.co.uk

Author
Angela Lansbury
Travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have several more posts on murals, at stations in London, Russia, and Singapore, plus more pieces on destinations and the weird and wacky and wonderful. Please share links to your favourite posts.

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