On the short walk between my south Bristol home and our local Asda, there is a cut-through called Lucky Lane. A dreary back alley furnished with weeds and wee and wheely bins, it’s a not a place I liked to linger – not until I started posting pictures of Lucky Lane on Instagram.
Over a Saturday in September, a pop-up paint festival was organised by the women-led Bristol Mural Collective. They worked with brushes and cans of spray paint and turned the place into a vibrant outdoor gallery. The artists had full permission from the residents who own the walls, fences and garage shutters that provided their canvases. They created a collection of abstract images, flowers, philosophical slogans (such as “Dream Big and Believe in Yourself”), a cow udder, a chicken and two takes on the Japanese Maneki-neko cat (those arm-swinging figurines loved by Chinese restaurants). It has gone down well with locals. “Thank you for bringing joy to the neighbourhood,” wrote one happy resident.
‘Full of Wonder’ 2022 , a work by artist Sophie Mess from Upfest (Photo: Paul Box)Welcome to Bristol: the birthplace of Banksy and the home of Upfest (the now biennial street art and graffiti event is the largest in Europe; a city that not only celebrates street art, but is perhaps unique in encouraging and curating new work.
“No city in Britain uses its urban landscape as a canvas quite like Bristol,” agrees Lonely Planet’s new Best in Travel guide – the annual list in which the organisation’s writers and editors select 50 of the world’s best destinations and experiences for the year ahead. The only UK city to be featured, Bristol and its street art scene have a dedicated section in the just-published 2026 edition.
Although I can’t speak for other cities, I can say with some authority that street art is part of everyday life here in Bristol. I see it on the way to the veg shop on East Street, as I walk to Southville deli on North Street and while on the bus heading up West Street. And I’ve been here long enough to observe the urban art scene’s progress from the illegal underground movement that emerged in the 1980s – taggers and “writers” vandalising bridges and underpasses with subversive expressions of spray-can art – to the mainstream of today, when artists some of us have heard of do their stuff in plain sight, often invited by the owners of the buildings they are painting.
It’s among the many reasons I’ve stayed here. Bristol embraces counterculture. A place of collectives, co-operatives and anti-capitalists, it’s a bastion of green politics, protest and independent thinking. The ubiquity of its street art is very much part of that vibe. This is the city, after all, that toppled the statue of 17th-and-18th century slave-trader Edward Colston and cheered the crowd that chucked him into the docks. The statue now lies in the M Shed, the city’s harbourside museum, along with the “Grim Reaper”, a rescued Banksy original that used to be on the hull of a ship.
We Bristolians are proud of Banksy (I know people who know people who know who he is, but nobody’s telling); at one time there was even talk of renaming the city airport Banksy International.
The enigmatic artist and his stencilled brand of political satire is at the forefront of the city’s international reputation, but there are so many other creators whose work you can see around Bristol. Among them are Inkie, Jody, Cheo, 3D (aka Robert Del Naja of Bristol band Massive Attack), 3rdEye, Hazard One, Goin, Lucas Antics and Bex Glover, as well as many emerging artists (all vying, no doubt, to be the next Banksy).
You can find their creations by joining one of Where the Wall’s weekend street-art tours that start on the green outside the City Council offices, plunge down the back alleys that weave around the centre, and head up to “edgy” Stokes Croft, the hub of alternative Bristol. On the way, you’ll take in Nelson Street, the city centre thoroughfare that hosted “See No Evil” in which an international cohort of artists took part in two events in 2011 and 2012. Talking earlier of plain sight, Nick Walker’s bowler-hatted “Vandal” runs up the side of a 1960s tower block on the street.
The beauty of street art tours (there are a few, including a self-guided option and a south-of-the-river Upfest mural tour) is the opportunity to visit parts of back-street Bristol you might not otherwise see, but they don’t tend to cover the off-the-beat pieces.
‘Girl with a Pierced Eardrum’ is among the off-the-tourist-trail Banksy works (Photo: Oliver Paton)Only dedicated tourists will find the “West Street Horse”by Andy Council, a local artist best known for abstract beasts composed of Bristol landmarks (the Clifton Suspension Bridge forms the horse’s spine; a Bristol-built Concorde soars over the terraces of red-brick that runs down its equine nose). Banksy? Well, his works are dotted all over the city, too. There’s one in the city museum (“Paint Pot Angel” is a relic of a major exhibition in 2009), and another on Stokes Croft (“The Mild Mild West” features a teddy bear throwing a Molotov cocktail at riot police), but it takes a bit more effort to find “Girl with a Pierced Eardrum”: a take on Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring”– it’s tucked away down the back end of the docks. And how many visitors make it to outer-city Barton Hill to see Banksy’s now vandalised “Valentine’s Day 2020”, arguably his most recent Bristol work? I haven’t been.
More accessible are the streets of Southville and Bedminster (Upfest territory) where owners of shops, pubs, offices, and even homes, have willingly donated their outdoor wall space to hundreds of artists to paint. Don’t miss the so-called “Six Sisters”, for which six female muralists painted the exteriors of six neighbouring shops, including the Upfest gallery.
“The city is a tapestry of illegal graffiti and legal street art,” says Upfest co-founder Steve Hayles. In the mix are the new generations of contemporary artists and illustrators who have “seen the power of painting on the street, and have become part of the scene,” he adds.
It’s not all about paint, though. Back in the city centre, look out for work by the anonymous sculptor whose stealthy, nocturnal installations include “Bear with Me”, in which a Winnie-the-Pooh-like bear reaches out to a man in distress. The clay sculpture was installed on a high plinth overlooking Jacob’s Wells Road, on World Suicide Prevention Day in 2020 by the artist known as Getting up to Stuff (I do know who he is, but I’m not telling). Five years later, it’s still there.
Banksy’s “Well Hung Lover” was defaced with blue paint (Photo: Visit West)Over time, many of these pieces have become much-loved Bristol landmarks, but they aren’t permanent fixtures. Imagine the outcry when Banksy’s “Well Hung Lover” (at the bottom of Park Street) was defaced with blue paint. But isn’t that the nature of the beast? Like any gallery, the work on the walls is in constant transition.
One of my all-time favourites was a giant portrait of John Lennon painted by Brazilian artist, Kobra, on the side of the Tobacco Factory in North Street for Upfest 2017. Two years later Lennon was replaced by Greta Thunberg by Bristol’s own Jody (for a while the real Greta adopted the image on her social media profile), followed by Insane 51’s skeleton woman in double-exposure 3D.
Who knows what will appear in this prime spot at next year’s Upfest (in the pipeline for May 2026, subject to funding). That’s how it rolls around here: one day, there’s dreary old wall in, say, a carpark, the next there’s something bright and brilliant and wonderful to look at.
For more info on Bristol street art, see Visit Bristol
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