Leicester hosted a street art festival called Bring the Paint Festival in 2017 and then two years later in 2019. I discovered some of the murals when I visited the city this summer. Graffwerk is a collective of street artists, and they worked with the council on the festival.
The below photographs are from 2017.
One of my personal favourite murals from Bring the Paint Festival in 2017 is this mural by SMUG on LCB Depot, Rutland Street. SMUG has paintd a bearded man with a rat poking out of a pocket.
Also from 2017 is this floral mural with pink, white, and green floral imagery that brightens this dull wall in a parking lot at Midland Street. The mural has been created by Philth.
Core246 painted abstract portraits in 2017 on a vacant overgrown wall.
Bates painted a huge mural on Southampton Street, adding some colour to this boring part of Leicester in 2017. It is a yellow wall with a Smurf character poking out.
Said Kinos also created a black and white mural on a boring wall in a parking lot at Southampton Street, and it is located on the side of a building. On the other wall is a portrait by Voyder, which I covered in a previous post.
The below photographs are from 2019 Bring the Paint.
Gent painted a character on a wall next to the SMUG mural that was painted in 2017.
A few buildings down from the Gent character, Philph returned to create a floral column on one of the walls in 2019.
Street artist ZINER created a mural near Burley's Way. It's looking a little worse for wear for only being painted in 2019.
The 1UP Crew from Berlin completed a new mural in the Midland/Southampton Street area in 2019.
I was also pleased to see a mural from well-known Bristol street artist Inkie in the same area painted in 2019.
Unfortunately, this striking mural across two shutters on a building on Midland Street was not fully visible. The mural was painted in 2019 and is by Tasso.
Artist SkyHigh, which I've covered before on this blog, painted a shutter in 2019 around the Midland Street area featuring a parrot and grafitti text, which are both common subjects of the artist.
The below mural is from an artist called DOES and peeks out from a wall on Belgrave Gate. It was painted in 2019.
WON ABC painted a mural along the side of a building on Belgrave Gate street in 2019, and it is difficult to photograph but seems to display a green dragon-like character made of marijuana leaves holding a spray can.
Hombre (you can read more here) painted for 2019.
Street artist Ruelo created the below magpie street art in 2017 for "Bring the Paint".
Calais Hill was the location for a work by Voyder in 2019, and it's in an unlikely place void of any other street art. You can read more about that work here.
A lot of street art was also painted in an area of new development around Soar Street. There are several hoardings here as construction teams are building in this area of Leicester, and there's a lot of street art and grafitti around the canal here too. I walked by it, but I did not think much of it was too worthy of a photograph as it was difficult to take any with all of the construction around. I glimpsed one mural along the canal at Frog Island, but I couldn't work out how to get to it as the whole area was fenced off.
I also caught other glimpses of street art around Leicester, and these do not appear to be part of Bring the Paint.
I cannot remember this atist's name (the green face). The artist has painted in other cities before.
I am aso not sure who painted this image, which appears to be a sunflower.
Street artist Annatomix has painted a wall on Silver Walk in the middle of Leicester. It depicts a fox in her geometric style. I couldn't get a better photograph because there was a person sitting at the bottom of it, and it is a narrow walk-way.
There were a few frog-like characters painted onto some of the buildings in the middle of Leicester.
The Newark House Museum contained a wall with various different murals.
I also discovered some murals on the other side of Leicester, near the hospital and stadium area. These were all football-thrmed murals.
Another large mural features foxes fighting over a trophy in the vicinity of Walnut Street. The artwork was painted by SMUG and was painted in July of this year where the foxes team used to play. It was painted for the FA Cup win against Chelsea.
The Belgrave Road area of Leicester, on the other side of the city again, features a couple of murals of Bollywood actresses. These were painted to clean up the streets. There is a larger mural on the same street (Garfield Street) facing the back of the buildings, and you would have never known unless you walked down the street and looked back in this direction, so I missed seeing it. It was painted a few years ago.
Another group of street art is a floral and natural patterns painted on the columns holding up the ring road around Leicester. The ugly grey concrete has been painted with colourful flowers and trees.
The final place that I have seen street art in Leicester is in the centre near Belgrave Gate Road. It is a new street called Savoy Place and contains vintage typography. This street art appears to have also been painted this year.
That concludes my photographs of the street art seen in Leicester at the end of August. I did not realise, but Bring the Paint had actually returned this year and was held at the end of August during and after my visit to the city.
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