A look at an effective graffiti reduction strategy used around Brunswick Station. I bet you didn’t expect to read a longitudinal study on how to prevent graffiti on this blog.
In the past there were many pieces quality graffiti and street art on the block next to the station. This includes some of the area’s first legal walls, which is still in use, although the fishing tackle shop wall has now faded. I remember Banksy stencil of a chimp and Reka a purple monster on the station (or was that was at Jewell) — both removed to the disappointment of travellers young and old. The AWOL crew regularly painted several of the walls, Slicer, Adnate, etc., developing their mature styles from old-school graffiti (read my AWOL Evolution).
It wasn’t the graffiti was terrible; it was the area that was ugly. The street artists and graffiti writers were trying their best to improve the aesthetics of a neglected section of land behind factories – dirt, rocks and fly tipping. The barren area was a no-mans land between the petty fiefdoms of the local council and the railway. So another anarchic community group, Upfield Urban Forest moved in and started to plant trees and cultivate a garden — fine community-minded people with as much planning permission as a graffiti writer. (Read more about Upfield Urban Forest in Brunswick Voice.) Now that the trees have grown, the walls are no longer visible, making them no longer desirable for graffiti writers and street artists.
Tips on preventing graffiti are often vacuous recommendations written by local councils providing less than helpful advice. Regular removal, anti-graffiti coatings, improved lighting, and uneven surfaces are expensive and environmentally unsound options. Painting walls dark colours to discourage graffiti; black is a favourite colour of graffiti writers to buff/undercoat a wall with because it makes colours pop. Another recommended simply growing creepers on the wall, forgetting that creepers like ivy with do more damage to the wall than a coat of acrylic paint.
Graffiti can appear overnight, a mural or legal wall can take a little longer, and a substantial improvement will not happen overnight. It takes years to grow a tree. It took about a decade of work around Brunswick Station and Premier Daniel Andrews “sky-rail” project will destroy it.
All of the artists mentioned in this post have gone on to paint bigger and better walls.
Black Mark 