Top street art in Willenhall

Map of street art in Willenhall (United Kingdom)

This West Midlands town, a former centre of English lock making, carries a mural titled Reasons to be Cheerful.

Large-format painted text holds a particular place in British urban art, where the tradition of the slogan and the political poster goes back to the 1970s. A positive phrase painted on a wall in a declining industrial town belongs to a common use of public commissioning: giving an image back to an emptying centre, with the means available.

The United Kingdom is among the countries where urban art was institutionalised earliest, with municipal programmes from the 2000s and whole districts handed to painters. The Midlands, heavily hit by deindustrialisation, saw several of their mid-sized towns adopt the mural as a regeneration tool, with budgets bearing no comparison to those of London or Bristol.

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