Aberdeen street art festival gains national recognition
The Nuart Steet Art Festival will be the focus of a BBC Alba documentary
Last updated 11th Jan 2023
Aberdeen’s unique street art festival is gaining national attention in a documentary.
The Nuart Street Festival is set to be the focus on BBC Alba’s Tog do Shùil (Painted City) tonight, and will feature some of the art created last year.
Some of the city’s 40 murals and their artists will feature, but the focus will also be on the graffiti scene and how it can’t be overlooked as an artform.
Executive producer Pat Macleod said: "The graffiti scene in Aberdeen is phenomenal, the quality and the range of art that’s around on legal walls is fantastic and I think people maybe need to shift their thinking and not see it as vandalism but see it as the art form that it actually is."
Featuring both murals and graffiti helps cement them as equals in the street art world, something artist James Klinge is keen to encourage.
He said: "Whenever people want to talk about the murals, the artist will then say, well I actually come from a graffiti background, and try and explain graffiti isn’t just this negative thing on the street, it’s something more as well.
"The generalisation will be well that’s a mural art but graffiti isn’t, but it is an artform, in essence it’s calligraphy and like art, it’s a form of style and expression."
The festival is attended by artists from across the world, and Barcelona based Slim Safont has described it as “one of the most important festivals in the world” for the European urban art world.
Pat hopes the documentary will show Aberdeen as being brighter than just the Granite City, and that it will encourage people to do as the title says and lift their eyes to the art around them.
She said: "We tend to have a reputation for being grey and dour in this city, and the reality is we have an incredible, most amazing painted city, that actually has an international reputation in the urban arts scene.
"I just want people who live in the city and people who visit the city to recognise that, and actually look up and appreciate what’s around."
The documentary will air on BBC Alba on Wednesday 11 January at 9pm.