London: Shoreditch Street Art Tour

London is a treasure trove for street art lovers. The area around Shoreditch High Street and Brick lane is so colourful – art is everywhere you look.

I went on a street art tour recently, and thought it would be good to share the itinerary we did so that you can do it too!

We started off in Braithwaite Street, right next to Shoreditch High Street Station (overground). Here you can try and spot the difference between street art and graffiti tagging, which is really just someone’s signature.

Next, walk to the corner of Buxton Street and Brick Lane. Here you’ll spot so many different street art pieces.

Look out for the fun street signs that Clet Abraham has hacked.

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You’ll also see some self-portrait masks by Gregos.

Have a play around with Saki and Bitches’ interactive wooden blocks. I think art is always better when you can play with it!

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Walk through Sclater Street, which is full of interesting boutiques on one end and street art murals on the other end.

See if you can find one of Jonesy’s pieces above a street sign. Our tour guide says that Jonesy is a Welsh man in his sixties who recently started making these tiny sculptures. One day, he found a dead pigeon in his garage and used the wings for his art – that’s why they look so lifelike!

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Make your way up Redchurch Street and look out for Jimmy C‘s mural on Whitby Street. His signature style is to let the paint drip down. I really love this one! The colours are beautiful.

Another interesting piece is this sculpture by Cityzen Kane on Club Row. I love that it is 3D, it makes you want to touch it! Looks like it would have taken many hours to make.

Our guide pointed out that unfortunately there aren’t many female street artists in London. On Chance Street though you will see the huge colourful work of German artist MadC. I think it’s brilliant because it adds some bright, happy colours to the city!

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Make sure you take a selfie in on of the mirrors across the street! Okay so that wasn’t actually part of the tour…

Look up! ‘ACAB’ is apparently used a lot in street art – it stands for “All Coppers Are Bastards”. According to Wikipedia, people have been fined for wearing t-shirts with ACAB printed on them!

Another piece that I really enjoy on Chance Street is the huge hedgehog by ROA. This Belgian artist is known for painting large-scale animals that relate to the environment they’re in. So Thailand gets elephants, Norway gets a whale, and London gets a hedgehog and a pigeon (boo!). Our guide says that ROA likes to paint animal skeletons but people ask him to paint nice living animals instead. You wouldn’t want to walk past a huge dead pig everyday, would you!

Isn’t it such a shame that people have tagged the hedgehog?

After taking in all this street art in Shoreditch, we walked over to lovely Columbia Road and took more pictures.

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If you haven’t been before, I recommend going on a Sunday morning for the big flower market. On any other day of the week you can go there to shop in the cute little boutiques or have coffee at Campania.

Our walk ended at Alternative London‘s offices where we got to try out HP’s new little printer, the HP DeskJet 3720. It was fun to be able to print out our photos right there and then – something I haven’t done in many years! I’m very tempted to get one of these little printers for myself now; they’re small, cute, wireless and can even scan.

Thank you to HP, Currys, and the lovely Doug from Alternative London for this fun day!