Bristol Graffiti Map Launched

Neil Clark from the University of the West of England has just launched a "definitive" street map of Bristol's graffiti.

Here is is.






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Banksy Defaced

Mild Mild West, the image that projected Banksy into the public consciousness in Bristol, has been defaced by a group describing graffiti artists as "the copywriters for the capitalist created phenomeon of 'urban' art."

The image, located in Stokes Croft, was defaced in the early hours of this morning by a group describing itself as Appropriate Media who lambast Banksy as a "spray-can monkey for gentrification" and of "[selling] his lazy polemics to Hollywood movie stars for big bucks."

Shall we expect tightened security at Crimes of Passion?

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Friday's Snow Patrol

Yesterday's highlights from the Great White Out of 2009 include:

Down with the Artists

The range of designs on Durdham Down made entirely of snow is a testimony to the creativity and humour of Bristolians. Personal favourites include:

• snow man sitting on a bench near White Tree roundabout
• full size igloo, complete with tunnel entrance, near Westbury Park
• sofa and chairs near the water tower
• eight foot high snow man near Upper Belgrave Road

Brandon Hill Slide

Described by one participant as a "full on mud slide", Brandon Hill was turned into a white and brown playground on Friday by hundreds of "kids and students" who, lacking the equipment for sledging, had acquired a range of items for descending the snowy hill.

Among the items lining up for inclusion in the 2010 winter Olympics were:

• large cushions in fertilizer bags
• a canoe
  
• plastic sheeting
• a double lilo
• planks of wood
• a car bonnet
• plastic lids from recycling boxes
• dustbins of various sizes and smells
• surf and body boards
• a metal sink and draining board
  

Marvellous.




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Banksy Christmas Special (5)

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Banksy Christmas Special (4)

Enough said.

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Banksy Christmas Special (3)

A few notes on the stories behind this image.

Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the nine-year old Vietnamese girl whose image is at the centre of this Banksy, was caught in a bombing raid of North Vietnamese positions near the village of Trang Bang in June 1972. Now a Canadian citizen and a committed Christian, the adult Phan Thi Kim Phuc has written her story - The Girl in the Picture. You can read more about her here.

The company that produced the napalm that was dropped by American forces in the Vietnam War (napalm was a weapon that caused huge gas-based fireballs to explode at ground level) is called Raytheon, the fifth largest defence contractor in the world. Today, Raytheon produce a range of high tech weapons, especially cruise missiles such as the Patriot and Tomahawk and the
GBU-28 "bunker buster", a 5,000-pound bomb used in the Tora Bora campaign in Afghanistan.

Raytheon have an office in Bristol, at 510 Bristol Business Park, Coldharbour Lane (near the UWE Campus in Frenchay) where, since December 9th, a small but sometimes noisy group of protestors have been occupying the roof of the Raytheon building in protest at the company's activities and presence in Bristol. You can read more about the rooftop protest and see photos here.

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Banksy Christmas Special (2)

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Banksy Christmas Special

During the festive season, and for no particular reason apart from his Bristol roots, I'll be posting a few favourite Banksy images on Trym Tales.

Enjoy.









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New Feed Added

Children of the Can -a local street art site - is the latest blog to be added to the live feedroll on the right hand side of this page.

Trym Tales aims to include all the current feeds from Bristol's blogging community so let me know of any I've missed.

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Get Your Hands on Some Cash for Westbury Neighbourhood Events

With Westbury on Trym's high level of community spirit and frequent neighbourhood events, local organisers may want to be aware of the The Bristol Community and Festival Fund.

The fund exists for Bristol–based community groups, organisations, companies and charities who are organising existing, or emerging cultural festivals & events from April 2008 to March 2009. Priority is given to events that "engage communities" and "enhance local image and identity".

Individual funds are awarded to a maximum of £2,000 per festival/event and the application deadline for 2008-09 is Friday 22nd February 2008.

Further guidelines and an application form can be found here.

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St Mary Redcliffe 6th Form Rag Week

Went this week to the Musical Extravaganza at SMRT, part of the 6th Form Rag Week.

A fine event - celebrating everything that is great about being 17 as well as raising several hundred pounds for worthwhile charities.

The evening kicked off with a tight 10-minute set from Johnny and his Birds, the eponymous Johnny being a very able guitarist and singer-songwriter performing his world debut with this particular configuration of musicians whose combined sound put me in mind of the Jam mixed with Nirvana. I was particularly pleased to see that the PA did not work properly for the first song - a regular feature of 6th-form musical events if my distant memory serves me correctly - and that there was one person (only one, inevitably) who knew how to fix it while the band played on.

Enter, with only the most tenuous link to SMRT, The Wild Gulloots who performed a slick and tight set paying tribute to their role models the Arctic Monkeys, while consuming quantities of Capri Sun.

This Way Up were a heavy metal sensation. Their front man - Frosty - was a thin Marc Bolan look-alike with a great stage presence that combined leopard skin drainpipes, a shock of long curly hair, teenage angst and a truncated mike stand. I am reliably informed that Mr Frost is in fact a very mild-mannered member of SMRT's thriving Christian Union. Marvelous.

An impressive folk duo - Rosie Garrard and some bloke - interspersed with sketches from the imaginatively named "Drama Group" sat either side of Filton College's finest, Moody Goose, who seemed to have the edge in terms of musical experience, though for me Johnny and the Birds displayed the strongest innate musical ability and depth. Which probably means they'll go on to become financial advisers or logistics managers in future life.

Money raised on the evening is being given to Bulgarian Partners who are supporting Sofia Baptist Church in their social work programme among the Roma community in their neighbourhood and to Ikoba School near Masindi in northern Uganda, with whom St Mary Redcliffe School has a long-term partnership.

In conclusion, a very fine evening.

North Bristol Art Trail

Today was another first for me - the North Bristol Art Trail.

Having never been on an art trail before (they are an increasingly popular way of local artists exhibiting and selling their work) I was unsure of what to expect. In the end I was impressed by a range of quality art, entertained by people-watching and faintly amused by the simple pleasure of nosing around a range of private houses in north Bristol.

The houses were all Victorian and lie in that swathe of city built in the 19th century between Ashley Down and White Tree roundabout.

As for the art work, some personal favourites included Sue Harvey's watercolour landscapes and seascapes - I've got my eye on one of her Dartmoor pieces; Dylan Arnold's photography and Debby Bird's mixed media and textile work.

The artists themselves seemed to be pleased (if a little exhausted by 5 pm Sunday) with the event, which ran over Saturday and Sunday, and the numbers of people looking round. The dry weather may have helped draw people out who might otherwise have stayed at home.

All in all, a good day out. And since I didn't buy anything, a very cheap one as well - £4.60 for two hot chocolates and a flapjack at The Prom on Gloucester Road was the sole expense.