The other side

Today we had a walking tour of London, but it wasn't just any old tour, this was an alternative walking tour, starting outside Spitalfields Market and heading down Brick Lane and around the streets there, learning about the history that has developed the area and about the flourishing street art scene.

Our guide, Doug, is clearly an active part of that scene and has filled my children's heads with ideas of redecorating Germany. We saw many different styles, from the basic scrappy tagging, to Lego christmas trees, space invaders you can plot on a map of the city, stencils, crochet bombing and the style that most interested my son involving small explosive charges under plaster.

This piece of street art was done by an American who had a bit of time to kill before his flight home, he chills his aerosols in iced water in order to get the effects you see, another guy plastered a wall and then took a jack hammer to it etching through the plaster and into the actual wall in places, then there's 60 year old Jonesy who manufactures coke can sized pieces of art and afixes them to the tops of sign posts. Street art isn't just yobs in hoodies wielding aerosols.