ABOUT EUSSSI Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of South Florida
“Beautiful Walls: Street Art Festivals and Urban Place-Making”
The past decade has given rise to new trends in arts-based urban revitalization and place-making. For instance, in many cities across the globe, we can observe a proliferation of cultural festivals meant to celebrate “authentic” creative expressions while also seeking to attract visitors and fill hotel rooms. In particular, we witness an increasing institutional and public embrace of (sanctioned) street art, a clean-cut cousin of unsanctioned and (allegedly) “disorderly” graffiti. Street artists create and materially transform urban places. Street art gives rise to new forms of cultural consumption, investment, and tourism while also producing new actors, alliances, and conflicts.
In my talk, I explore street art as a creative public performance while seeking to understand its impact on urban communities and landscapes. I draw on (ongoing) ethnographic research of street art festivals and scenes in several international cities, currently including Miami, St. Petersburg, Montreal, Bristol, Aberdeen, and Vienna. The emerging overall picture is complex, showing a variety of street art festival types, pathways, impacts, and responses. In some cities, artworks and artists continue to produce “authentic” and critical messages that support local communities and align with grassroots efforts to foster inclusion, diversity, and creativity regardless of market considerations. However, in others cities, despite some resistance, street art festivals are increasingly becoming a tool for gentrification, financialization, and commercialization, thereby contributing to social exclusion. In sum, street art scenes and festivals are variously impacted by social dynamics at both local and global scales, and by events in both real-world and social media spaces. All social research on creativity must carefully engage with the politics and materialities of place and place-making.