Spread your wings, see some free art

By Kate Simon

Art is all around us and should be available for everyone to see for free. That’s the vision of Art UK, a charity dedicated to digitally displaying more than a million publicly owned paintings, sculptures and other artworks held by thousands of institutions across the country, including museums, libraries, town halls and hospitals. Now Art UK has announced the digitisation of more than 6,600 murals on show in the nation’s public spaces, from churches to shopping parades.

Murals composed in materials as varied as paint, tile, wood and stone, on themes as diverse as celebrating nature and social comment, have been recorded by the charity’s volunteer photographers in the three-year initiative, which runs until December.

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The archive spans the centuries, from 12th-century paintings displayed above the chancel arch in St Thomas’s church East Shefford, Berkshire, to works by some of today’s leading international street artists, such as Thierry Noir, Stik and, of course, Banksy.

And the murals are wide-ranging in size, too. Tiny paintings on bollards in Shrewsbury that tell the story of the Phantom Coach of the Lion Hotel are featured. So is the 82-metre-high work on St George’s Tower in Leicester, Britain’s largest mural, a montage of local points of pride – a fox for the city’s emblem, an astronaut to make the link between Leicester and space exploration.

Although Art UK’s quest is to make all this accessible to view via your phone or computer, almost 90% of the archived works are outdoors and the majority are free to view first-hand. That’s easily done with the help of the website’s map of the venues, and the team is currently composing trails to follow, which will be posted on the website. There are audio descriptions for blind and partially sighted people, too.

Free culture isn’t confined to visual art. In London, the Royal Ballet & Opera hosts Live At Lunch most Fridays, free performances of music and dance by resident and guest artists. Just be sure to turn up early to get a seat. The London Symphony Orchestra also offers free bite-sized concerts by small groups of its musicians, which include a Q&A session with the performers. And students and lecturers put on concerts, from chamber music to jazz, at the Royal Academy of Music.

Check out similar free initiatives at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, Royal Northern College of Music and Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester. It seems there is such a thing as a free lunch.

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Pub walls are great places to paint murals, and in the case of the Prince Albert in Brighton a collage of musical heroes has become a tourist destination in its own right. There’s even a genuine Banksy behind glass. Inside, meanwhile, as well as being a busy live music venue, the pub showcases beers from Sussex brewer Burning Sky.

Other pubs commemorate local history on their outside wall. The Lord Morpeth in Bow, east London, has a beautiful painting of Sylvia Pankhurst – the socialist one of the suffragette siblings. She lived in the house next door, apparently, and I’m sure she’d have been popping in there for a pint and a pizza.

Not sure who the woman with the book and the dog is on the side of the Red Deer in Sheffield but the striking image was painted by Austrian artist Frau Isa. Inside, the pub is rare in welcoming students and older people with equally open arms and serves fine ales.

Murals on pubs, though, can be vulnerable to fate. When a fire at the Hardy’s Well in Rusholme, Manchester, meant the building had to be demolished 2023, Lemn Sissay’s poem, painted on the wall 30 years previously, went with it.

Photo: “St Mungo mural on Glasgow High Street” by Bex.Walton is licensed under CC BY 2.0.