Spray Art workshops

Street artist Silent Hobo will be in Great Yarmouth on Saturday 6th November to work with the community to finish a large street mural being commissioned for the town, funded with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The drop-in workshops take place outside Great Yarmouth library from 10am-4pm, where the local community will be given the chance to finish off filling in the mural in a paint by numbers spray art workshop.

The finished mural will then be used to decorate the hoardings around the St George’s Chapel development whilst work is under way to renovate the building.

The work depicts key points in Yarmouth’s heritage and cultural life, from earliest beginnings, through maritime and tourist heritage up to its focus in 1960s youth culture with the Mods and Rockers.

The mural has been created by Bristol based artist Silent Hobo. A character-based artist who works on large-scale street murals, Silent Hobo mixes comic art influences, graffiti and Manga. His work is featured on buildings around Bristol and has been exhibited at The Tobacco factory in Bristol and Selfridges in London.

“My main idea for the piece was to represent the people through this period of history right up to the present day with elements of history passing by in the background” explained Silent Hobo. “To manage such a large mural, I broke the periods of history into sections and I’d originally sketched out a design for approval from the board and pretty much stuck with it. It is so important to have a good design before attempting a mural of any kind.”

The mural also features a local man, Michael Blank, who is chairman of “Comeunity”, the local Neighbourhood Management organisation. Michael is also Treasurer of the Middlegate Community Association. He was nominated and won a public vote to feature in the mural in recognition of his work to improve the lives of people from South and Central Yarmouth.

The works have all been created on panels, which will be attached to the hoarding around the chapel during its renovation into a multi-purpose arts centre and it is expected these will stay in place until major works are completed. Work on erecting the hoardings is due to start within the next few weeks.

Silent Hobo’s Spray Art workshop takes places outside Great Yarmouth’s Central Library from 10am-4pm on Saturday 6th November