Harper-Thames spends a morning with the man tasked with deciding what counts as art and what doesn’t
Every neighbourhood has its quiet experts, people whose jobs give them a genuinely unusual vantage point on how a place actually works. In Shoreditch, one of the more interesting is a contractor employed by the council specifically to manage graffiti removal, a job that requires him to make near-daily judgment calls about what constitutes protected street art and what constitutes straightforward vandalism requiring immediate removal.
A Job Built On Judgment Calls
“There’s no official rulebook that covers every case,” he told me, standing beside a wall he’d been asked to assess that morning. “You develop an instinct after a while. Is this something with genuine artistic intent, something that’s clearly been done with care? Or is it just a tag, quick and disposable? Most of the time it’s obvious. Sometimes it genuinely isn’t, and I have to make a judgment call that somebody, somewhere, is going to disagree with.” He estimates he’s removed several thousand individual pieces of graffiti over his years doing this work, alongside a much smaller number he’s actively recommended for preservation.
His unofficial expertise extends well beyond simple removal decisions. He’s watched artists’ styles develop over years, watched pieces get referenced and built upon by other artists, watched the same walls cycle through completely different visual identities multiple times. “I probably know more about how this neighbourhood’s actual visual culture has changed than most people who write about it professionally,” he said, not unkindly, but with a genuine, earned confidence.
A Role With Real Community Tension Built In
His work sits at a genuine, ongoing friction point between property owners wanting clean walls, artists wanting their work respected and preserved, and council policy trying to balance both competing interests without a perfectly clear framework for doing so consistently. “I get complaints from both directions sometimes,” he said. “Someone upset I removed something they loved, someone else upset I left something up they consider an eyesore. You can’t win everyone over on this job. You just try to make the call you genuinely think is right each time.”
Coverage from Londonist has documented the ongoing tension between street art preservation and property maintenance extensively across several London boroughs, a conversation this particular contractor navigates in practice, daily, without much formal institutional guidance.
What He’d Want People To Understand
“I actually love a lot of what goes up around here,” he said, as we walked past a mural he’d personally lobbied to protect two years earlier. “People assume my job is just erasing things. Mostly it’s deciding what deserves to stay, which is a genuinely different, more interesting job than people give it credit for.” Talking to him, I came away with a real appreciation for a role I’d genuinely never thought much about before, one quietly shaping this neighbourhood’s visual character more than almost any other single job in it.
More from Harper-Thames at her author page on The London Prat.
Related coverage can be found at Londonist.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
