New street art emerges in Derry city centre with more still to come

The murals were created by Peaball, a street art collective, with the hopes of bringing life to run-down parts of the city. The murals are all done in different styles, showing different images and Peaball member Donal O’Doherty says there’s ‘something there for everyone’.

The murals are part of Peaball’s street art initiative ‘Get Up’ which is intending to brighten up the riverfront and areas around it such as the Strand Road and Ebrington. Murals were recently completed on the new Ebrington Hotel, City Cabs in William Street and Quayside Shopping Centre on the Strand Road.

"We really wanted to get this right,” said Donal. “So, we brought Fintan Magee to do Ebrington Hotel. Fintan’s father was born in Derry, he left during the troubles and Fintan is a world famous, high-end street artist. We had a mural on City Cabs in William Street before and it was a bit tired looking to be honest. James from City Cabs said he wanted to freshen up the whole area to make it light and bright and welcoming for people. William Street is quite a serious street so we wanted something fun and engaging. We worked with Bonsai on that, a London-based artist who has been visiting the city and painting graffiti for over ten years. We talked about this idea over five years ago to take symbols that identify us around the world, such as the shamrock, and put a real modern street art twist on it. I have to say, I think it’s amazing. And the feedback we’ve had is phenomenal.”

Peaball have big plans for the future of the city to help local businesses flourish in difficult economic times.

“Pyke ‘n’ Pommes, Patricia’s, Primrose, are all trying to animate our riverfront and they’ve got a great scene there,” Donal said. “But, once you pass the Council offices, you navigate three car parks and the back of Quayside before you get into town. We’re hoping to take people off the quay earlier, up to the great food scene around Guapo. We found that a lot of tourists and Derry people alike were drawn over when they seen the artist and were asking questions and I was guiding them to the Mandarin Palace, a staple of Derry restaurants and all the other places around there. I think those businesses were very happy with what we were doing.”

The ‘Get Up’ festival is privately funded, with most of the money sourced by ‘knocking on doors’.

“A lot of people said ‘no’ but this is sometimes a hard sell until it’s done, then people think it’s amazing. We work back-to-front because we don’t tell people what’s happening or what it’ll look like – that’s like buying a cinema ticket and asking what happens at the end! You have to watch it and wait and see. The power of graffiti is that they seem to pop up and us artists are a bit allusive. We will stop and chat to everyone when we’re painting the walls, though, and I think that’s a good thing that people are able to interact. But it’s that surprise element that makes it work so well.

"We put thousands of our money into these events, that we save throughout the year, and we’re hoping to build on that for the future. It’s shocking that we don’t have an art festival here, especially because we’re a city full of artists, so we‘re hoping to create that in the future with support from local businesses. Thousands of pounds are poured into great events in the city but the legacy of those events is very hard to see after. This street art is there all year so you can enjoy a bit of colour in your life on a dull Tuesday afternoon in February.

"We have so many murals – civil rights murals and murals who tell the story of who we are as a city. All we’re doing is adding to that rich culture that we already have that I don’t think we value enough in the city. When I bring artists here from all over the world, they say that we have been doing the street art thing 30 years before everyone else. They are more serious and are oppressed peoples voices but seeing a painting of that scale still influenced me growing up.”

The festival isn’t finished yet and Donal says the special guest, who happens to be ‘one of the best graffiti artists in the world’, will make a huge improvement to the city

"This surprise guest will blow peoples socks off but will also animate the riverfront. It’s going to bring a much-needed blast of colour to the Foyle.

"This could never have happened without the businesses that support us. City Paints, Pyke ‘n’ Pommes, Gray’s Communications, Quayside, Ebrington Hotel, City Cabs – they were all amazing. They shared our idea for the city to be a more colourful, playful place. We have big plans for next year to close the whole thing off for a street party where the public can sit with a glass of wine and some food and watch the artists work all day. You could spend the whole weekend watching art develop!

"If people want to get involved in the festival in any way by providing a wall, sponsoring an artist or adopting a mural, they can contact us through any of our social media by searching Peaball.”