Description
Graffiti as a method of public messaging is not a new phenomenon in Northern Ireland. The broad use of paint and marking through murals, kerbstones and written tags deliver territorial and political messages. Through a temporal and spatial analysis this paper illustrates that historical divisions and contemporary political challenges through graffiti. However, the city of Belfast is changing, and so is the graffiti. The type of graffiti, and the message it sends, has changed in terms of acceptance in different spaces across the city. Through a spatial and temporal analysis, this paper demonstrates an understanding of the way in which graffiti interacts with the changing city, and its understanding of violence, avoidance, memorialisation and current social issues in conflict-contexts. The key questions this paper aims to answer are: what is accepted in different spaces? How have these acceptances change over time? How does this connect to how the communities themselves have changed?
