Description
The research design for the project compared the urban and social phenomenon of street art in the post-conflict cities of Beirut and Belfast, over a four-month, blended case study and focused ethnography. The researcher conducted twenty-two semi-structured interviews with eighteen street artists, three festival organisers, and one city management official, and observed participants while volunteering at two street art festivals in Belfast. By shedding light on some of their artistic practices, the findings reveal that street art communities engage in small- ‘p’ political acts. They re-purpose taken-for-granted spaces within the city to demonstrate how street artists adjust their practices to reveal pragmatic and rule-based forms of placemaking to avoid jarring with sectarian identities while bringing attention to the democratic, transient, and transformative nature of their practices. While they do not have an impact on the nature of space, their interactions could remark on the possibilities for the co-production of space. Moreover, they intend to awaken the slumber of urban dwellers with the visceral enjoyment and experiences of creating and producing street art for the inhabitants of the space. While small, their artistic interventions gift the inhabitants of Beirut and Belfast with ephemeral and gratuitous forms of interactions that present an opportunity, however temporary, for different social worlds to meet.
