The art historian leading graffiti walks in Shoreditch’s backstreets

On a rain-dark Tuesday in Shoreditch, Dr Miriam Cole stops outside a shuttered print shop and asks her group to look below the celebrated mural. Beneath the fresh paint are older paste-ups, a faded tag and the ghost of a commercial sign. Her point is immediate: here, a wall is not one artwork but a crowded, contested archive.

Her small-group walks turn that archive into a moving seminar. Moving between Hanbury Street, Brick Lane and the quieter courts near Boundary Street, Cole identifies recurring hands, traces changing styles and explains how immigration, regeneration, policing and property development have shaped east London’s visual language.

Reading east London at street level

Cole began studying these layers while researching how public images respond to urban redevelopment. Today, she divides her walks into conversations about authorship, belonging and the difference between graffiti written without permission and street art commissioned for a legal surface.

The experience resembles an evening seminar more than a sightseeing tour. Cole supplies historical context, then asks visitors to consider the social clues surrounding each mark. “A wall tells you who was allowed to speak, who paid for the space and who was later erased,” she says. “The paint matters, but so does the silence around it.”

Layers, tags and a moving archive

The oldest material is often least conspicuous. Cole points to bricked-up windows, Victorian commercial lettering and signs for businesses that disappeared decades ago. Later layers include 1980s political slogans, pirate video-release artwork, stencil culture and the dense visual dialogue that followed Shoreditch’s emergence as an international street-art destination.

Even famous pieces become part of a larger ecosystem. She discusses works attributed to Banksy as evidence of wider political and creative movements rather than isolated masterpieces. Handstyle tags, paste-ups and throw-ups reveal a different hierarchy: some images receive an artist’s signature, while others circulate anonymously because repetition is central to their purpose.

For readers who want further context, the independent art-book catalogue offers monographs and visual histories that extend the experience beyond the walk.

The Australian laneway comparison

Cole often compares Shoreditch with Melbourne’s Hosier Lane, where painted surfaces sit alongside loading bays, coffee counters and small studios. Both districts attract visitors who come specifically to look, yet both remain working neighbourhoods where residents, delivery workers and independent businesses shape the atmosphere.

Sydney provides another parallel through its council-approved street-art panels and legal paste-up sites. These projects can become accidental exhibitions encountered during ordinary commutes, with office workers, students and dog walkers passing commissioned pieces on the way to trains or shops.

Australian graffiti regulation varies by state, territory and council, with state laws, permits and local by-laws determining what is authorised. Victoria’s Graffiti Control Act 2008, for example, operates alongside council permit schemes, while unauthorised marking elsewhere can prompt removal orders or penalties. The local market includes limited prints, festival commissions and studio events sold through independent galleries, open-studio weekends and urban-art markets.

A walker’s field guide

Cole recommends treating the streets as a shared environment rather than an exhibition to consume without restraint.

Before the walk

• Wear shoes with grip for wet cobbles and broken pavement
• Carry a waterproof layer and a charged phone
• Keep voices low near flats and workshops
• Respect boundaries around private courtyards

The most rewarding views often appear where visitors are tempted to hurry towards a famous photograph. Cole slows the group outside ordinary doorways, faded signs and patched brickwork, allowing the visual history to emerge gradually.

What to notice

• Overpainted edges revealing earlier campaigns
• Paste-up seams, wheat paste and torn paper
• Tags embedded within murals rather than beside them
• Faded handstyles preceding famous names

These details reward repeat visits and careful photography. A stencil viewed across a road may reveal a date or quotation that disappears at close range. Even partial tags can connect streets, artists and periods that official maps treat as separate places.

Art, ownership and the tourist gaze

Shoreditch’s polished galleries, restaurants and branded developments sit close to streets still marked by contested ownership. Cole is wary of presenting graffiti as a free-floating creative rebellion. Many walls belong to landlords, businesses or public authorities, and artists negotiate fees, permissions and the possibility of removal.

Her walks also address the uncomfortable afterlife of popularity. A photograph can turn a temporary intervention into a collectible commodity, while crowds may overlook the residents and working businesses that gave the area its character. The task, she argues, is to understand the image without pretending it exists outside the economy that produced it.

That scrutiny gives the tours unusual depth. Visitors leave with more than a list of names and locations; they gain a method for reading public space, and a sharper sense of how rapidly a neighbourhood can change while its marks remain visible on the walls.

Book a small-group Shoreditch graffiti walk with Cole, then pair the experience with a legal mural corridor closer to home. Support artists by buying a limited print from an Australian independent gallery, attending a council-approved open studio or joining a local urban-art market. Walk slowly, look generously and let the backstreets unfold at their own pace.