Like many Londoners’ I have always viewed camden as the domain of tourists and to be avoided at all costs. However, over the past few months I found myself working in the area fairly frequently, and began to notice an incredible amount of street art popping up on walls, by some seriously big names.
This got me wondering what it was about Camden that was attracting artists from around the world. So when Camden Street Art Tours reached out to The Locals to tell us about their new two-hour walking tour, I immediately jumped at the opportunity to go find out more.
Guide and tour founder, Nelly Balazs, first fell in love with the blossoming street art scene, three years ago when she started documenting work around the city, taking thousands of pictures. She is now a blogger closely involved scene and works with many of the artists, whose work you see on the tour.
Throughout the tour, Nelly insures she gives visitors an alternative insight into Camden, not just the overrun tourist trap it has come to symbolise. The work she showed us all demonstrated that our cities are not static spaces but dynamic environments, constantly shifting and changing.
As we wandered around the back streets looking at works by the likes of Bambi, Alice Pasquini, Chinagirl, and Gregos to name a few, Nelly explained that artist are increasingly going to social media to push their latest work, and Camden market with its 200,000 visitors every weekend, offers them a huge potential audience to share their work with.
The tour takes visitors past a variety of works both big and small, by locally-based and internationally-renowned artists, with the stories behind each the pieces and their creators wonderfully explained. Nelly was a fantastic tour guide and her enthusiasm for sharing Camden’s street art is contagious. I can’t recommend this tour enough for both locals and tourists alike.
Tickets are available here for £15 per person