Holi One Colour Festival

On Saturday two friends and I went to the Holi One Colour Festival at Battersea Power Station. As we bussed it towards Battersea, a sea of bedraggled and happy revellers, covered in a plethora of colour, walked along the pavements (think brightly-coloured cave men and women, hair sticking up on end, clothes ragged and smeared: within ten minutes I, too, became a cave woman).

When we arrived I was first struck by how friendly the stewards who let us through were - something you don't often get at festivals: it boded well for a great day out (there's nothing worse than being spoken to rudely and, sometimes, manhandled, when you get to an event, especially if you have spent your hard-earned cash to buy the ticket). Once we got in, we were given bags of colours (pink, yellow, green, purple) and then got cracking with chucking it over each other and everyone else. Everyone was wearing white tops (some were in full-one white ensembles), so it was great fun making the different colour effects on human canvases.

The sun was shining and the music was playing (not loud enough in my opinion) and everyone was in a relaxed and happy mood. It was good fun going into what was effectively a car park to become big kids again - there must be something about throwing powder paint around (and then, once mixed with liquid, poster paint) that is good for the soul (not so good for the eyes though... ouch!).

A thoroughly good day out - I look forward to next year...

Images: Lucy and Amy

Alternative London walking tour

On Saturday my friend and I went on the Alternative London walking tour. A two hour tour around East London, looking at the varied, exciting, thought-provoking and often don't-spot-it until-you're-pointed-it-out art. So, what is street art? I looked on Urban Dictionary (appropriate for the urban nature of this post, Wikipedia just wouldn't do) which defined street art as: 'Street art is any art developed in public spaces - that is, "in the streets" — though the term usually refers to art of an illicit nature (as opposed to, for instance, government or community art initiatives). The term can include traditional graffiti artwork, though it is often used to distinguish modern public-space artwork from traditional graffiti and the overtones of gang territoriality and vandalism associated with it.' As I found out, there are many different ways to produce street art - it certainly isn't 'tags' you see adorning monuments and people's back gates (grr), from stencilling to rolling to chipping away at a building to make a relief sculpture... I particularly like how street art is placed on the street for people to add to - often transforming it from its original state into something alive and edgier.Here are some examples of the street art you will see on the tour [spoiler alert!]:

Images: Lucy