London Street Art Run

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to a run organised by Like The Wind Magazine around East London. ‘It’ll be different,’ they said, ‘it’s not just about the running,’ they said. Well having attended events by the guys before I was gonna go anyway, cos they are always fantastic, but they sold it as follows!

Co-sponsored by new apparel brand Stance Socks we were offered to don free samples before we headed out. I gladly obliged! Our run leader for the day was going to be Alternative LDN and we would get a guided tour of Shoreditch, Brick Lane and Bethnal Green to learn about the areas and mostly to get an insight into the street art adorning wall and pavement. In!

As you can see all of these examples are ‘street art’ and not ‘graffiti’. Graffiti sometimes comes with negative connotations which isn’t really fair. Basically the difference: graffiti is initials or a name (or a ’tag’) rather than an image. These works, I’m sure you’ll agree, very much resemble art more so than any sort of vandalism. We got to learn about the artists, what they were seeking to explore culturally with their works and also learnt a little bit about our backyard. 

It was a great morning and a really engaging way to see the city. Thanks to Gary for your hard work – I appreciate you hadn’t run in years, you did a great job! If you have a spare morning I would definitely recommend going to see the Alt LDN guys and get a tour, whether you wanna run or walk it!