The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Festival bares its art and soul
Thousands join wall to wall guided tours of murals that show city in new light
Thousands of people came out on the streets of Aberdeen at the weekend to explore the street art on display as part of the Nuart Festival.
The second outing of the event was launched last week and has involved artists from countries as far as Argentina, Lithuania, Norway and Portugal decorating buildings in the city centre. Nuart began in Stavanger in Norway and has been brought to the northeast by the city council and business group Aberdeen Inspired.
Over the weekend thousands took the opportunity to make their way into the city centre and get a glimpse of what is on offer.
Organisers of the event hosted guided tours of the art on Sunday afternoon, with participants gathering on the Green before making their way through St Nicholas Lane, Union Row, Langstane Place to a finish on Holburn Street.
Along the way they got to see the main mural of the event, located on the side of the Union Plaza.
The work by Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharvic depicts a young child climbing up a wall alongside two gulls.
The tour finished off with a view of the work on Willowbank Road by Scottish artists Conzo and Ciaran Glöbel, which shows a boxed toy gull for sale.
All the pieces will remain on the buildings, creating a lasting legacy, with tours taking place in the city centre on Saturdays until the autumn.
One person who took part in a tour was Cults resident Francoise Stolte.
She said: “This is the first time I’ve been to Nuart.
“It was an absolutely engaging tour.
“My favourite part is discovering Aberdeen in a different light.”
Jon Reid, an artist host of the festival who led one of the tours, was also delighted that so many people took part.
He said: “We are pleased with the numbers.
“The thing is, if we get 10 or 100 is it the same and we try to give the same experience.
“Street art is about rediscovering your city.
“All the people here were engaged and that is what it is all about for us.”
Adrian Watson, the chief executive of Aberdeen Inspired, was immensely pleased with the amount of people who made it to the city centre over the weekend.
He said: “We’ve not had specific numbers about how many people were there but there were many thousands on the tours. We thought it would be hard to match last year, but the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
“It seems this is one of the best street art festivals on the globe. The tours will be running until October and then we will see what the demand is like.”