Organisers of what is viewed as one of the world’s leading celebrations of street art have visited Aberdeen this week as plans to bring a similar event to the city gather pace.
The Nuart Festival is an international contemporary street and urban art festival, held annually in Stavanger, Norway, since 2001. Providing an annual platform for national and international street artists, the walls of the city, both indoor and out, are transformed for one week only to create one of Europe’s most dynamic and constantly evolving public art events.
Now, thanks to an invitation from business organisation Aberdeen Inspired, the directors of the festival have been in the north-east to pursue the feasibility of bringing a version of the festival to the Granite City next year.
With discussions between the two parties already underway, the visit is the next step in bringing the festival to fruition. Both the Nuart Festival team and representatives from Aberdeen Inspired have been carrying out an expansive tour of the city centre to locate potential venues for the exhibition alongside meeting other key stakeholders who could potentially get involved.
The idea for a North-east version for the festival came after Aberdeen Inspired experienced success with their own street art projects within the city centre’s McCombie’s Court, Adelphi Lane and the thoroughfare between Aberdeen Train Station and the Trinity Shopping Centre.
Although on a much smaller scale, the pieces have helped breathe new life into these parts of the city centre and Aberdeen Inspired chief executive Gary Craig is excited at the prospect of bringing a dedicated street art festival to the city next year.
He said: “We were delighted to welcome the team from Nuart Festival to Aberdeen in what is hopefully another positive step towards introducing something of this scale and depth to the city next year.
“We want to help people explore parts of the city that they wouldn’t necessarily visit on a daily basis but there is also a part to play in challenging any preconceptions that street art has in the city; people often think of graffiti and vandalism when street art is mentioned but when used in the right context at the right time, it’s much more than that.
“A festival of this sort would hopefully attract some of the world’s most exciting and thought-provoking artists to the city along with giving local artists a chance to showcase their work on a larger scale. We’re excited at the prospect of an event of this stature coming to Aberdeen; hopefully there will be some interesting work coming to a wall near you soon.”
Martyn Reed, director and curator of Nuart, said: “We’re honoured to have been invited to discuss the idea of bringing Nuart to the city of Aberdeen. As a twinned city that is just a one hour direct flight from Stavanger we see huge potential in the project, we’re keen to experience the Granite City and look forward to discussing this exciting opportunity further.”