Aberdeen, 10 Jopp’s Lane

There are four pieces of street art on the south-east exterior wall of Jopp’s Motorcycle workshop, which stands on the SW side of Jopp’s Lane. In 2017, as part of the NuArt festival (https://2017.nuartaberdeen.co.uk/, accessed 25.6.2018) artist Elki painted a stencil of a bagpiper. Next to the piper is a smaller figure of a person in a kilt and high-vis vest, painted by the artist known as Jaune. On 26 May 2017, the street artist who goes by the Instagram name of fitlikeart created a framed stencil of the word ‘FIT’ with a heart adjacent. The heart is a symbol used across social media platforms to indicate that a person ‘likes’ another message. On the same wall, just to the south-west of the stencils, is a new stencil by Elki, from the NuArt 2018 festival (https://2018.nuartaberdeen.co.uk/artists/elki-uk/, accessed 25.6.2018). The circular stencil comprises a DJs mixing deck and a set of headphones, in monochrome with blue highlights on the headphones.

Visited by HES (AGCH, LM) 16 May 2018.

Recording Scotland's graffiti project was designed to review the range of historic and contemporary graffiti art across Scotland. It involved desk-based assessment and fieldwork at a number of example sites, to consider recording methodologies and dissemination practices.

Between 2016 and 2017, phase 1 of the project aimed to:

Aim 1: review a range of historic and contemporary graffiti art from across Scotland, already present in Canmore.

Aim2: undertake a research review of previous approaches to recording graffiti art in Canmore and other HERs, review and develop the current Thesaurus terms.

Aim 3: test and develop a range of recording methods within the following programmes or projects: Discovering the Clyde programme (1223), Scotland’s Urban Past (1222), Architecture and Industry projects, such as Urban Recording Projects (1028), Area Photographic Survey (311) and the Tomintoul and Glenlivet Landscape Partnership (1167).

Aim 4: the following test sites will be considered for research into the range of historic and contemporary graffiti. They will be analysed to demonstrate the different ages, contexts, styles and survivals of historic and contemporary graffiti: Polphail village (Canmore ID 299112), Scalan farmstead (170726), Cowcaddens Subway Station (243099), Croick Parish Church (12503), Dalbeattie Armament Depot (76279) and Dumbarton Rock (43376).

Aim 5: to research the potential for social media to play a role in crowd-sourcing information and archiving Scotland’s graffiti art.

In 2017-2019, phase 2 of the project aimed to:

Aim 1: To enhance the NRHE to the point at which it can be said to adequately represent the broad range of historic and modern graffiti that is evident throughout Scotland, and to explore ways by which that information can best be disseminated.

Aim 2: To develop guidelines that will convey the HES approach to researching and recording graffiti.

Aim 3: To write a specification for a book on Scotland’s graffiti.

Aim 4: To develop external partnerships to explore further ways to record graffiti and to identify and explore potential funding streams to enable further knowledge exchange and research.

The project was managed by Dr Alex Hale, with contributions from staff across Herirtage and Commercial and Tourism directorates.