The Art of Protest director on hopes for debut York festival

Jeff Clark, creative director of The Art of Protest, who say they are changemakers “dedicated to transforming towns cities and communities – one spray can at a time”, spoke to The Press at something of a homecoming York event – AcombFest 26.

Their mission statements emphasise effecting meaningful change through art and culture, collaborating with local authorities and stakeholders, and creating a stronger sense of vision, belonging and identity in public spaces.

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For three days starting yesterday (Friday, July 3), Front Street, York Road and the wider urban area are transforming into an open-air gallery, blending art, community, and family fun across the west of the city.

Internationally recognised mural artists and multimedia experts are creating live street art, with large-scale pieces transforming the area under the festival’s “return to nature” theme.

Jeff said the business has been around for the last ten years and he has brought this type of event to all parts of the world.

On returning to Acomb he said: “It was really nice to be able to bring it back to my hometown.

“We have been operating in York a long time – as a business we’re placemakers, we’re specialists in that and we use art as a vehicle to communicate.

“For us, to be able to communicate well to the people, to show how community can be created, it’s a real pleasure.

Acomb, I suppose, it’s our home and it’s where most of the team are.

“It’s where a lot of them grew up.”

Curtis Hylton’s work What Flies Above Us is next to the Post Office in York Road (Image: Kevin Glenton)

Jeff said there are times where curators of events like AcombFest could feel like they are being parachuted into a lot of the communities they tranform.

‘I realised without showing people first, you can’t quite get to it’

“We don’t do that, we work with people because we want to art with people not to them as a collective voice, being here long enough to feel the element of change, he said.

“Look around us right now. It’s buzzing and it’s a fair thing to say that we’re changing the viewpoint and also the conception of the place.”

In the build-up to this inaugural event, The Art of Protest visited nine schools and over 1,100 residents of Acomb to give them a flavour of what to expect and listen to what they want.

Hundreds of people have descended on Front Street this morning to take a glimpse at the murals and take part in activities that run from Dansbury Drive to Holgate Road (Image: Kevin Glenton)

He said: “Some people don’t quite understand what you’re doing, and I realised without showing people first, you can’t quite get to it, so the first thing we started to do was to show them different types of art – styles, expressionist details on walls how that works and let them learn a little bit more.

“From that we started to actually get workshops up – the incredible spray paint workshops allow people then to build up layers and work on art and we themed that around animals because that’s what was asked for.

“When we went back, the one thing everyone asked for was ‘returning to nature’.

“Why? Because there’s green spaces people aren’t returning to.

“We sit inside our houses, we stare at screens and we know that nature is good for us but somehow it doesn’t get us excited enough to get out there.

“If we interrupt our landscape with a juxtaposition by painting really well-curated beautiful pieces of art it reminds people that they’re a part of something bigger.”

Jeff Clark hopes AcombFest 26 hopefully is just the start of something.

He said: “What we want to see is the inspiration to move people forward, so hopefully it creates new budding artists of the future.

“And when they walk around this space – there’s paint jams, there’s live exhibitions, there’s so many different things we want the people, and the artists to come forward.

“We want more artists.

“We need to slow down the concept of AI and we need to increase the enjoyment of physically making things, use our dexterity.

“We would like to be here next year and creating art again.”