Growing global appreciation for street art has animated every set of eyes that interacts with the medium. As this art form has gained widespread renown, studio artists have taken their talents to the streets in search of fresh air and increased connection with viewers. Tourists have come to understand public art as a visual face of each city’s identity. Community cultures are celebrated on the facades that citizens pass each day. Business owners are harnessing the unique power that art possesses in arresting attention.
In turn, digital innovators have provided their services in streamlining street art’s future. A complex machine in its own right, the global street art movement possesses multitudinous components, that if coordinated, could yield a symphonic synergy. Organizations like Canvas, BookAStreetArtist.com, and Street Art Cities each perform duties that synchronize several aspects of this equation. Wallspot takes this endeavor toward unity one step further, forging a new seamlessness.
Established in 2019, Wallspot is a Barcelona-based “management and promotion platform for urban art that links new technologies with art projects and programmes for urban creators,” according to a press release from the organization. Available for use via their website or app, Wallspot’s primary function connects street artists with facades available for painting around the world. The platform currently boasts a membership topping 7,100 artists, the press release states.
Wallspot’s model capitalizes upon underutilized space by providing a platform where anyone with an open wall can advertise it with one simple email. As Wallspot’s website explains, listers typically include “a private property owner with available walls, an organisation or an arts manager.” Artists peruse the site’s collected offerings upon making a free account on the platform. After searching according to criteria like city or dates available, registered artists can then book their desired wall if the provided images and dimensions are appealing.
Wallspot’s focus on organizing legal painting opportunities proves its greatest advantage for the arts community it serves. The site assures artists they will face no complications from police because each wall holds official paperwork permitting artistic interventions. An artist’s booking confirmation constitutes their paper working proving the project’s legality. This privilege comes with necessary stipulations though, and the model’s success depends on artists’ cooperation. Artists must keep their work within each wall’s specific dimensions. Furthermore, their site explains, “The freedom for artistic expression is one of the founding principles of the platform. However, when painting, we are all responsible for not causing offense or breaching basic human rights.”
Once painted, there are no regulations on how long a piece can ride. As the FAQ explains, “spaces are designed as dynamic, free spaces for art interventions on rotation. As such, we cannot guarantee any minimum or maximum time for artwork to remain on the wall.” Many already host a bit of art, ready to be added onto. “It is up to the artist to decide where and how to paint,” the site continues. “Usually, walls have already been painted so it is up to the user to decide which area to cover.”
Wallspot incorporates photographers and enthusiasts into the equation by holding space to document the works they’ve facilitated. Photographers can make their own accounts to upload their shots of Wallspot’s walls, linking their images to the artists and places depicted and transforming the platform into “a virtual gallery that features a visual record of all works created on Wallspot’s walls.” This allows the photographer to share their work for an audience, while connecting artists and fans and allowing enthusiasts to plan their art adventures in new locales. It also provides urban arts professionals with “place to interact, exchange and promote their projects,” their press release explains.
From here, Wallspot has further shattered the fourth wall by developing several programs “which aim to offer both artists and cultural managers new opportunities to promote their work within an international network while reinforcing the role of urban art to act as a catalyst for social and cultural transformation.”
Each individual programs suits artists of different needs. For those looking to expand their work’s reach, Travel the Wall is an artist exchange program where selected artists “travel to a Wallspot city to create a mural and share their art. Artists are provided with accommodation, flights, airport transfers, paint and infrastructures and a video promotional interview.”
Artists looking to create works with a longer lifespan will be interested in Wall Lab, “an initiative with a professional aim through which registered artists in the platform are selected to perform a mural in different spaces. In contrast to open walls, which have a rotative dynamic and therefore have an ephemeral condition, Wall Lab’s spaces have a permanence of one year.” Selection for this initiative helps build exposure for the artist, who are provided with “paint and infrastructures, a video promotional interview and an artist’s fee.”
Wall Claim marries street artists’ talents with the public good. This initiative “consists of inviting different artists who are part of the platform to paint an artistic intervention in tune with some of the International Days established by the UN.” In doing so, this program “responds to the need to give visibility to certain social groups using art as a means and tool of social claim.” Artist Emily Eldridge painted this program’s inaugural edition, on International Women’s Day, March 4th 2020, in Barcelona.
Aside from these named endeavors, Wallspot also hosts a variety of training programs “With the aim to promote the professionalisation of artists within urban art, a discipline which still has a low professionalisation rate.” In mitigating this perception, Wallspot has “created specific training for the artists to have knowledge about their rights and duties when they provide artistic services to others.” To this end, they “offer short courses that cover all the essential aspects in relation to this profession: lifting platform training, the legal regulations on artists’ rights, technical advice, the different types of insurances related to their work and masterclasses with artists that have a long career in the field.”
With its sophisticated, multi-purpose platform, Wallspot makes great leaps in legitimizing street art as a professional craft. Wallspot builds upon the progress made by its peers in connecting every participant in the public art process. Their final result gracefully blends the form’s many facets into one platform with an intuitive interface. On it, everyone from artists and photographers to fans and property owners benefit from their efforts. Much like street art, it’s these avid participants who make the machine move.
