Exploring London’s East End Street Art Scene (Walking Tour Review)

Going on walking tours, especially of specific neighborhoods in huge cities, is a great way to learn more about local life. Focusing down on specific topics means you can dig deeper into the history of that particular area, and really learn something new.

During my visit to London, I went on a street art and graffiti tour of London’s East End, specifically the Shoreditch area. While I’d always been interested in graffiti and murals, I’d never really seen ANYTHING like the scene that’s exploding out of the East End, and this tour was a phenomenal way to explore with a guide who really knew the ins and outs of the neighborhood.

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While the original tour I went on isn’t available any longer, luckily it’s a popular subject so there’s quite a few other similar tours to choose from.

• London Street Art and Graffiti Guided Walking Tour
• East End Street Art Tour and Spray Painting Session
• London: Street Art Bike Tour

This post will be about my experience on an East End walking tour, with photos of some of the best pieces I saw. I’ll share more detailed photologs of the street art I saw in subsequent posts.

Tour Guide & Set-up

Nelly was my tour guide and she was FANTASTIC. She’d been a tour guide for nearly 10 years at that point and it showed: very professional, well-spoken, and knew how to get through a lot of information quickly but comprehensively. She had a hobby of photographing street art and sharing it on her Instagram, which eventually got her interested in doing tours!

Unfortunately it seems like she isn’t doing tours any longer, but I’m glad I had her for this tour because she really made it a good one.

Book your East End Street Art tour on Get Your Guide now!

Tour Itinerary

We met just outside a metro station and headed off to look at some of the bigger and more historically important pieces of street art in a small radius in the Shoreditch neighborhood. Because it was fairly busy with other tours, Nelly took us on a few detours to find quieter, less crowded parts of the neighborhood– which I definitely appreciated!

As we walked, Nelly explained the history of street art, how it came over to England, and some of the important local and visiting artists. She also talked about how street art has gone from being totally underground to slowly being more accepted, and even encouraged by some city governments as a way to beautify their neighborhoods.

The area we were walking in started out as a totally “illegal” street art location, but recently some companies have been encouraging artists to paint official murals and big art pieces. There’s also a large international artist movement; it’s a big deal to get a piece put up in Shoreditch, especially if it’s big and beautiful. Kind of a bragging rights thing.

Some of the places and artists we saw were:

• Brick Lane (major hub for street art)
• Banksy’s Guard Dog
• Helcho’s big piece(s) on Grey Eagle St. across from
• Boris Johnson as a clown portrait (pictured above)
• Braithwaite Street
• Sclater Street
• Fashion Street
• Spitalfields Market area

It was a relatively leisurely walk, where we had enough time to take photos of the big pieces. I kept seeing a bunch of small stuff I wanted to look at closer; basically everywhere I looked I saw something new and interesting, and it was super cool!

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed this tour and the neighborhood so much that I went back the next day and roamed around on my own to get even more photos. Keep an eye out for upcoming photo posts!

If you’re interested in street art, local art movements and such, I highly recommend doing a walking tour in London. The tour guides know where some of the best art is, and it’s not always obvious which alleys you need to go down so it’s good to have someone bring you around. Definitely worth the time to do this tour!

Book your East End Street Art tour on Get Your Guide now!