Wild Walls Festival – Ipswich

The Wild Walls Festival is an exciting four-week street art programme in Ipswich, beginning on Friday 6th September. The mainly free programme will bring an early autumn creative buzz to the town with plenty of family-friendly things to do. The festival will also bring what is believed to be one of the biggest murals in the East of England to Ipswich Waterfront.

The festival offers a new large murals and smaller street art pieces by brilliant artists, a new street art trail, free urban art workshops with graffiti artists, an art market, a virtual reality graffiti art exhibition, free screenings of three iconic films at King Street Cinema, and a ticketed Wild Walls closing party at The Baths, Ipswich, on Friday 5th October.

Anyone travelling on Ipswich Buses to attend festival events will be reimbursed in cash on arrival. Simply talk to a festival team member.

A first of its kind for the town, Wild Walls Festival is the collaborative brainchild of Art Eat Events CIC and The Subversiv Collective, who had a vision to create a street art festival with a difference. With experience in delivering community arts projects and a passion for street art, they are being supported by Arts Council of England, Ipswich Borough Council and Ipswich Central, as well as SPILL, The Hold and University of Suffolk.

Throughout the summer, young people joined workshops in Ipswich to co-design four large scale murals in the town centre. During the festival people will see the new artworks emerge, with the largest being a whopping 576 square metres – the equivalent of approximately three tennis courts – on the University of Suffolk’s James Hehir Building on Neptune Quay. It is expected to be one of the largest murals in East Anglia.

The other large-scale murals can be found at the rear entrance of The Hold near the Waterfront, on the back of Ashtons Legal’s building and viewed from Portman Road, and on Great Colman Street. The public can also look out for other urban art in unexpected places!

Further information about Wild Walls Festival events and participating artist information are available here: www.wildwallsfestival.com.

To find out about the films and book free tickets, go to the Kings Street Cinema website: www.kingstreetcinema.co.uk.

Wild Walls is working with local community partners including: Chip, Future Female Society, Ipswich Borough Council, Ipswich Community Media, Ipswich Suffolk Council for Racial Equality, Karibu, King Street Cinema, Murrayside Community Centre CIC, Sounds East CIC, Suffolk Libraries, Suffolk New College, Suffolk Refugee Support, The Hive and YMCA.

New Woskerski mural on Ashtons Legal building (c) Tim Leggett for The Ipswich Society