In a questionnaire I gave out to people of all races, genders and religions aged 17 – 19, 16 people said that they considered graffiti as art and 2 people said they did not.
Street Art: Vandalism or Art
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37410164
Title:Banksy artwork removed from Liverpool Street to enter street art museum
Author: BBC
Date: 19th September 2016
Summary: This article talks about how one of Banksy’s street art pieces was being put into a gallery. “Sam Fishwick, a graffiti artist from Liverpool, dismissed the idea of a street art gallery. "It's not street art any more if it's hung up in a museum," he told the BBC.” This shows that street art can be seen as vandalism but that idea is dismissed when people such as Banksy create a piece.
Impact: This influenced me as it made me want to portray both sides of street art and how some street art, such as tags, are vandalism but things like murals are not vandalism and should be seen as art. This encouraged me to want to film my documentary to get rid of the stigma behind spray paint.
https://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/uk-now/read-uk/graffiti-art-or-vandalism
Title: Graffiti: Art or Vandalism
Author: Learn English Teens
Date: Updated 2016
Summary: This article talks about graffiti and Banksy. It talks about how Banksy’s work is viewed as art and not graffiti and how graffiti is an excepted art form in his home area of Bristol.
Impact: This has affected my idea as it made me want to talk about the different views towards street art and how people see it differently.
http://www.neighbourhoodjustice.vic.gov.au/home/news+and+resources/news/fightingvandalism
Title: Fighting Vandalism with Spray Paint? It Works!
Author:Neighbourhood Justice
Date: 12/7/16
Summary: ‘“We work with young kids who have been in trouble with the law for vandalising property, and it’s fair to say some of them are heading towards more serious trouble. As our kids admire the artistry behind street art we steer them away from vandalism towards skilled art practices. The kids learn how to draft up work, work with clients and in teams, and we give them purpose in life.”’
Impact: This showed me how street art can influence people in my target audience. This influenced me as I can use it to help me make my documentary engaging to this target audience.
http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/fall07/sanchez/art.html
Title: Graffiti as Art
Author: Noel Sanchez
Date:
Summary: ”Although many consider the spray-painted pieces a nuisance, graffiti has been gaining recognition from the art world more and more as a legitimate form of art”
Impact: This influenced me to want to include the opinions of people who view graffiti as art rather than just looking at it as vandalism. I wanted to use this article to look at different pieces of graffiti art and how they’re seen as more accepted now.
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/art-crime/0/steps/11888
Title: Art or vandalism: the street art debate
Author: University of Glasgow
Date:
Summary: This article is from a free online course. It looks at two different street art artists and how the community and local authorities view them differently.
Impact: This influenced me to want to talk about the different views on street art and whether it is considered art or vandalism and how this view differs and why.
http://decodedpast.com/graffiti-tags-history-vandalism-popular-art-form/4850
Title:Graffiti ‘Tags’ Through History: Vandalism or Popular Art Form?
Author: Emily-Jane Hills Orford
Date:January 21, 2014
Summary: This article discussed a collection of different graffiti art and the different artists that went with these pieces. It looked at viewing why people would agree that graffiti is street art or whether they consider it to be vandalism.
Impact: This made me want to make sure that I included a balanced argument in my documentary and looked at both views of what people consider graffiti to be.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tomas-olesen/more-than-just-scrawl_b_3155340.html
Title:Tagging: It’s More Than Just Scrawl
Author: Tomas Olesen
Date:June 26, 2013
Summary: ”Even those with a professed appreciation for the art form will invariably say something along the lines of: “I like it when it’s proper pieces but I hate tagging.””
”Graffiti, and its trendier little brother ‘street art’, are by nature a hijacking of public space. It seems, therefore, immediately aggressive in the same way that advertising billboards are: It’s like someone shouting at you. This is in part graffiti’s power but also its downfall in terms of acceptance.” The article discusses how graffiti should be considered art as it is a way of expression through an art medium.
Impact: The impact of this was that it made me want to explore the idea of tagging more in depth. For example, tagging is often seen as just pointless vandalism but the tags can often mean something to the artists themselves. Therefore, I want to talk to the artists that I interview on whether they do tagging and if it means anything to them.
Title: Graffiti: Street art - or crime?
Author: Arifa Akbar
Date: Tuesday 15 July 2008
Summary: ”A group of south London graffiti artists were jailed last week for up to two years for defacing public property. Yet as they begin their sentences, their work is to be championed by a New York gallery.”
“By contrast, just down the road, the riverside facade of Tate Modern had been covered in giant murals by six urban artists with international reputations, including Blu from Bologna, Faile from New York, and Sixeart from Barcelona, in the first display of street art at a major museum.”
This article talks about the juxtaposition involved with contrasting opinions of street art. It talks about how art is often defined by the opinion people have of the artists intent, which is often not the actual intent of the artist. This is why street art is often considered vandalism.
Impact: This made me want to interview people who create street art to gain a better understanding of the art from their view and why they do it, even though people refer to it as vandalism.
My focus group that I conducted with four 17 - 19 year olds to get opinions on my documentary from my target audience.
Research evaluation
I conducted a questionnaire to get the opinions of people in my target audience age range on what they thought of different aspects of my documentary topic. 16 people from my survey said that they considered graffiti as art, compared to two that didn’t. This showed me that already a lot of people agree that it is street art. However, I will still explore the idea that it is vandalism to gain an idea from both sides of the argument. In my questionnaire I also asked what people thought of when hey heard the word ‘graffiti’. 7 people said they thought of ‘art’ and 6 people thought of ‘vandalism’. 4 people also said they thought of ‘tagging’ and ‘youths’. Another one of my questions was what would people like to see in a documentary like this; 4 people said they would like to see visuals and 4 people wanted to see both the positive and negative side of graffiti. This made me know that I should interview a policeman to get the negative side of graffiti and talk to street artists to get the positive side of graffiti.
From my focus group I gained insight from my target audience that they think I should keep the use of colours broad, as the graffiti I may film will have lots of different colours so it is better to not keep to a specific colour theme. They also said I should go to skate parks to get a variety of visually pleasing cutaways. This aided me in knowing more about how I could use visuals and which ones to use in my documentary that would appeal to my audience.
They also agreed that my documentary should be observational rather than presenter led as it means that the audience can create their own interpretation of the documentary and content within it. This allowed me to get a better idea of what style my audience would like to see and how I could film my documentary in an observational style to keep the information more interesting.
In my focus group we also discussed what background music I should. They agreed that any genre would work as long as it was relevant to young people and so I won’t need to use one genre of music to appeal to my audience. They also suggested that whichever genre I use, I should make sure it is upbeat as graffiti is quite exciting and not dull so the music should represent that. This made me gain an idea on what sort of music would work and appeal to my audience and allowed me to think of different music instrumentals I could use in my documentary.
My content research showed me some important artists in the history of graffiti that made me want to include them in my documentary. This could either be in terms of cutaway of their work or asking artists that I include in my piece if they are inspired by any of these artists.
In a survey monkey questionnaire I conducted, 75% said that they associated tagging with spray paint. This showed me that I need to ensure in my documentary that I look at both aspects of graffiti and whether it should be considered art. I also asked if people found graffiti murals appealing to the eye, 100% answered yes. This shows me that graffiti can be considered as art and it is something I should talk about my documentary.