New Book Gives an Insider’s Look at London’s Extensive Street Art Culture [Interview]

New Book Gives an Insider’s Look at London’s Extensive Street Art Culture [Interview] For nearly 15 years, Giulia Riva has been documenting the global street art scene on her respected blog, BLocal. Using public art as a window into local culture, she travels extensively and engages with the local art community to understand what makes it unique. To share her knowledge with a wider audience, she’s also begun […] READ: New Book Gives an Insider’s Look at London’s Extensive Street Art Culture [Interview]

Art Oct 6, 2025 0 18 Add to Reading List

New Book Gives an Insider’s Look at London’s Extensive Street Art Culture [Interview]

Dan Kitchener (Photo: Paolo Giannotti)

For nearly 15 years, Giulia Riva has been documenting the global street art scene on her respected blog, BLocal. Using public art as a window into local culture, she travels extensively and engages with the local art community to understand what makes it unique. To share her knowledge with a wider audience, she’s also begun self-publishing street art travel guides to some of the world’s top art cities. After publishing her book on Paris in 2024, she’s set her sights on London.

As Seen on the Streets of London is a comprehensive look at what makes the British capital a world leader in street art. For nearly 300 pages, Riva explores every nook and cranny of London, demonstrating why it’s long attracted the world’s top street artists. And in doing so, she makes us realize that street art in the UK is much more than just Banksy.

Going beyond a guide to the city’s best street art, the book takes readers inside the community through 11 interviews with London-based artists. Riva’s interviews with them not only allow them to share their voices but also provide much-needed insight into local neighborhoods and their motivation for working on the street. This layered approach allows readers to have a much deeper appreciation for and understanding of the artwork on the city’s walls.

A detailed history of London’s street art scene teaches readers where the movement had its origins, while a helpful map will guide you through the city and allow you to plan for a day of street art hunting. Available in two convenient formats, both with the same content but different sizes, As Seen on the Streets of London is a must-have for any street art lover. Currently, the book is available directly from the BLocal website, with further distribution planned for 2026.

We have the chance to speak with Riva about the London scene and how she pulled together the book, as well as a sneak peek at what’s next in this book series. Read on for My Modern Met’s exclusive interview.

"As Seen on the Streets of London" by Giulia BLocal Riva

What makes London’s street art scene so exciting?

What makes London’s street art scene so exciting is that it carries both history and prophecy. When graffiti first crossed the Atlantic from New York, London became one of its strongest footholds in Europe. The shared language helped the culture take root quickly, while the city’s long tradition of countercultures—from punk to rave to grime—infused it with a distinctly local energy.

Soon after, anarchic, uncommissioned street art began to spread across the city, securing London’s place at the forefront of both graffiti and street art in Europe. For those of us who came of age in the 1990s, in a world without the internet, London really was the future. It was where ideas landed first, where change sparked quickly, and where everything felt more alive. I remember the city not just as a backdrop for art but as a generator of cultural shocks: punk, graffiti, and street art were all part of a continuum of counterculture that thrived in its streets.

But that future now looks very different. In the past two decades, London has been reshaped by waves of redevelopment: open public spaces have been replaced by shopping centers, luxury towers, and privately owned plazas that feel more like malls than parts of a living city. Within these managed environments, graffiti and spontaneous street art have largely disappeared, replaced by polished, commissioned murals—spectacular, decorative, and made for Instagram, yet often lacking risk or depth.

And yet, London remains exciting precisely because it is still at the forefront, still pointing us toward the future. What we see here is a warning: the co-option of graffiti and street art into real estate branding and consumer marketing. London continues to anticipate what comes next, but today what it shows us is a cautionary tale—how urban creativity can be commodified, sanitized, and repackaged.

"As Seen on the Streets of London" by Giulia BLocal Riva

Carrie Reichardt (Photo: Paolo Giannotti)

What sort of research went into putting together a book like this?

As with the Paris book I published last year, the research for As Seen on the Streets of London began much like preparing for one of my trips. I’ve been writing about graffiti and street art for over a decade, and through my blog BLocal Travel—which has been a media partner for several UK street art festivals—I already knew many of the artists featured in the book.

Ahead of a summer spent in London, I reached out to them for their insights: the neighborhoods they love, the places they return to, and the spots that inspire them. That kind of local knowledge has always been at the heart of my work, and it shaped the way I explored the city (and that’s what the name of my blog, BLocal, stands for)

I spent the summer walking, documenting, interviewing, and writing, alongside my partner Paolo Giannotti, a professional photographer whose images bring the series to life. At the end of the research, we also welcomed a small group of loyal blog readers to London. Their participation in those walks wasn’t just memorable; it also became a form of crowdfunding that helped make this independent, self-published book possible.

"As Seen on the Streets of London" by Giulia BLocal Riva

Photo: Paolo Giannotti

Can you share a bit about the artists who were interviewed in the book?

The book develops around the voices of 11 London-based street artists, complemented by shorter contributions from many more. When selecting the main artists, my goal was to reflect the diversity of London’s street art scene in every sense.

Some of them were already active in the graffiti movement of the 1980s, while others belong to a younger generation bringing fresh energy to the streets. There are artists born and raised in London, as well as those who came from different parts of the UK, Europe, or even further afield, and made the city their home.

I also wanted a variety of mediums and approaches — from paste-ups to abstract murals, figurative works to installations, and from unsanctioned interventions to commissioned pieces. But the real richness lies in their personalities and perspectives. Their “insider tips” reveal different Londons: one artist is drawn to the spirituality of Chinatown, another to the city’s food culture, and others to its parks and canal walks. Taken together, their voices not only highlight the diversity of artistic styles but also capture London’s essence: its extraordinary cultural mix, a melting pot of people, ideas, and energies that makes the city so endlessly compelling.

"As Seen on the Streets of London" by Giulia BLocal Riva

Jimmy C Zabou (Photo: Paolo Giannotti)

What’s the most surprising thing that people should know about London’s street art scene?

That it’s not just Banksy.

What areas do you recommend for people coming to London who want to see good street art?

There are so many. I’d say start with the classics—Brick Lane and Shoreditch—but don’t stop there. Those areas no longer feel the most authentic. My favorite spots are Penge in the far south and Walthamstow in the far north, where genuine community-driven projects have built remarkable mural collections. Unlike the “mural facilitators” that dominate Shoreditch with branded walls, these neighborhoods still carry the spirit of something local, grassroots, and real.

"As Seen on the Streets of London" by Giulia BLocal Riva

Photo: Paolo Giannotti

This is the second book in the series after Paris. What cities are on your radar next?

Up next is Lisbon—we already did the research trip last spring with readers of my blog, meeting artists and starting the interviews that will shape the book. At the same time, winter months are usually less hectic for me work-wise, and I get to spend more time in my hometown of Rome—unlike spring and summer, when I’m constantly traveling from one street art festival to the next. So I also plan to start recording interviews for the Rome book in the coming months, especially during the Rome research trip with readers this December, which will combine exploration, artist meetings, and crowdfunding support for the project.

The ambitious plan is to release both Lisbon and Rome in 2026. Realistically, producing two books in the same year — while handling everything ourselves, from graphic design to contacting each artist directly to secure permissions for their work, all the way to promotion — might be a stretch. But I like to set the bar high and aim for the moon, even if it means landing among the stars.