If Wellington City Council wants a beautiful city, it should stop wasting money on erasing good graffiti and arresting artists and fund some creativity instead, a concerned citizen writes.

Wellington City Council has declared the need for “a new proactive approach” to managing graffiti. The call was announced to the public last month in a Stuff article referencing Pork, a Wellington tagger and street artist whose work goes back 20-odd years. In the article, the council decried Wellington’s perceived tagging epidemic; young hooligans painting amok because Pork’s tagging has given them a taste of the devil. As a young person involved in Wellington street art, I wholeheartedly agree with that assessment. 

The word graffiti originates from the Latin word “graffio” which refers to carvings and markings on ancient Roman archeological sites. Countless studies of graffiti show its immense educational, political and historical value, providing insights into dominant culture, political engagement and civil unrest. This is what’s being painted over every day in Wellington under this new approach, without documentation of what’s been erased. White vans patrol the city, searching for colour to make grey.

These patrols are paid for by the same Wellington City Council that sports its own street art web page, with a guide for famous murals and commissioned street art around the city. The site declares Wellington to be “famous for a vibrant creative culture” and “a cosmopolitan city with an energetic personality”. As if this could be said of a city void of street art, a landscape of grey paint and advertising billboards. Perhaps this description ought to reflect the curators, scholars and quiet, starkly lit galleries the city has to offer. 

In July of 2018, Auckland Council spent $20m on graffiti eradication, Stuff reports. WCC is less transparent about its spending but, whatever the budget, I call for it to be re-allocated to funding free community art spaces. Such spaces are currently underfunded and overfilled by aspiring, often under-privileged artists, with many on waiting lists eager for an outlet. 

A reflection of the times

Studies show that graffiti statistically increases in times of unrest, and with a cost of living crisis and inadequate or unaffordable housing, an increase in graffiti should come as no shock. From Ancient Pompeii to modern day Ukraine, Palestine and Aotearoa, this ancient art form is a communication and political engagement strategy, used to create beauty in anguish, speak truth to power, and to lash out at governments funnelling money into punishing you for feeling punished.

This “new proactive approach” involves heavy-handed policing of minor crimes in impoverished urban communities. We’re told that this strategy will soon reduce crime. That branding urban community members as criminals, for things like graffiti, loitering and public drinking, will create a happier, more beautiful city environment and make it all better. But it just keeps getting worse. Reports of “new crackdowns” in urban communities have been appearing since forever. There’s only so much you can take away from a community before it has nothing to lose. 

A 2010 report showed that it costs the New Zealand taxpayer $249.25 per day for each person in prison. That’s a whole lot of money to spend on cavity searches, court proceedings, incarceration and lifelong criminal records for young people who want to paint. I know a few people who have served time for graffiti – all of them have painful and expensive health issues, limited job opportunities and are renters. Every one of them grew up poor, and had traumatic experiences with the police before they were 16. People like to frame tagging like it’s some gangsta proverbial. When really, from what I’ve seen, it’s born out of the need to accomplish something. 

Self-esteem for $14.50

Street art gives troubled youth the opportunity, and the agency, to do something big and praiseworthy. People use this point to dismiss graffiti, like it’s some ego boost for kids that already have everything. When you get told you’re a drop kick all the time, when you don’t feel safe at home, going out with your mates and buying some cans for $14.50 from Bunnings, listening to music and making your name into a mural is a pretty effective way of showing yourself that you are capable of something. But then you have to run back and rack out another 14.50 before the tag’s even done. Not so gangsta.

The will to make change doesn’t go away just because you don’t have the education, the trust fund, or the suit and tie to be in government. Dropkicks and taggers, we want to improve things too.

A win/win solution

Erasing our attempts to be seen isn’t helping – in fact it only makes the tagging worse. Quick coverups breed shoddy graffiti. I too have noticed a spike in poorly-executed tags around the CBD. I noticed them rise alongside the militant eradication tactics. We need community-driven mitigation of street art. A third party liaison trusted by both taggers and with government agents. This could allow for the negotiation of street art content and placement between local council and taggers. 

Liaison officers could do contract work in this field, working with council to agree on walls for street art. They could document harmful graffiti for the council and cover-ups would be redirected to taggers, who could be paid for the service. This would give taggers a healthy alternative to the job they already do for free, instead of paying people who couldn’t care less. Across the literature on tagging, several studies mention the use of grey paint. This can’t be a coincidence. Why does everything have to be grey?

All this cracking down in the name of protecting community from harm, meanwhile white supremacist stickers are everywhere in the CBD and the only people covering them up are taggers, the only people reporting on them being kids on Twitter. Anti-vax propaganda billboards were propped up in the hottest spots around the city for months while the council ignored public pleas for removal. The public I know felt more offended, more vandalised by those billboards than by any Briscoes tagging. A cluster of billboards in the CBD with links to medical disinformation, autism denial and coded antisemitism? That’s vandalism. It was harmful to the public. Yet nothing was done because somebody paid for it.

According to the Police website, there were 767 reported police proceedings on the matter of graffiti in the last two years, with Māori and Pasifika making up 48.2% of defendants, despite making up 25.5% of the population. Of these proceedings, 459 resulted in court action or sentencing, 55.7% of those charged being Māori or Pasifika. And all in the name of protecting community.

I’m not saying harmful graffiti doesn’t happen, but lifelong criminal records and racist, lazy policing causes more harm to the community than any tagger ever has or will. Nothing makes a person want to do graffiti more than a night in the cells – if you were trapped in a concrete hellhole, might you not want to decorate it?