Blackall Street — Shoreditch's Hidden Alley
Blackall Street is a narrow alley off Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch, London, famous as a top East End street art and paste-up location with constantly changing murals. Tucked behind former industrial warehouses, it features works by international artists including French stencil master Christian Guémy and Dubai artist Fink22. In January 2016, the alley hosted London's first street art paint jam of the year, created by an all-female artist collective.
London · from the walk “Walls That Talk: Shoreditch Street Art & Urban Creativity” · Generated
Blackall Street, London EC2A 4PL
- Industrial collapse in Shoreditch during the 1970s and 1980s led artists to occupy vacant warehouse buildings by the 1990s.
- French stencil artist Christian Guémy, known as C215, frequently paints close-up portraits of marginalized individuals on Blackall Street.
- In January 2016, Blackall Street hosted London's first street art paint jam of the year with an all-female lineup.
- Twenty-two street artists gathered on Blackall Street for a second jam celebrating the London Calling Blog first anniversary.
Why is Blackall Street in Shoreditch famous among London street artists?
Take a look around you... and chances are, you almost walked straight past this place. That's exactly the point. Welcome to Blackall Street... a narrow, unassuming alley tucked just off Great Eastern Street, and one of Shoreditch's best-kept secrets.
What makes this little lane so special?
It's essentially a glorified alley, forming the back end of a number of old warehouse-type buildings. But look closer. Blackall Street presents a stretch of hoarding with a high turnover of street art and graffiti on one side, and a wall which is one of the premier paste-up locations in the entire East End.
To understand why this matters, you need to know what happened to this neighbourhood. For most of the twentieth century, Shoreditch was a working industrial neighbourhood. The textile and furniture trades that had sustained it for generations collapsed in the nineteen seventies and eighties, leaving behind empty warehouses, derelict factories, and vacant lots. Rents fell. Artists moved in. By the early nineteen nineties, the area around Old Street and Brick Lane had become a loose community of studios, squats, and makeshift galleries.
And then... what developed in Shoreditch was something different — less about tagging names, more about image-making, political expression, and the deliberate occupation of public space.
Blackall Street became a magnet for that energy. Its slightly off-the-beaten-track setting attracted artists including Run, C two fifteen, Swoon, and Alice Pasquini. The French stencil master C two fifteen — real name Christian Guémy — is one you might spot traces of here. His work nearly always consists of close-up portraits, and his subjects are usually beggars, street kids, homeless people, and refugees — those he describes as people rejected by society... the forgotten.
And here's something most visitors don't know. In January twenty sixteen, London's first street art paint jam of the year took place right here in this alleyway — with an all-female group of artists taking to the hoardings. It started when a university student doing a project on female street artists contacted Femme Fierce, who in turn reached artist Giusi Tomasello, who decided to rally forces and turn it into a full paint jam. Just weeks later, some twenty-two artists showed up for a Second jam to celebrate the London Calling Blog's first anniversary.
But here's the tension that runs through every square inch of this alley. Blackall Street retains a lot of smaller gems... though much reduced nowadays because of the huge development happening here. Artists like Cartoneros from Buenos Aires have brought a touch of South American flair with stencils of Van Gogh, while Fink twenty-two from Dubai adds striking faces to the urban canvas.
What you see on these walls right now... might be gone by next week. Painted over. Pasted on top of. Replaced by something entirely new. That's not a flaw — that's the Whole point. Some pieces stand for a decade. Others disappear overnight, painted over by the next artist. That rotating lifecycle is what makes it so compelling — and why no two visits to these streets are ever quite the same.
So take your time here. Look at the layers. Peel back the stickers with your eyes. Every surface tells a story of someone who came here... in the dark, or at dawn... and left a piece of themselves behind.