“The Art is Shouting”: Reflections on Local Responses to Hegemonic Street Art Culture in Spitalfields and Banglatown, East London

London’s East End has long been home to a significant street art scene: places like Brick Lane and Shoreditch are known for their abundance of street art, to the extent that it now often characterizes this part of the city. In abstract, please adjust second However, East End heritage is infamously nuanced; it is home to a rich social history shaped by trade and immigration, heritage not typically reflected in local street art. Focusing empirically on local responses to street art in East London, this article draws on interviews and observations to explore subtle tensions between a hegemonic and increasingly sanitized street art canon and the lived heritage of the East End, by focusing on the concept of representation. Adopting the vocabulary of public art, I argue that where street art is perceived to fall short of attending to its resident public(s), such representation is achieved through local interventions that explicitly seek to destabilize the hegemony of the street art scene. I conclude by suggesting that where East End street art is perceived as sanitized, it may well (re-)gain critical relevance by paying greater attention to whom it represents.