Blogging’s been light of late, sorry about that. This has come in from the good people at The People’s Republic Of Stokes Croft though, and potentially has repercussions for graf all over the city.

In short, a production by Cheo and 3Dom, both obviously having recently painted the walls of the RWA, has been painted out by the council without permission.

Here’s the backstory to the photos below from PRSC.

The work was done with the express permission of the property owner, and the council were made aware of this on Friday, yet on Monday the piece was painted over. PRSC has been working to promote Stokes Croft as an outdoor gallery. Whilst Bristol City Council has been making noises about wanting to work with the community, their behavior seems to be negative, antagonistic, and certainly unacceptable…This kind of behavior has been going on for over two years now.

Here’s what it was before the council got to it…

…here’s how the council used our money to ‘improve the streetscene for the community’…

…and here’s the reaction of PRSC.

So, if you want to register a complaint about the council painting over work that a building owner had apparently given permission for, then PRSC would like you to email the council’s chief exec  – jan.ormondroyd@bristol.gov.uk.

Given there’s about to be council elections in a few weeks time, it might be worth emailing councillors about this too. This part of this fair city falls under the responsibility of Cllrs Alex Woodman and Mark Wright. The latter is currently seeking re-election.

The thing is, if the council can paint out work on private property when the property owner has given permission for the original work to be done, then nothing’s safe is it. They’ve said before that these things are done as accidents, but whether they are or not, they can’t keep on happening.