Belfast Canvas Project (Painted Utility Boxes)

There are dozens of painted electrical (and other utility) boxes in Belfast – a small sample is presented here. (Please send us your pictures of ones we don’t have.)

The practice of painting street art on utility boxes is one found around the world and has been enthusiastically taken up by city councils and municipal bodies – a programme in Colorado dates back to 2004 (WP). Closer to home, there is a programme in Dublin called Dublin Canvas.

The fact that these programmes are administered (and funded) by municipalities has led some to question them – here is a 2017 plea to stop the practice: “this bizarre trend has less to do with beautification than it does with cities wanting to take control of street art, to make it sanctioned, palatable, institutional, and toothless”.

There are a few early examples of painted boxes but the practice was made mainstream in Belfast with the “Belfast Canvas” programme supported by Belfast City Council in 2019. A number of artists painted boxes that year on May 6th, the day after the 2019 Hit The North (a street art festival), and more artists were subsequently hired to add more, such as Danni Simpson in the summer of 2021 (Belfast Live) and Rob Hilken in March 2022 (Rob Hilken). For the first few years (2019-2022), the painted boxes were in the city centre. In 2023, a few were painted along the Antrim Road, including in the CNR New Lodge and middle-class stretch of the arterial route. A third round of painting took place in late 2024 and 2025, again mostly in the city centre and middle-class areas.

It is not clear that the painted boxes beyond the city centre have any connection to Belfast Canvas or any public funding.

To be clear, these are electical boxes painted with street art. Paramilitary markings are sometimes put on electrical boxes – here are a few: UVF | IRA | BRY – and a number of boxes in CNR west Belfast have been painted with nationalist emblems and themes; these are included below.

City Centre