The emblem on the flats at the mini-roundabout (where Glandore and Skegoneill avenues meet) depicts a tree and a face, perhaps a reference to the name “Skegoneill” or ‘the earl’s thorn bush” after the place at which Anglo-Norman earl William de Burgo was assassinated in 1333 (PlaceNamesNI).
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Copyright © 2018 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Leo Boyd (web | previously) resurrected his ‘PSNI ice-cream wagon’ for Culture Night/Hit The North, along with Laura “Lamb” Nelson (profile), and added a trio of winged police land-rovers like wooden ducks ascending along a living-room wallpaper and vintage ice-cream advertising. The piece drew the response shown in the second image, but this was apparently too direct a comment and was quickly painted out.
Both artists are currently members of Vault Artists (web | Fb | ig) (formerly Belfast Bankers).
Update 2018-11 damage and grafitti
Update 2019-01 further damage
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Update: replaced by a Clockwork Land-Rover
From the Twitter feed of Colombian street artist Visual AGP (Anderson García Pérez | (web | tw): “Newen” means “strength” or “energy” … birds represent the freedom and colors of the Wiphala [the flag of indigenous peoples of the Andes].”
“Graficalia” refers to a street art festival aimed at minimising youth violence in their home town of Cali, Colombia.
Compatriot Sancho was also in Belfast for Hit The North/Culture Night: see Empezando Con La Magia.
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A Union Flag is freshly repainted on a rock in the Westwinds estate, Newtownards, now joined by the emblem of the YCV on another.
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“Serving the community for over fifty years.” BTCIC is the current name for what was previously the West Belfast Taxi Association. Black taxis have been running up and down the Falls since 1970, providing an alternative form of transportation to local people during the Troubles when buses were cancelled or, as in this picture, burnt out and used as barricades. They now, in addition, provide tours of the murals (such as the Bobby Sands mural in Sevastopol Street) and Belfast city. Taxi Trax has a web site but here provides a phone number for those already at the International Wall, where there has been a black taxi mural since 2003. There are other WBTA murals in Beechmount and Ardoyne. The painters have signed the mural: Doherty’s Coal Merchant and Lyons Tea.
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The Marrowbone (or simply “the Bone”, perhaps from the Irish “Machaıre Bothán”) is an area of north Belfast between Ardoyne and Cliftonville. Ardilea Close is home to four memorials to local republicans: on this wall, the plaque on the left is to “men and women from this and past generations who died from natural causes having dedicated their lives to the cause of Irish freedom” while the one on the right is to “those who showed courage in the face of adversity by giving aid, shelter and support in defence of the area.” Only one of the original walls mentioned the IRA (see Bone Memorial), as well as the 2014 addition of a Fıanna memorial – Hark To The Tramp Of The Young Guards of Éıreann. The new mural commemorating F company of the 3rd battalion – as well as the associated Cumann Na mBan, Cumann Na gCaılíní and Fıanna – can be added to these.
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A new series of UDA “memorial” murals has been painted along Island Street, in east Belfast. Poppies are featured throughout, as we have increasingly seen over the last few years. New to this series, however, are the use of Lawrence Binyon’s poem For The Fallen in the third panel (see below) and in the image above – the left-most of the four – modern UDA volunteers stand in reflection upon an above-ground grave, also symbolic of the fallen of World War I.
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The magic of Culture Night and Hit The North reaches its tenth year in 2018. As part of the celebration two Colombian artists were in Belfast this past weekend for Culture Night. The magic begins with this inter-species mural above is by Sancho (Fb | ig).
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Extramural Activity 