London International Paste-Up Festival and the Fight for Brick Lane

Every September, hundreds of pieces of paper arrive in London from across the world. They come folded into envelopes and covered with drawings, portraits, characters and messages. 

For a few days, they converge on the streets of East London, where buckets of paste, brushes and an army of artists and volunteers transform ordinary walls into enormous collaborative works of art. This is the London International Paste-Up Festival (LIPF), a grassroots street art festival organised through Art House Project London. 

Bringing the World to East London

Now on its sixth edition, the festival celebrates the very culture that made Brick Lane internationally famous. But it’s a culture that faces a crisis. Major redevelopment around the Truman Brewery area looms over the area. Proposals include offices and a data centre. The conversation around gentrification, cultural identity and who gets to shape the future of Brick Lane has become impossible to ignore.

The London International Paste Up Festival has however become established on the street art scene. Every year, hundreds of artists send work from across the UK and internationally. Emerging artists can find their paste-ups installed alongside established names. Any hierarchies that might dominate traditional art spaces are removed.

Community Behind the Paste

For Apparan, festival founder, this equality is one of the reasons she fell in love with paste-up culture in the first place. “It wasn’t just the art, it was the people behind it,” she says.

“I found a community that genuinely believes in sharing, collaborating and lifting each other up. Everyone contributes to creating something bigger than themselves. That sense of equality, generosity and community is incredibly rare in the art world.”

Can Brick Lane Keep its Soul?

Brick Lane and Shoreditch have spent decades attracting artists precisely because they offered something that conventional cultural districts often could not. Affordable spaces, neglected walls, diversity, independence and room for experimentation. Communities formed and walls became canvases. 

Eventually, the rest of the city, or even the world, noticed. And that is where a familiar cycle begins. Once an area becomes fashionable, rising rents and redevelopment often push the very people who gave it its identity somewhere else. The danger is not that Brick Lane will physically disappear. It is that the ingredients that made Brick Lane so special, will no longer exist. Can you regenerate a neighbourhood without removing its soul?

Street Art Economy

Street art has become inseparable from the international image of Shoreditch and Brick Lane. Visitors photograph the walls, join street-art tours, visit markets and buy from independent businesses. They return specifically because the neighbourhood feels different from London’s more polished commercial districts.

“If the creativity disappears, many visitors will simply stop coming because the unique atmosphere they came to experience will no longer be there.”

“We need to start seeing artists as an investment rather than an inconvenience,” says Apparan.” Regeneration and creativity do not have to be enemies. New development can coexist with cultural space. The whole ethos of the East End is that it has always thrived because it welcomed diversity, experimentation and counterculture”.

Artists, Walls and the Right to Create

Gentrification is not the only pressure. Increasingly restrictive approaches to graffiti and street art from Tower Hamlets council have changed that landscape. “Artists are not criminals,” says artist Susi Foxy. “They’re creating art, bringing colour to the streets and making art accessible.” The distinction between vandalism, commissioned murals, tolerated street art and other forms of public creativity can become lost when the council’s approaches to graffiti removal are applied.

For LIPF, losing walls is not an abstract issue. The iconic and recently whitewashed Seven Stars Yard is an example of that. Every wall lost means less space for artists. That’s fewer opportunities for collaboration and another fragment of street culture potentially disappearing. And Susi Foxy, has seen first-hand what those walls mean to people. “I’ve lost count of how many times people have stopped while we’re painting or pasting just to tell us that seeing what we’re doing has made their day.” That’s where dialogues spark between the walls and the passers-by.

Freedom of Expression

“Street Art and Paste-Ups are about freedom of expression,” says WRDSMTH. “I make art that is a pleasant distraction from everything that’s f*cked up in the world. That’s also the essence of the London International Paste-Up Festival. We celebrate work that celebrates love, empathy, equality, inclusion and positive human values. LIPF draws a line between expressing an opinion and attacking others. Freedom of expression does not mean forgetting that what we put into public space can affect other people.”

Keeping the Spirit Alive

Apparan remains hopeful about LIPF’s future. “Our goal has never been to create stars. It’s about building a supportive international community where emerging and established artists can exhibit side by side, inspire one another and open doors for future opportunities.” That may ultimately be the most important message LIPF pastes onto the walls of East London.

In an art world often dominated by money, status, exclusivity and competition. Hundreds of artists send pieces of paper across the world without knowing exactly where they will end up. Volunteers cover walls in paste. Artists who may never have met, work alongside each other. Passers by stop and take in the art. Conversations begin. For a moment, the wall belongs to everybody. And perhaps that is precisely why protecting festivals such as LIPF, and the imperfect, messy, constantly changing streets that allow them to exist, matters. Because cities need offices, infrastructure and development. But they also need soul.

For more Inspiring City articles you will like, take a look at…

• London International Paste Up Festival 2025
• Poster and Paste Up Street Art in East London
• Alisa Oleva invites us to see the city differently
• Chrisp Street Market and the Festival of Britain: A 75-year Legacy in Poplar
• Secrets of the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane
• Save Brick Lane Campaign Launches on Princelet Street