A recent string of street art posters distributed across London boroughs of Camden, Southwark, Lambeth, Hackney, Westminster, and Tower Hamlets, have done precisely what they intended to do: get people talking.

“No one wants to be a drug addict”.

This is the message being broadcasted by Pattern Up, a London-based street art collective whose recent grassroots campaign took the form of a series of posters plastered around the city and corresponding exhibition at Camden Open Air Gallery titled AD-DICTION.

The somber posters embodied the uninspired aesthetic of a bog standard, governmental notice and bore the name and logo of each council. Not much to look at, one could easily have mistaken them for yet another piece of municipal detritus if not overlook them altogether.

It is the words that have got people in an upset, and the apparently unauthorised permitance of drug use; more specifically of crack and heroin – two of the most damaging, antisocial, and ubiquitous street drugs in the UK. The posters announce: CRACK & HEROIN ZONE and go on to indicate that The sale and use of Crack & Heroin is permitted in this area.

When residents complained to councils, local newspapers were quick to jump on the story, declaring the posters “bogus,” “fake,” and a “hoax,” as furious Twitter activists lamented the supposed condoning of public drug abuse, with one resident writing “Have you just given up tackling the biggest cause of crime and homelessness in our borough?”

For a culture who prides itself on the art of satire, it seems poetic irony has been lost on the British public. The ever-growing drug addiction crisis is precisely the inspiration for the initiative.

Most news coverage rashly skimmed over the underlying message, only briefly mentioning the intent of the posters to start a conversation as well as raise awareness about the growing discrepancy between those battling addiction and the public infrastructure available to support them.

Furthermore, posters were swiftly removed.

“We knew it would get buffed, but that was the point,” one artist explained. “If it’s relevant to the borough, why shouldn’t [the message] be seen on the streets? It’s this hostility against anything negative, critical, or that doesn’t conform to their like, beautiful world that they’ve bought in their one million pound apartment in Hackney Wick.”

In typical British fashion, public conversations about drug use have been kept to a minimum while CCTV footage has been widely expanded ¹https://www.mylondon.news/news/south-london-news/london-street-revellers-do-cocaine-26806035 in efforts to appease the neighbourhoods. But can drug dependancy be surveilled away?

One member of the collective explained that “criminalisation of [drug] users is not benefiting anyone and there needs to be a conversation about decriminalisation.” They added “the crack and heroin notices depict the lack of community effort in preventing the exploitation and destruction of young lives through the supply and use of Class A and B drugs in the city.”

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As the situation becomes increasingly and silently worse each year, the problem remains largely underreported. In a country where one in five young adults reported regular drug use in 2022²https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/drugmisuseinenglandandwales/yearendingjune2022, the disparity between London’s global image and the dreggy reality parallels the incongruity between the grassroots origins of street art and the now art-washed, commercialised practice that inundates highstreets in places like Shoreditch and Camden – former havens of active street artists.

Street art activism has become less pervasive as it has become replaced by clandestine commercial endeavours like sponsored walls, hand-painted advertising, and street art skins. Correlations between advertising and addiction extend well beyond the art world, and into abuse of alcohol, sugar, and all levels of social injustice.

“This is the original role of street art,” one local artist observed, adding that “it’s a tenuous thing. Like, if you want to do it, you can do it, but it’s illegal. There’s loads of people who want to do it, it’s just they don’t know that they could do it. The thing is, we have an opportunity to build community around the street art.”

“You have the muralism, the pretty street art, and then this kind of activism. People aren’t used to this [original] kind of street art anymore. There isn’t room for stuff like this because it has been pushed out. People just don’t get it.”

Another artist described why the method of delivery was so vital, acknowledging that “we all want to make the city nicer, but pretty murals aren’t going to do that.”

“We don’t need more pops of colour and decorating. That’s just a lick of paint over something that’s much more broken than that. I think artists make a statement about what’s happening around them. Street art plays a role in changing a place, and making it better, more inclusive.”

The bricks and mortar exhibition at Camden Open Air Gallery features corresponding artworks, background information, and in-depth explanations about the collective’s proposals for education and policy reform.

Acknowledgement of drug use as a tactic is not a new idea. First implemented in Switzerland in the 1980s, supervised injection sites (SIS) are safe, medically supervised environments, often mobile, that furnish hygienic spaces for people to consume illegal, recreational drugs.

The concept is that by moderating the drug use, death due to overdose can be mitigated. Growing literature supports their effectiveness at reducing harm, public visibility, and untimely police intervention.

Up until several decades ago, England and the UK had a considerably more liberal opioid use policy, until in the 1960s the country adopted a much more punitive stance from its American cousin across the pond. Opioid dependancy has since surged from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands³https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/3/22/these-people-are-broken-why-the-uks-war-on-drugs-has.

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“Art is always going to be subjective,” says a local street artist. “That’s what makes it wonderful. Sometimes a piece of art only appeals to one or two people, and they get it and they understand it, they love it, and it’s for them. Actually going out and challenging people and presenting a different perspective, for us holds huge value.”

AD-DICTION is on view through through 11 September at Camden Open Air Gallery

216 Camden High Street

NW1 8QR

more information here