Political graffiti daubed over Spalding Flower Parade mural

Political graffiti has been daubed over a town centre mural.

The street art, depicting a woman with flowers in her hair alongside a cartoon dog was commissioned ahead of last month’s Spalding Flower Parade in a bid to add some colour to the front of the boarded up former Calthrops Solicitors building in Market Place.

The work was carried out by South Holland street artist Karl Barfoot, who is known as Honr.

But shoppers were met with an addition to the mural this week.

One graffiti artist’s tag appears in the top left corner of the mural, but it is a question daubed across parts of the mural which catches the eye.

“There are over 60,000 children without access 2 education in England… why?” the graffiti asks, before appearing to be signed off by the initials CBS.

While graffiti artists adding their tags over Honr’s work at both the Spalding skate park and mural at Westons Farm Supplies have caused outrage locally, this work has been created in a different manner.

There is no tagging over another artist’s work and the writing appears to have attempted to avoid covering parts of the artwork, but still aiming to get the message across in a busy location.

South Holland District Council have been working with the police to look through CCTV footage in a bid to crack down on graffiti in the district recently.

Lincolnshire Police say the graffiti has not been reported, but officers are aware of it.

Insp Matt Dickinson said: “Anyone who leaves graffiti faces the prospect of it being investigated by us as criminal damage.

“We will continue to work with our partners to tackle this issue and we would encourage anyone with information about these offences to contact us.”

One person who is disappointed with the vandalism is Pete Boekestyn who is a former member of the flower parade committee and had raised 90% of the money to fund the artwork.

He said: “We are dismayed that someone would want to make a political statement on a non-political piece of artwork.

“I feel sorry for Karl who had put a lot of effort into creating the artwork.

“Karl has said that he would put it right. Kudos to the guy who did an amazing job which has been respected by the people of Spalding.”

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