Archive for November, 2011
The Changing Faces of Graffiti
2011 TAGS Event, Edmonton, Alberta
As a dedicated Crime Prevention and CPTED practitioner, I would like to suggest to you that the future is bright, creative and full of color. It may be somewhat risky for me to even suggest this, but I think we should give it a chance, graffiti that is. For those of you that are already calling the graffiti hotline to report me, hold the phone! Think about it, what are we really trying to eliminate here. If it’s vandalism on buildings and graffiti without permission then I’m still fighting in your corner. If graffiti is being done illegally then its certainly a crime and there should be significant consequences for those that perpetrate these acts of vandalism.
Last month, I attended The Anti-Graffiti Symposium (TAGS) event in Edmonton, Alberta. It’s not the first TAGS Event I’ve attended and it won’t be the last. It was hosted by the City of Edmonton’s Capital City Clean Up Program, with support from the Complaints and Investigations Section of the Community Standards Branch and the Edmonton Police Service. It was well-organized with plenty of supporters and a very dynamic group of guest speakers, many of them considered experts on the subject of graffiti. This year, there were also a number of graffiti artists and taggers invited which I thought was brilliant. After all, they were guests and did offer us a unique perspective on the subject during a panel presentation and discussion.
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