I’m standing in Joiner’s Court, near the top of Shipwright’s Avenue in Luton. It’s a bright, sunny Easter Sunday. The hills of Medway rise and fall steeply below me.  In the distance, I can see the Chatham Naval Memorial to my left, leafy Darland Banks away on the right. In front of me, taking up the whole side of a house, is a mural of a young lad holding a paper aeroplane.

The boy is dressed in a khaki jacket and sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by paper planes. His disappointment as he looks at the plane in his hand is palpable. This plane is clearly not a toy; it’s a painful reminder of something.

The lad’s name is William Mason. As a young boy, William dreamed of flying his own aeroplane. After getting a pilot’s licence and a job at Short Brothers in Rochester, he started designing and building his plane, which was named the Luton Minor. It stood in the back garden of his family’s home in Magpie Hall Road, Luton.

But William’s Luton Minor would never take to the skies. The Second World War broke out on the day of its test flight, and all civilian aircraft were grounded. Post-war restrictions meant William never fulfilled his dream of flying his own plane.

The mural of William Mason is one of several that have been painted on buildings around Luton, thanks to volunteer organisation Arches Local and the town’s residents. Enormous thanks to Arches Local, who kindly talked to me about the background to this frankly amazing project for this post.

Today on Medway, She Wrote: Luton, home of monumental painted tributes to Medway’s past, and a community that isn’t afraid to take bold risks to tell its stories.

Luton, Medway

When you say Luton, most people think of the town in Bedfordshire with the football team and the airport that’s nowhere near London despite its name. But there’s another Luton, and it’s in Medway.

Once just a small country village, our Luton expanded over the years to accommodate the growing workforce at nearby Chatham dockyard. At its height, Luton was a bustling part of Medway, with several pubs and churches, and a tram depot. One of its pubs, the Hen and Chickens, served local workers for over 250 years, having opened as an alehouse in 1746.

The closure of Chatham dockyard in 1984 had a major impact on Luton. It decimated local employment rates, which had inevitable knock-on effects, including buildings falling into disrepair, businesses closing, and other economic and social problems. The Hen and Chickens didn’t survive either; a developer recently got planning permission to turn it into ten flats.

Luton is now the most deprived area in Medway. That’s a sobering fact, even more so when you consider that Medway as a whole is one of the most deprived parts of England. A recent report makes for grim reading, showing that there’s a 10- to 12-year difference in life expectancy between Luton and Medway’s least-deprived area, Rainham South West.

All of this has contributed to Luton getting a reputation for being a bit rough and rundown. It’s fair to say some folk have preconceived ideas about Luton, most of them not complimentary. The Man of Kent was therefore somewhat surprised when I announced my intention to spend Easter Sunday in Luton as a tourist.

But perception and reality are two different things, and perceptions of Luton belie its history. Its former residents include people who have made great discoveries, and changed the world around them for the better. People like Asquith Xavier, who fought against a ‘whites-only’ recruitment policy to become the first non-white train guard at Euston Station. People like Sydney Turner, who discovered the 400,000-year-old Chatham Elephant, and Laura Richardson, one of the first women to ride a bicycle in Kent. People like William Mason. These lost stories are now being rejuvenated and commemorated by a grass-roots project that’s turning Luton’s houses and high-rises into an open-air art gallery; Arches Local.

Changing places and perceptions

Arches Local is a group of volunteers with a love of Luton and a ton of ambition. It was born out of the Big Local programme, a joint project by the National Lottery Community Fund and Local Trust. Big Local identified 150 deprived areas across the UK that had been overlooked for funding in the past, with the aim of financing community projects that would create long-lasting change. It was a ground-breaking initiative that gave local communities not just a substantial amount of money (each project received at least £1 million) but also the freedom to choose how to spend it.

Aiming to strengthen links between people and places, Arches Local started in 2012 with projects focused on neighbourhood engagement, social investment and greening local spaces. Nowadays, it’s engaged in everything from local policy decisions to planting trees on streets. The fact that most of the original volunteers are still involved almost fifteen years later is a testament to the group’s dedication and passion for the area. It’s a bunch of people with serious commitment and bold ideas. Bold ideas like painting Luton’s history on the sides of its houses…

Do something that can’t be ignored

Luton is densely populated. Plenty of its residents have lived there for years, but it’s also a place where people come and go.

Wanting to invest in memories that would otherwise be lost, and determined to do this in a way that couldn’t be ignored, Arches Local came up with a daring plan. Huge, public murals that would preserve the stories for residents old and new, and challenge perceptions of Luton at the same time.

I’d say mission accomplished; it’s impossible to ignore the Luton murals. Why? Well, this isn’t your average street art, for a start. The Luton murals are striking contemporary artworks that wouldn’t be out of place in a gallery like the Tate Modern. This is deliberate on the part of Arches Local, who are determined to do everything to the highest possible calibre. Their driving principle is, if it’s good enough for somewhere else, it’s good enough for Luton.

The other reason it’s impossible to ignore the murals is their vast scale. Much as they could fit right into the Tate Modern in terms of style, you’d never fit them into the actual rooms there. Ricardo van Zwol’s mural of Luton resident and campaigner Erica Stuart takes up a whole side of a four-storey block of flats in Sawyers Court, as does Jack Lack Art’s nearby tribute to gardener extraordinaire Henry Charles Lawrence. You can even see Luke Smile’s interpretation of George Bond’s life and career from the top of the Great Lines in Gillingham!

Who, what and where

Each mural tells a story of Luton or wider Chatham, and the position of the mural is as important as the story itself. There’s been no shortage of people wanting to volunteer their homes as a canvas, but the locations chosen aren’t arbitrary. The building on which a mural is painted always has a connection to the story depicted. For example, William Mason is facing the address where he lived, and Asquith Xavier is looking in the direction of his old house a few streets away.

The artists involved come from all over the UK and Europe, attracted no doubt by the ethos behind the project, but also the creative freedom they are given. They choose a subject for their mural off a list of potential stories, which has been carefully curated from local residents, archives and other sources. But once a subject has been chosen, what the final mural looks like is entirely up to the individual artist, who gets full creative licence. No one gets a veto on the finished look, including the person whose house is the backdrop for the mural.

Having no idea what the final version will look like sounds pretty scary to me, but luckily for the rest of us, the people of Luton are braver souls.

Risk and reward

The first mural to go up was the Cabbage, painted by WOSKerski in November 2023 on a house in Henry Street. It represents Luton’s agricultural history; the preponderance of cabbage-growing in the area led to Luton becoming known as ‘Cabbage Island.’ Some Luton residents refer to themselves as ‘Cabbage Islanders’ even today.

The family who live in the house had no idea that the mural would be a giant cabbage being inspected by people in yellow hazmat suits. Local residents had no clue what was happening either, other than the road next to the house was closed. Once it became clear something was being painted, Arches Local mischievously kept the story a surprise until the mural was finished, though many neighbours tried to work it out during the six days it took to paint.

The Cabbage mural was an audacious experiment. The idea of painting an enormous cabbage on the side of someone’s house might sound intriguing or comical, but it was majorly risky. No one knew what the local reaction would be. Arches Local had even set aside funds for painting over it if necessary.

As it turned out, people loved not only the art and stories, but also the curiosity and discovery inherent in watching the murals take shape and finding out the history. Consequently, there’s deliberately no signs giving details about the murals like you would see in a gallery. The story behind each mural is entirely up to you. You can deep dive into the history with Google, Street Art Cities or the Arches Local website, or make up your own explanation of what they’re about. As Arches Local put it, “The stories belong to the people who live there.”

Whether the murals would stand the test of time was another experiment. The fact that all of them remain untouched and undamaged says it all. Every single one looks fresh as a daisy, not a scuff mark, scratch or graffiti tag in sight. Luton has taken these murals into its heart, which is just as well considering the people who live in the painted buildings constantly have strangers knocking on their door asking questions about them!

Since the success of Cabbage, a new mural has appeared every few months and Arches Local has been inundated with artists wanting to paint in Luton. The Big Local funding provided financial freedom to create the murals, and not being in a conservation area meant more freedom in terms of appearance, location and style. The murals have been covered in the national and local press, and photos of them regularly pop up on social media. Nowhere else in Medway has a public art installation on this scale.

That’s not just down to Arches Local, but also the family who live in the Henry Street house that’s home to the Cabbage; the mural pioneers. Without them, none of the other murals would have happened.

The art of the possible

Luton might be deprived in some ways, but it’s not lacking in history or community spirit. It’s also leapfrogging other Medway neighbourhoods when it comes to resident involvement in local planning policy and cultural projects.  

That’s not to say there isn’t still a long way to go; much more is needed to reduce the stark inequalities between Luton and the rest of Medway, if not the rest of the country.  The recently-announced Pride in Place funding of £60 million over 10 years for Luton (as well as Twydall/Gillingham and Rede Common in Strood) should hopefully see further tangible change that makes a real difference to local residents. Medway Council is aiming for Medway to become a Marmot Place, working with the UCL Institute of Health Equity to halve the gap in life expectancy between the best and worst-off areas. Arches Local will also be continuing its own programme of work to improve the area and change people’s perceptions.

Nevertheless, the Luton murals show what’s possible with financial investment, community empowerment, and a willingness to take risks. The fact that there’s now a whole trail of murals proves the old adage of those who dare, win.

Chatting to Arches Local, they put the success of the murals down to trust, friendship and community. New murals keep appearing because of residents’ admiration and enthusiasm. There’s no external consultants and no fancy architects involved. It’s all being driven by the people who live there.

And finally

Imagine someone telling you they’d like to paint a mural on the side of your house. You won’t know what it’s going to be until it’s finished, but it will be something to do with the history of Medway. You don’t get a say in the design, and when it’s done, people will come and photograph your house and knock on your front door to ask you about it. It’ll be in the paper and probably all over Instagram.

What would you say?

Before Easter I’d have told you that, while I would like to think I’d be brave and say yes, I’m too much of a control-freak scaredy-cat. I’d need to know exactly what it was going to look like, what the story was going to be, size, colours, the lot. And even if I said yes, I’d be stood outside on the pavement flapping the whole time it was being painted, clutching a cup of tea and panicking that I wouldn’t like the end result.

But now, if the person asking me was from Arches Local? I would say, absolutely, yes, go for it. Slather my house in the history of Medway in all its colourful glory, any story you like. I’ll make the tea while it’s being painted, and bring ice creams if it’s hot. I’ll happily stand and watch it take shape from the pavement, and I’ll chat the ears off anyone who wants to ask about it. Because who wouldn’t want to be part of this amazing project? I’d be dead proud to have one on my wall.

As we were walking around Luton that Easter Sunday, The Man of Kent said these murals made him feel hopeful about the future of Medway. I’m not just hopeful; I’m excited.

Luton deserves to be proud of these painted monuments to Medway’s history. Long may they last.