Street art is an artistic movement that first arrived in the Greater Paris region about 30 years ago. It uses public spaces for self-expression, where artists leave their marks on walls. This type of art has become extremely popular in Plaine Commune Grand Paris as the artists use graffiti as a way of communicating openly and freely.
Throughout France as a whole, street art is gaining ever more followers. The movement covers various styles including classic graffiti, sticker art, graffiti stencilling, street poster art and even sculptures. Among the legends of street art, the UK artist Banksy is the most well-known, using stencils to create his masterpieces. In Plaine Commune, we are proud of our local artists from the new generation, such as Marko 93, Swen, Ducrew93 MC and Basto.
Plaine Commune Grand Paris is nowadays seen as a place where graffiti artists can express themselves, and the towns have been transformed into exceedingly colourful open-air galleries.
Street Art Avenue
Parisian East territories are known as earth creation especially in urban art.Many international artists embellish the walls of the Plaine Commune territory with their works of street art. From this observation came the idea to create the "Street-Art Avenue" gates of Paris at the Stade de France, along the Saint-Denis canal linking the towns of Aubervilliers and Saint-Denis.
Guided walking tours
So, you are an art lover, but you don’t want to hide away in a museum somewhere. The perfect solution – come and take part in our guided tour, organised on a regular basis by the Tourist Information Centre, through the streets of Saint-Ouen and Saint Denis following in the footsteps of the region’s graffiti artists. You will discover the origin of this art form and the history of the area’s most famous graffiti artists.
Urban river cruises
For something a little different, why not discover the breathtaking graffiti along banks of the Saint-Denis canal whilst travelling down the waterway. Plaine Commune Grand Paris’ Tourist Information Centre organises colourful river cruises along the canal so you can learn more about street art in the
local area. The cruise tells you about the history of this modern art form, with artists and experts on board giving demonstrations and sharing their techniques.
AUCWIN Contemporary urban art workshop and tour
Established in 2010, le 6b is a place for creating and exhibiting art on the subject of culture and communication. Furthermore, it offers residency positions to artists from all sorts of backgrounds in music, mixed media arts, illustrators etc. The place brings together around 100 residents in 7000m2.
The atelier regularly organises events such as workshops and exhibitions. During their time as residents at the 6B, Joachim Romain and Jungle developed a contemporary urban art trail along the Saint-Denis canal, called the parcours Aucwin. They invited about 30 artists from France and abroad to work on this project using a unique colour scheme throughout to create coherence between the individual pieces.
Workshops are also organised as part of the Aucwin trail, giving you the opportunity to try your hand at different graffiti techniques. There are also sessions organised for little ones, from three years and up.
Who knows, you may even find out you have a hidden talent for graffiti art!
