Public Art and the Slow Creep of Gentrification

Lauren Halsey and other artists on preserving the memory of community

Listen to the podcast episode on Apple here, on Spotify below, or search for The Gallery Companion on your podcast player:

Lauren Halsey, The East Side of South Central Los Angeles Hieroglyph Prototype Architecture (2023) on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Photo via Dezeen

Recently I’ve really been counting my blessings. I live with my family in a three-bed terraced house in Bristol, a large city just over 100 miles west of London, close to the border with Wales. We moved here in 2016 after being caught in London’s housing trap of sky-high rents and 6-month leasing agreements. With two young sons, it was increasingly unaffordable and precarious for us to continue living there.

So we made the decision to leave our community, our friends, and the streets we knew to start from scratch somewhere else. For less than the price of a one-bed flat in London, we were able to buy a house in Bristol which was big enough for both our boys to have a bedroom of their own.

Our local neighbourhood is a familiar story of gentrification. When we first moved here the ward was one…