I recently got sent a copy of a book called Time for Murals. The book was published after a conference, organised by the artist Jens Besser, that took place a couple of years ago on the subject of the “contemporary phenomenon” that are urban murals. Now murals aren’t my usual area of interest but in my home town of London there are a few cool murals dating from the late seventies and eighties that I really like. The sort of murals that I see going up nowadays all seem to be large scale pieces of street-art rather than the community focused and often politicised murals that came before. Anyway as Besser points out in the book “a narrow interpretation may result in nerdiness”. So, as not to be classed a graff-nerd, it’s probably healthy to delve into another type of urban art that isn’t usually graffiti and doesn’t have to be street-art. Each chapter in the book is written by different artists and organisers discussing the place of murals in the city and within the urban art scene, descriptions of mural festivals, community initiatives, a bit of mural history and finally an interview.