Walthamstow based street art collective Wood Street Walls launches the first ever ‘Paint Your London’ event. Bringing together some of London and the world’s best street artists, the month long event will transform bland and dreary buildings across Waltham Forest into colourful works of art.

A first of its kind event, during the weekend of 18th March 15 artists will be painting multiple locations, giving residents and visitors the chance to spend the weekend watching the buildings & unloved bland walls come to life through public art. Other street artists taking part in Paint your London over the coming month include world renowned Maser, who will be using the disused music venue The Standard on Blackhorse Road as his canvas, wallpapering the entire building on 11th April, as well as street art & grafitti legend and Walthamstow resident Shok-1 who will be painting at the Bell Pub on Forest Road, E17.

Paint Your London is part of Wood Street Walls mission to raise awareness of London’s need for more affordable artist workspace, something which is severely lacking with 35,000 graduates from Art and Design Colleges every year. According to the Mayor of London’s 2014 Artist Workspace Study London is set to lose 3,500 creative workspaces by 2020, that equates to a third of the city’s creative space. This is largely down to a need to address the city’s housing crisis, rising rents and redevelopment of areas such as Hackney Wick which were once seen as run down and unappealing areas.