Graffiti News

A chicken has been turning up on Birmingham walls for years. The character is called Cluck, and there is almost always a short line of text beside it. The person painting it is a 25-year-old who has not given his name, and the local paper Birmingham Live published an interview with him on 13 August 2026.

Cluck started as something the artist needed to hear himself

The messages were not aimed outward first. According to Birmingham Live, the artist said: "I've struggled with mental health my whole life." He went on: "I was telling this to the world, but really, I was spraying it on the wall because I needed to listen to that."

The same report says he began pairing Cluck with positive messages three years ago. The lines are short — "love yourself", "keep trying". "I love leaving positive messages for people," he told Birmingham Live. "I just want people to be happy."

He is not only a street painter. Birmingham Live reports that he also works professionally as a mural painter, which puts commissioned wall work and anonymous street work in the same pair of hands.

The character appears across four parts of the city

Birmingham Live reports that Cluck can be found in Digbeth, Edgbaston, Kings Heath and Ladywood. This is not a single large commissioned wall but the kind of work you come across while walking.

The response has not been small. According to the same report, hundreds of people have contacted the artist over the years to say Cluck put a smile on their faces.

Repeating one character is an old street-art method

This is where Cluck stops being one person's story. Painting the same recognisable character in many places, without a legible name attached, is a long-established approach in street art. The character does the work a signature would do. A passer-by who has no idea who made it can still say "the chicken", and at that moment the whole city reads as one continuous series.

Adding a short line of text pushes that one step further. A drawing on its own is a matter of taste. A sentence turns the wall into something that addresses you. That is close to why Cluck travels the way it does: an anonymous note left by a stranger for a stranger is a form that suits the subject of mental health unusually well.

The artist's view and the legal question are not the same thing

Birmingham Live reports that the artist does not regard his work as criminal damage, because it spreads positivity. The same report notes that the work appears in public spaces.

The gap between those two sentences is the whole argument about street art. Good intent on the part of the painter and consent on the part of whoever owns the wall are separate questions. Wallscape does not take a side in that argument and does not encourage painting without permission. What it does is record what is actually happening on the street.

Prints are the next step

According to Birmingham Live, the artist is planning to release limited prints around Birmingham so people can own a Cluck of their own. That is a familiar route out of the street and into something ownable, and it is also one of the few ways an anonymous artist can put work in people's hands without giving up the anonymity.

Street work does not stay put

Painted work outdoors gets cleaned, painted over, or demolished along with the building. There is no guarantee that the Cluck you saw this week will be in the same place next month. In street art, recording a piece matters nearly as much as looking at it.

If you come across a Cluck in Birmingham, photograph it. Pinning it on the Wallscape map lets someone else go and find the same wall, and the feed shows how street art in other cities is being documented.

Original report: Birmingham Live, "Birmingham's 'Chicken' graffiti artist on the heartfelt reason for his positive messages" (13 August 2026)