Graffiti News

Community ideas will shape the next addition

Power Cup café owner Tomas Kolbus is seeking local ideas in 2026 for an addition to the mural beside his business on Bridge Street in Banbury, Oxfordshire. According to BBC News, he is working with artists from Banbury, Swindon and London and wants the artwork to reflect life in the town. A pigeon could return to the composition, although the final design has not been revealed.

The wall belongs to the former Bridge Bar building, now occupied by the café. Colourful artwork has appeared there for more than three decades. For several years, its most conspicuous subject was a huge pigeon with its wings spread over the street. That image was painted over in 2024, prompting mixed reactions. The proposed addition opens another stage in the same wall's changing appearance.

For people who follow murals, the distinction matters: this is a proposal being developed with community input, rather than the unveiling of a completed replacement. The possibility of a pigeon is part of the owner's account of his intentions. It is not yet a published image that visitors can expect to find.

The 2024 repaint drew on an earlier mural

The artwork introduced in 2024 took inspiration from the original mural that had occupied the wall for more than two decades before the pigeon replaced it. Kolbus told the BBC that the pigeon had been in poor condition. He approached the artists behind the original, roughly 30-year-old artwork to change the wall.

The decision did not please everyone. Kolbus described the reaction as mixed, while saying that people subsequently warmed to the new design. Those observations are his account of the response; the report does not establish a unanimous local view. Both the disappointment at losing the pigeon and the connection to the older artwork are part of the wall's history.

That sequence gives the site a particular interest as street art. Returning to an earlier visual reference can itself mean removing an image that another group remembers fondly. The Banbury wall illustrates how a mural's history can contain several competing points of attachment. Looking only at the latest surface misses the sequence of pictures that made the location familiar.

Kolbus plans to add rather than erase

The stated intention for 2026 is to add something to the existing mural, rather than clear the entire composition and start again. Kolbus described the project to the BBC as another chapter for the wall. His explanation places continuity with the current work at the centre of the proposal.

He is gathering information from people in the community and wants the image to encourage viewers to slow down, relax and step back from stress. As for the possible pigeon, he suggested a more humorous and interesting version. The report gives no settled description of its size, pose or position. It also provides no completion date for the addition.

For a street-art audience, community involvement raises a practical point about how shared views are made. A café wall is attached to a business, yet its image becomes part of the street that other people encounter. Asking what should represent Banbury brings those everyday viewers into the discussion. How the finished addition expresses that ambition remains something to assess when a design is made visible.

Bridge Street is the location to identify

The location described by the BBC is the side of the former Bridge Bar, now Power Cup café, on Bridge Street in Banbury. The report places the mural in a prominent position close to the bus and railway stations. Those landmarks provide context for finding the building without assuming an exact address or a dedicated viewing route.

A visit should distinguish the existing mural from the proposed addition. The original pigeon, the 2024 design and a possible new bird are separate stages, not interchangeable descriptions of one unchanged painting. Since the design remains undisclosed, the report cannot establish when a visitor might see a new pigeon on the wall.

When recording changing murals, noting the building, street and date of observation helps keep images tied to the right stage of a site's history. Banbury offers a clear reason to preserve that context alongside a photograph. Explore other works and their locations through the Wallscape map.

Source: BBC News