Graffiti News

The artist behind the chicken graffiti that keeps turning up under Birmingham's bridges, archways and gates has explained why he paints it. In an interview published by Birmingham Live on 7 August 2026, he said he created the character as a symbol for positive mindset and action while battling his own mental health.

Where Cluck appears and what it says

The character is called Cluck, and it is spread across the city. According to Birmingham Live, the tag can be found beneath bridges, in archways, on gates and across walls in Digbeth, Edgbaston, Kings Heath and Ladywood. A short line of text usually sits beside the bird: "love yourself", "keep trying", "be kind", "keep going".

The messages were written for the painter first

Those lines started as something the artist needed to hear himself. He spoke to Birmingham Live anonymously, through his Instagram account @cluck.uk. He is 25, works professionally as a mural painter, and began pairing Cluck with positive messages around three years ago.

"I've struggled with mental health my whole life," he said. "I feel like I was depressed from the age of eight or 10. I've only really just come out of depression now."

On where the words came from, he was direct: "It was basically my subconscious. I was telling this to the world, but really, I was spraying it on the wall because I needed to listen to that."

Strangers write to him about it

The work did not stay a private conversation. Birmingham Live reported that hundreds of people have contacted him over the years to say seeing Cluck had put a smile on their faces.

"I was spraying in Digbeth the other day and four people came by, saying they'd seen the chicken artwork for years and how happy that made them," he said. "I thought, that's got to be the reason I keep doing this. I'll just be the 'chicken man' now."

The character was designed to be noticed

Cluck standing out is deliberate. The artist said he built the character to look unlike a conventional tag. "You look past normal graffiti because it's just normal, but not when you see characters and things like that. Cluck is his own character."

He added that the bird appears in many forms. "The message he shares is love, positivity, happiness, togetherness and community." Enough people have asked for a Cluck of their own that he is planning a limited run of prints around Birmingham. "Cluck is just the message bearer. The message is love, coming together and positivity because the world needs it right now."

The law does not weigh the message

The artist's own view and the legal position are two different things. He told Birmingham Live he does not regard his work as criminal damage, because he believes it spreads positivity. He also acknowledged the gap: "In the eyes of the law, they'd probably see it differently," he said. "But if I stood in front of a judge and told him, I reckon he'd probably understand."

In England and Wales, painting on property without the owner's consent is a criminal offence, and the content of the message does not change that. Wallscape does not encourage unpermitted painting.

What a recurring character does to a city

Character-led work like Cluck is a long-standing approach in street art. A single repeated shape becomes recognisable without a name attached, and when it is scattered across separate neighbourhoods it makes a large city read as one connected place. In Cluck's case the short line of text adds a second layer: the same sentence, delivered again to anyone who already knows the bird.

If you come across a Cluck in Birmingham, you can pin it with its location on the Wallscape map. Work like this is usually buffed or painted over within months, so a single photograph often ends up as the only record that it was ever on that wall. Walls from other cities are in the feed.