Following a national pitch United Creatives were commissioned by Groundwork and The Larkin Socity to design, create and install over thirty hand-crafted wall murals and enamel sign installations accross the Hull and East Riding area.
The Larkin Trail in Hull, a commemorative trail in honour of poet Philip Larkin who is widely considered to be the UK's greatest post-war poet. We used laser-cut mylar stencils and microporous paints to allow us to create super-accurate lettering onto the smooth architectural masonry of Hull's period and listed architecture.
Painting our artworks onto walls within train stations, bars where Larkin drank pints of gin and tonic, hotels and cemeteries, resultant designs endorsed a variety of shapes and sizes in order to fit in with the surrounding architecture. Sometimes an artwork, which would carry extracts and insights into the poetry of Larkin, would be purposely hidden within an architectural nook. However, once found, each sign conveys the next geo-code so the full trail can be navigated using a standard smart phone or GPS device.
The paints used were microporous in order to breathe with the masonry they adorned with the life of the signs extended further by a coat of a transparent product called graffiti shield. Local Victorian signs can still be seen today yet with contemporary paints being far more resilient we envisage the painted trail signs will last at least 50 years.
