‘Crossing Bridges’ the painting of bridges on Active Travel routes in Barry and Penarth

Aims

In 2021, Vale of Glamorgan Council decided to make the Gladstone Bridge in Barry and Cogan Bridge at Penarth Marina into defining landmarks with hand-painted murals. This was in response to repeated graffitiing.

The aims were:

to make the bridges more visually appealing.
to encourage more people to walk, wheel or cycle along existing active travel routes at Penarth Marina and Barry Waterfront.
to work towards achieving Project Zero goals by encouraging more active travel.

Description

The project (funded by Welsh Government) took 8 months to complete. Permission was sought from the Council’s internal structures team and an agreement was made with Network Rail due to the sites’ proximity to railway lines.

The Active Travel Officer and Placemaking Team worked together to write an Artist’s Brief. The brief was published in the Arts Council of Wales’s newsletter and the local press. Three out of 19 artists who responded to the brief were invited for an interview.

The successful artist, Katrina Adams, set up a collaborative workshop with local residents to create a mural that resonated with the community. The final murals include shapes and colours which represent landmarks, heritage, architecture and maps of both locations. For example, the Gladstone Bridge design features the blue of The Knap Lake and Porthkerry Viaduct’s railway arches. Colours were also chosen to closely match the Barry Making Waves colour palette.

Lessons learnt

Any new paint used needed to be the exact same or similar to the previous paint treatment on Gladstone Bridge.

The coronavirus pandemic affected the supply of the original paint, so a similar paint protection system was found to replace it.

Due to the paint's toxicity (as well as the sites’ proximity to railway line), the painting needed to be carried out by professional painting contractors, Swansea Painters.

Katrina remained heavily involved in the process by producing accurate scale screen print for the 120 metres of bridge walls and marked the designs in different colour Sharpie pens as a guide for the Swansea painters to follow.

A permit had to be issued by the Highways Maintenance department to site a welfare unit on the highway and to close footways during painting.

Cost

The total cost of the project was £19,300 made up of the following elements:

£4,000 for the artist (mural design, workshop events, accurate screen print for the 120 metres of bridge, marked designs onto the bridges for the painters to follow).
£18,900 for initial cleaning of bridges and some minor repairs, painting of the design and covering the bridges in anti-graffiti paint.

Outputs

The chosen anti-graffiti paint has proved to be very successful in removing minor incidents of graffiti.

Local authority officers have anecdotal reports of positive feedback on user experience.

Gladstone Bridge, Barry

Removing graffiti

Graffiti and rust were removed from the bridge walls and cleaned by the Councils cleaning department. The walls were prepped and undercoated. The Artist mapped out her design.

First colours completed