Now it’s emerged that murals have a much broader role to play beyond just brightening up sometimes dreary town and city centres.
National tourism body VisitScotland says Glasgow’s crop of murals are stirring up rising interest among tourists to the city.
Interest in Glasgow’s urban art has created a ripple effect, driving up demand for visitor experiences that allow people to delve into the stories behind the murals.
As the number of neighbourhoods with murals expands, VisitScotland says there are growing opportunities for tourism operators to grow their business and develop their product range into new parts of the city.
Its ‘insights’ research has found the average monthly search volume in the UK for the term ‘Glasgow Mural Trail’ during 2024 is up by nearly a third on last year’s figures.
While its own website pages highlighting the Glasgow Mural Trail have had over 130,000 visits online in the last five years.
Glasgow has become a vibrant hotspot for urban artists, among them hyper-realistic mural artist, Sam Bates, aka Smug, whose huge gable end murals are created entirely freehand using aerosol cans.
His works include the High Street mural of city patron saint St Mungo, depicted with a robin perched on his finger in reference to one of his miracles, the nearby Enoch and Child, showing the infant St Mungo being breastfed by his mother St Enoch and a more recent Rab C. Nesbitt mural in Argyle Street.
Further fuelling the city’s image as an urban art destination was graffiti artist Banksy’s 2023 Cut and Run exhibition, which attracted around 180,000 attendees.
Glasgow City Council’s mural trail map has around 30 ‘official’ murals, including the three portraits of Billy Connolly to mark his 75th birthday designed by artists Jack Vettriano, John Byrne and Rachel Maclean.
But there are dozens more: in recent days, new ones have appeared including a community mural at Burghead Place underpass in Govan featuring scenes of the area’s ship-building heritage and the Govan Stones, and another in Charlotte Street in the East End created by graffiti artist Rogue One featuring a scene from Trainspotting.
Walking Tours in Scotland, based in Glasgow, is among the businesses experiencing a spin-off from the city’s network of murals.
It created a street art tour in 2017 which is now one of their most popular tours: it has taken more than 11,000 people round the murals since the tour’s launch.
Founder Jenny Benson said: “This shows just how much of a pull this type of touring is for visitors. It is one of our most-taken tours since we launched it.
“With the numbers on our tours, as well as the increase in engagement with local street art events like SWG3’s Yardworks, there are clear economic and social benefits to organising the mural trail.
“Interest in street art is only growing and offers an off-the-beaten-path, alternative tourism activity that suits a certain type of traveller.”
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At West Coast Motors, operators of City Sightseeing Glasgow buses, Sharon Morrison says they have altered their routes to take in more of Glasgow’s street art.
“The Glasgow Mural Trail has indeed had a significant impact on our business,” she adds. “Our customers are consistently impressed by the creative way they tell the story of Glasgow and the skill involved in their creation.
“Anecdotally, we have seen an increase in interest in our tours because of the murals.”
Meanwhile, Martin Heaney, owner of Gallus Pedals, which offers city bike and walking tours, has also seen a positive impact from the city’s urban artworks.
“Our guests love the street art we see on our tours,” he says.
“Feedback is overwhelmingly positive: from brightening up some of our many large gable end walls to helping visitors connect to historic and contemporary Glasgow, in a much more engaging way.
“Street art of course is something that many cities have, so it’s interesting to hear a visitors’ perspective on how they compare what they see in Glasgow with elsewhere.”
Arts and music venue SWG3 has held Yardworks, an annual festival of graffiti and urban arts, at its site in Finnieston since 2017. It also has a year-round arts programme which aims to encourage and develop artists while also highlighting the benefits of street art to communities.
It plans to build a 142-bedroom hotel at the corner of Eastvale Place and Sandyford Street which it has said will serve as a focal point for the city’s creative community and include a range of studio spaces.
The development is seen as an indication of how Glasgow’s thriving street art scene is inspiring investment.
“Yardworks believes in and is excited by the potential that street arts have to capture the imagination of communities,” says its outreach and education lead, Laura Frood.
“Through our outreach and education programmes, we aim to show how these art forms can transform spaces, empower young people, and build stronger, more connected communities.”
Yardworks annual festival at SWG3’s Galvanizers Yard outdoor space transforms it into a lively canvas of artworks and creativity, with this year’s festival expanding into nearby communities bringing a surge of visitors to local businesses.
VisitScotland say positive visitor feedback from Glasgow’s mural experiences can help boost the city’s reputation in a bustling global tourism market.
“We know exploring the buildings and architecture in Glasgow are already one of the most popular visitor experiences and the murals make this even more vibrant, colourful and enriching,” says regional director Lynne Cooper.
“Glasgow’s street art is a real success story for growing the visitor economy, by supporting jobs, businesses and by stimulating the kind of investment we see at SWG3.
“Working with the city tourism partners we are using our channels to promote Glasgow’s murals all year-round and helping these businesses capitalise on the demand for the city’s sought after street culture.”
VisitScotland says the average monthly search volume in the UK for the term ‘Glasgow Mural Trail’ rose from 1,000 in 2023, to 1,300 for most of 2024, with a peak of 1,600.
Councillor Angus Millar, Convener for City Centre Recovery at Glasgow City Council, says: “The City Centre Mural Trail is now a fixture in many people’s visits to Glasgow, with the range of fantastic artworks forming a unique tour route around the area.
“The Trail began as a plan to bring life to stalled or derelict sites in the city centre, but its continuing popularity with Glaswegians and our visitors means we will continue to look for opportunities to build on this successful project .”
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However, it’s not just Glasgow that is seeing a boost from street art.
Earlier this year Aberdeen was named by the Financial Times as one of the six ‘must see’ places in the world for street art, putting it alongside the likes of Rio de Janeiro , San Francisco and Sydney.
There are currently more than 60 signature works to be found in the city, alongside many other smaller street art pieces.
Many of the murals and street artworks are the result of the city’s Nuart Aberdeen annual street art festival. Usually held in June, it draws thousands of local, regional and international visitors to the city centre.
Even smaller trails such as Invergordon Off the Wall project’s network of 11 murals, unveiled in 2007, is credited with attracting thousands of visitors who would otherwise have passed by.
“At the time, Invergordon was a bit depressed, the smelter, the main source of industry, had closed overnight and there were lots of empty shops,” says project trustee Ann Crawford.
“The idea of the murals was to generate a bit of interest in the town.
“Not everyone liked the idea at first. But eventually people started to come around to it.
“We have had thousands upon thousands of visitors to the town from the cruise liners who now come in and spend time looking at the murals and taking photographs.”
Mural trails are also thriving in Leith and Edinburgh.
Intended to encourage more people to Colinton Village, footfall through the tunnel increased from just over 2,000 per week in 2018 to over 7,500 per week by 2022.
Chris, who is currently working on a Robert Burns mural next to the poet’s birthplace museum in Alloway, says urban artworks are helping breathe character back into town centres which had lost much of their individuality.
“Gorgeous architecture has been covered up or taken away because it was thought to be cost effective, but it’s actually been bad for business,” he says.
“Murals create a story and help make a place special again.”
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