Reframing Graffiti Writing As a Community Practice: Sites of Youth Learning and Social Engagement

Reframing graffiti writing as a community practice: Sites of youth learning and social engagement

Ron Corey Baird

orcid.org/0000-0002-8628-2939

Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

December 2018

Youth Research Centre Melbourne Graduate School of Education The University of Melbourne

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how graffiti writing is learnt and how graffiti writers experience this learning. Drawing on the concept of communities of practice, it frames graffiti as a skillful and aesthetic practice that is learned in a communally- situated context. This shifts the focus from graffiti as a stigmatised practice to a demonstration of the expert knowledge that young men develop over time through their engagement with a learning community. The research consisted of semi- structured interviews and observations of graffiti practice with eleven male graffiti writers. The thesis argues that graffiti writing involves a wide range of cognitive, social, emotional and bodily skills. These skills coalesce at the site of practice where they in turn inform the learning of novice graffiti writers. This thesis shows that the way writers experience the learning of graffiti occurs within a highly masculine space that can serve to exclude women’s participation. By developing an understanding of the lived experiences of male graffiti writers, this research contributes new knowledge about youth cultural practice as a site of learning and production.

ii DECLARATION

i. the thesis comprises only my original work toward the PhD;

ii. due acknowledgment has been made in the text to all other material used;

iii. the thesis is fewer than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, bibliographies, and appendices.

Signed ……………………………………………………………

Date ……………………………………………………………….

iii ACKNOWLEDGEGEMENTS Completing a PhD thesis is a task that is not undertaken and sustained alone. I was supported on my doctoral journey by a number of wonderful and amazingly helpful individuals, who without their support and encouragement this thesis would not have been completed. Thus, there are a number of people I owe a debt of gratitude to and who I wish to formally acknowledge.

Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisors Professor Johanna Wyn and Professor Julie McLeod who have been steadfast supporters of my study, guiding me expertly through the trials and travails of the research process. They are a supervisory ‘dream team’ and I am eternally grateful for their support.

I offer a very special thank you to the participants in this study. They are amazing, talented artists with a passion for life and a spirit of adventure. They welcomed me into their world and eagerly shared their knowledge and experiences of graffiti writing with me and for that I am truly grateful.

To my colleagues in the Youth Research Centre with whom I regularly discussed my research I thank the following individuals for having shared their knowledge, experience and advice. Dr Babak Dadvand, Dr Eric Fu, Dr Tamara Borovica, Ms Michelle Walter, Ms Rosie Yasmin, Ms Josie Reade, Dr Monique Dalgleish, Dr Bruce Hurst, Ms Claudine Lam, Mr Adam Seet, Dr Hernan Cuervo and Professor Kylie Smith.

I would also like to add a special thank you to Dr Lachlan Macdowall for sharing his wide-ranging knowledge of graffiti writing with me and for also allowing me to access his extensive achieve of graffiti newspaper articles that were extremely helpful in the writing of this thesis.

I acknowledge the help and friendship accorded to me by Mr Damir Lendich, Ms. Charlotte (Lotte) Hilder, Mr Sebastian Franz and Mr Adrian Doyle without whose assistance I would have not gained access to the graffiti writers who participated in this study.

Finally, it gives me great pleasure to thank my amazing wife Dr Valeria Cotronei- Baird. Valeria has been by my side throughout this journey, discussing my research with me, helping me brainstorm ideas and work through concepts. She has read my work, offered advice, provided feedback, encouragement and love all while being there for our beautiful and equally amazing daughter Ilaria who has been a patient, loving and helpful girl throughout. I honestly could not have done this without their steadfast love and support. Thank you.

iv DEDICATION

This thesis is dedicated to two men, one who I knew intimately and another who I never met, but who both marked the writing of this thesis.

Firstly I dedicate this thesis to my Father, James Arthur Baird Sr. from who I learned first hand the benefits of hard work, but more importantly I also learned that hard work must also include passion and commitment.

This thesis is also dedicated to Melbourne graffiti writer SINCH, aka Jordan Porter, who embodied the passion, commitment and hard work described by the participants in this study and who became one of the most known and respected graffiti writers in Melbourne.

What these two men share, apart from their hard work and dedication is that they both passed away during the research and writing of this thesis. My Father lost his three- year battle with cancer on September 10, 2015 as I was concluding my fieldwork for this study.

SINCH, who was well known amongst my research participants and who was particularly close to one of my informants lost his life in a graffiti related train accident on June 27, 2014 as I was in the early stages of my fieldwork for this study.

R.I.P James and Jordan

v Table of Contents ABSTRACT ...... ii DECLARATION ...... iii ACKNOWLEDGEGEMENTS ...... iv DEDICATION ...... v LIST OF TABLES ...... viii LIST OF FIGURES ...... viii GLOSSARY OF TERMS ...... ix Chapter 1 Introduction ...... 1 The Significance of Graffiti Today ...... 1 The Shifting Perception of Graffiti in the Urban Space ...... 11 The Place of Graffiti in Contemporary Melbourne ...... 16 Research Focus ...... 18 Theoretical Framework ...... 19 The Study ...... 31 Contribution ...... 33 Organisation of the Thesis ...... 34 Chapter 2 Literature Review: Contextualising Graffiti ...... 38 Historical Graffiti ...... 39 Contemporary Graffiti ...... 41 The Origins and Shifting Landscape of Melbourne Graffiti ...... 43 Key Themes in Studies of Graffiti ...... 49 Space and Graffiti ...... 51 Graffiti, Deviant Careers and Subcultures ...... 52 Identity, Self-Making and Graffiti ...... 58 Risk and Pleasure ...... 59 Learning and Graffiti ...... 60 Conclusion ...... 62 Chapter 3 Theoretical and Methodological Framework ...... 64 Practice Theory ...... 64 Theoretical Framework: Communities of Practice, Intent Observation and Reflection-In-Action ...... 68 Communities of Practice ...... 69 Communities of Practice: Core Concepts for Data Analysis ...... 70 Legitimate Peripheral Participation ...... 71 Situated Learning ...... 72 The Three Dimensions of Practice: Mutual Engagement, Joint Enterprise and a Shared Repertoire ...... 72 A Shared Interest and Passion ...... 74 Observational Learning Through Intent Participation ...... 75 Reflection in Action ...... 76 Methodology ...... 77 Research aim and questions ...... 78 Philosophical Assumptions of the Study ...... 78 Human Research Ethics Considerations ...... 81 Data Generation and Collection ...... 83 Getting In: Gaining Access to the Culture and Research Sites ...... 84 Researcher Positionality ...... 89 Sampling and Selection ...... 92

vi Semi-Structured Open-Ended Interviews ...... 93 Direct Observation of Graffiti Practice ...... 99 Data Analysis ...... 101 Initial Coding and Categorisation of the Data ...... 102 Selecting Core Categories ...... 107 Organisation of the Data for Analysis (Data Management) ...... 107 Conclusion ...... 108 Chapter 4 Entry to Practice: Becoming a Graffiti Writer ...... 111 The Crew: Notions of Family and Belonging ...... 112 A Shared Activity ...... 116 Protection ...... 118 Trust ...... 121 Secrecy ...... 123 Maintaining Group Cohesion ...... 127 Entry to a Community for Practice ...... 128 Entry to a Community for Learning via Legitimate Peripheral Participation ...... 134 Conclusion ...... 138 Chapter 5 In Practice: The Situated Learning of Graffiti Writing ...... 141 Situated Learning within the Graffiti Crew ...... 142 Learning by Doing: Participation, Observation and Practice ...... 148 Practice Talk: Discussion and the Sharing of Knowledge ...... 156 Learning Masculinity: The Graffiti Crew and Male Identity Formation ...... 160 Can Control: the Embodied Aspect of Situated Learning ...... 167 Participative Artefacts: Technologies of Everyday Practice ...... 175 Conclusion ...... 182 Chapter 6 Online Practice: New Sites of Community ...... 184 Changing Conceptions of Graffiti: Online Communities of Practice ...... 185 Social Media: Instagram and New Forms of ‘Getting Up’ Online ...... 189 Entry to Online Practice: Accessibility and Access to Digital Communities of Practice ...... 195 Internet Mediated Learning and Online Communities of Practice ...... 200 Conclusion ...... 210 Chapter 7 Conclusion ...... 211 Overview of the Study Findings ...... 215 Entry to Practice ...... 216 In Practice ...... 219 Online Practice ...... 221 Limitations of the Study ...... 223 Significance of the Study ...... 225 Autobiographical Reflection ...... 227 Final Words ...... 229 REFERENCE LIST ...... 232 APPENDICES ...... 242 Appendix 1: Human Research Ethics Approval ...... 242 Appendix 2: Human Research Ethics - Plain Language Statement ...... 243 Appendix 3: Human Research Ethics – Consent Form ...... 244 Appendix 4: Human Research Ethics – Interview Schedule No: 1 ...... 245 Appendix 5: Human Research Ethics – Interview Schedule No: 2 ...... 247 Appendix 6: Human Research Ethics – Interview Schedule No: 3 ...... 249

vii LIST OF TABLES

TABLE 3.1: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ...... 68 TABLE 3.2: ELEMENTS OF A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE ...... 70 TABLE 3.3: PARTICIPANT DETAILS...... 94 TABLE 4.1: DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE AND A GRAFFITI CREW...... 124

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE I: TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD STYLE ...... XI FIGURE 1.1: GRAFFITI IMAGES...... 3 FIGURE 1.2: JUMBLE AND DABS & MYLA...... 9 FIGURE 2.1: REPLICA OF ETERNITY TAG ...... 40 FIGURE 2.2: TAKI183 TAG ...... 42 FIGURE 5.1: AN EXPERIENCED WRITER ...... 146 FIGURE 5.2: OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING...... 148 FIGURE 5.3: HIGHLY SEXUALISED FEMALE GRAFFITI WRITER CHARACTER...... 166 FIGURE 5.4: GRAFFITI WRITER IN ACTION ...... 169 FIGURE 5.5: CHANGING NOZZLES AT THE COUNCIL AEROSOL ART PROGRAM...... 179 FIGURE 6.1: LUSH PIECE SHOWING @LUSHSUX...... 190

viii GLOSSARY OF TERMS

All city – When a writer’s work is ‘up’ and recognised all over town. It traditionally refers to NYC subway carriages that carried a writer’s piece all across the city. Bite – To explicitly copy another writer’s style, work or tag. A graffiti term for plagiarism. Bombing – To systematically saturate an area (train carriage, station platform or other public space) with a tag (written or painted tag, or a sticker). Burn – To do a piece that is much better than someone else’s and thus figuratively burn the other piece to ashes. Can also refer to a writer who paints really well. Burner – An extremely well-executed piece that burns (outdoes) everything around it. Character – Pictographic cartoon-style painting of a person, animal or animated object. Often referred to as a ‘Caro’ in Australian graffiti vernacular. Cap – To paint over someone else’s work (piece, tag or throw-up). Refers to the paint coming out of the cap or nozzle of the spray-can as it is used to go over someone’s work. Crew – A close-knit group of like-minded individuals who band together under a shared group name and a shared passion for graffiti to write under the banner of the crew name. Crews can be friends, perhaps akin to family, and serve the functions of learning, support and protection. Doing Damage – Graffiti slang for prolific tagging or bombing across the city or public transport system or other urban infrastructure. Down – To be accepted (“I am down with the crew” for example), or to understand something or agree with something (“I am down with that” for instance). Galving –To paint graffiti on the galvanised steel surface of a suburban commuter train in Melbourne. Get up/getting up – The act of painting one’s tag, throwie or piece in public. In-deep – Very serious writers for whom graffiti is their number one priority. Keeping-it-real – Refers to authenticity. To keep-it-real or be ‘authentic’ means to adhere to the history and unwritten codes of graffiti writing, which in strict terms means to write illegally with ‘racked’ (stolen) paint, so to be an ‘in-authentic’ writer would in theory be a writer who paints legally with purchased paint. Keeping-it-real can also refer to remaining true to the stylistic conventions of signature graffiti writing. King – A highly respected writer in the graffiti scene due to their skills and abilities as a writer. Usually much older and more experienced than other members of the culture. A very masculine term as it refers specifically to male writers. I have not encountered the term Queen being used to refer to a highly respected female writer in an Australian context. Mission – The act of going out to paint illegally, usually at night and with preparation. It can refer to painting any illegal spot, but it usually pertains to painting trains in a locked train yard, which requires high levels of planning, preparation and surveillance. Nibs (Caps) – Nozzles used for painting: caps, fats, skinnies, mids and New York fat caps (there are now a wide range of nozzles developed specifically for graffiti that can be angled to produce a variety of line widths, as well as pressure sensitive nozzles that will spray a different paint pattern depending on how much pressure is used on the nozzle). Old School (Old Skool) – Hip-Hop term that refers to the original aspects of the culture. Initially used to refer to graffiti produced largely in NYC in the 1970s and 1980s, but is now used to refer to anything that is older than the current time period of

ix the writer. In Melbourne, Australia it largely refers to graffiti produced in the 1980s and 1990s. Painting steel – Another term for the act of painting trains. Panels – Large-scale stylised pieces on the sides of a commuter or cargo train as the trains are often made up of a series of metal or wooden panels. Piece – Short for a masterpiece that is a large-scale stylised graffiti painting or mural (often depicting a writer’s or crew’s name, and sometimes incorporating pictographic characters). Rack – To steal. Usually refers to the theft of paint from shop racks in a hardware store, but can be used to describe any shop theft including the theft of expensive footwear and items of clothing. Rolled – To be robbed while out writing. Usually refers to having one’s paint stolen but can also include being robbed of one’s personal belongings or articles of clothing, particularly expensive footwear. Slash – To slash out another writer’s work by painting a line or lines through it. This is a very disrespectful act and is viewed as a figurative and often-physical challenge to the writer’s work that has been slashed and can result in a writing war or a physically violent altercation between the two writers or crews concerned. Staunch – An experienced graffiti writer who presents a persona marked by menace and threat. An intimidating experienced writer with a reputation for violence who presents a kind of oppositional or aggressive demeanour when interacting with people, specifically other less experienced writers. Steel – Trains, usually commuter trains, but can also refer to freight trains. Tag – A calligraphic marking depicting a writer or crew’s name that is quickly executed using spray-paint, a marker, or a paint-filled fire-extinguisher, or can be scratched into a surface. Tagging – The physical act of writing or marking one’s tag (scratched, marked or spray-painted). Throw-Up – A quickly-executed bubble font graffiti (fill and outline) that can be done in as little as 30 seconds, often referred to as a ‘throwie’ in Australian vernacular. Tin – A can of spray-paint. Toy – This is a nuanced term that has multiple meanings within graffiti culture as it can refer to a new or inexperienced writer who knows very little about how to write graffiti or has very little knowledge of graffiti culture. It can also be used to refer to a writer who is not very good, or a veteran writer who has very little knowledge of the culture (history, style, vernacular, and so forth…) and can also be used as an insult when levelled at an experienced writer to question their skill and/or knowledge (“that is a toy piece” for example). Writer (graffiti writer) – someone who engages in the practice of writing signature graffiti with a focus on stylised lettering in public spaces primarily using spray-paint and markers. Other implements such as, paint-rollers, fire-extinguishers, paintbrushes and implements for scratching or etching can also be used to produce graffiti writing.

Figure I: Take a Walk on the Wild Style Botherambo Street, Richmond, Victoria. Photo Credit: Ron C. Baird.

xi Chapter 1 Introduction

Graffiti is a ubiquitous youth practice that is often misunderstood. Societal understandings of graffiti have shifted, such that graffiti is now more warmly received and praised by the community. A new frame of reference is thus required in order to analyse the practice of graffiti writing. Against this backdrop, the aim of this study is to develop new knowledge about graffiti as a site of informal learning by developing an understanding of graffiti as a learnt practice. The site of this study is Melbourne, where a community of young male graffiti writers were observed and interviewed to produce an understanding of how the art of graffiti writing is learnt and passed on. To develop this analysis, youth cultural practice is positioned as a communally-situated site of learning. The investigation was informed by two key questions: ‘in what ways do young men learn the practice of graffiti writing?’ and ‘in what ways do young men experience this learning?’ The answer to these questions was sought by researching what it is that young male graffiti writers in Melbourne experience during their participation in graffiti writing. This thesis is therefore concerned with how graffiti writers learn the practice of graffiti writing. This includes not only the learning of the technical skills involved in using cans of spray-paint to create artworks, but equally the unwritten rules and guidelines that govern participation in the practice of graffiti writing.

The Significance of Graffiti Today

For this study, graffiti refers to the act of writing one’s street-name or signature as a

‘tag’1, ‘throw-up’2 or ‘piece’3 in public, either illegally or legally using spray-paint,

1 A calligraphic marking depicting a writer or crew’s name that is quickly executed using spray-paint, a marker, or paint-filled fire-extinguisher, or can be scratched into a surface.

1 textas/markers or paint-rollers. Some of the graffiti writing forms used throughout the thesis include: tagging (calligraphy letters depicting a writer’s or crew’s name, which can be scratched, marked or painted); throw-ups (quickly-executed bubble font graffiti); bombing (to saturate an area with a tag, written or painted, or a sticker); characters (pictographic animated-style painting of a person, animal or object); pieces

(large-scale stylised graffiti paintings that depict a writer’s or crew’s name that can also incorporate pictographic characters); and panels (pieces done on the side of train carriages). For examples of these graffiti forms (tag, throw-up, character, bombing, train panel and piece) see Figure 1.1 below. All of these graffiti forms, apart from characters, are focused on lettering styles.

A graffiti writer is someone who engages in writing signature graffiti with a focus on stylised lettering in public spaces, primarily using spray-paint and markers (Austin,

2001; Castleman, 1982). The term has been attributed to the legendary NYC tagger

TAKI 1834 who simply wrote his name using a marker without any stylised detail or colour (Castleman, 1982). Letters and fonts are therefore particularly important in graffiti culture. All the participants in this study write a tag, such as their street name, but more importantly they also produce graffiti pieces (the highly-stylised, multi- coloured murals that spell out their tag name or word with flourish, skill and flair).

Some young men who ‘tag’ do not make the transition to the more accomplished artistic work of graffiti pieces/murals, though, all writers who produce ‘pieces’ also tag.

2 A quickly-executed bubble font graffiti (fill and outline) that can be done in as little as 30 seconds, often referred to as a ‘throwie’. 3 Short for masterpiece, large-scale, highly-detailed stylised graffiti paintings or murals (often depicting a writer’s or crew’s name, sometimes incorporating pictographic characters). 4 In line with Snyder (2009, p. 203) who notes that ‘it is common practice in books and magazines on graffiti to put writers’ names in capital letters’. I have followed this convention in this thesis.

Figure 1.1: Graffiti Images. Clockwise from top left image: Tag (ONCE, Footscray), Throw-Up (SHAKE, Brunswick), Character (Animated ‘soap’, Brunswick), Bombing (NYC), Train Panel (TMOE, Flinders Street Station), Piece (ARSK, Brunswick). Photo credit: Ron C. Baird.

Melbourne is recognised as a vibrant cultural and intellectual metropolis that is home to a thriving graffiti and street art scene. Graffiti has become part of the contemporary cultural landscape of the City of Melbourne which is often branded as the graffiti capital of the world (Cubrilo, Stamer, & Harvey, 2009; Dew, 2007; Ganz, 2004;

MacDowall, 2006, 2014; Young, 2013). Yet, there remains debate and tension about

3 the significance of graffiti as a recognised and legitimate cultural artefact. On the one hand, graffiti is viewed as a form of vandalism or criminal damage that is a blight on the city landscape as it defaces the urban environment (Bandaranaike, 2001; Carney,

2017; Cresswell, 1992; Dow, 2017; Gomez, 1992; Halsey & Young, 2002; Moreau &

Alderman, 2011; Simonis, Langmaid, & Hore, 2017; Thompson et al., 2012). On the other hand, graffiti is increasingly viewed as a vibrant, cutting-edge art form that is both showcased in a number of city laneways and featured in internationally- acclaimed compendiums of graffiti (Cubrilo et al., 2009; Dew, 2007; Ganz, 2004;

Halsey & Young, 2006; Irving, 2014; MacDowall, 2006, 2014; McAuliffe, 2012;

Stewart, 2008; Young, 2013). Each year, a significant number of people visit the City of Melbourne from both domestic and international locations to experience

Melbourne’s lively graffiti culture. There are even City graffiti tours now, with

Melbourne featuring regularly on ‘Top 10’ internet lists of best international graffiti locations and in a range of tourist advertisements about city life and culture (Young,

2011).

Despite a positive shift in the reception of graffiti as an urban art form with aesthetic merit, the social value of graffiti continues to be contested, and graffiti still attracts negative media coverage (Carney, 2017; Dow, 2017; Hudson, 2009; Langmaid, 2017;

Simonis et al., 2017). Melbourne’s young graffiti writers continue to be portrayed as deviant vandals in newspaper headlines such as ‘Melbourne’s Graffiti Pests’,

‘Painting the Town Dreadful’ and ‘Growing Graffiti Vandalism’. It appears that there is a contradiction at play in wider society’s perception and understanding of the youth cultural practice of graffiti; it is simultaneously celebrated and vilified, creating tension and debate regarding the place of graffiti in the contemporary city (Halsey &

4 Young, 2002, 2006; Iveson, 2010, 2013; McAuliffe, 2012; McAuliffe & Iveson,

2011; Mubi Brighenti, 2010; Young, 2010, 2012, 2013). Consequently, while graffiti and graffiti artists like LISTER, SOFLES and ADNATE, who have arguably made the transition from graffiti writers to ‘street artists’, are celebrated, other graffiti writers like HEADS, ONLY, NOST, PORK, and LAMB are treated with contempt by the media (Bucci, 2017; Dow, 2017). Yet the artistic skill and aesthetic elements of graffiti are present regardless of whether the pieces (masterpieces/artworks) are produced legally in Hosier Lane5 or illegally along a train line or on a warehouse wall. The skills associated with graffiti writing that young men practise and learn, as this study seeks to show, can be vital in supporting their transition from youth to adulthood by providing them with transferable skills that can lead to employment and various career pathways (Avramidis & Drakopoulou, 2015; Lachmann, 1988; Snyder,

2009). Furthermore, graffiti writers participating in a graffiti crew are involved in a process of becoming a graffiti writer and all that that entails. In the practice of graffiti they also derive relational, learning and emotional benefits from being a member of a community. Typically, this occurs in the highly masculine space of a graffiti crew.

These ‘identity’ aspects of becoming a graffiti artist will be considered in the following chapters.

Graffiti is largely executed by young people, primarily male, between the ages of 14 and 30 (Campos, 2013; Hedegaard, 2014; van Loon, 2014). Graffiti is also a highly gendered space that is marked by a masculine dynamic associated with ‘superhero’ and boys’ own stories of risk and adventure that often preclude the female voice, as young men use graffiti to construct and validate a masculine identity (Campos, 2013;

5 A city laneway in Melbourne’s Central Business District that is famous for its ‘legal’ graffiti and street art murals which are tolerated by municipal authorities due to their popularity among domestic and international tourists.

5 Hannerz, 2017; Macdonald, 2001). Research into graffiti writing thus tends to focus primarily on the male experience, as evidenced by the small number of studies that investigate women graffiti writers (Fransberg, 2018; Pabón, 2013; Pabón-Colón,

2017). Women have been present in the literature, though often occupying a marginal position as novice writers or girlfriends of writers, as seen in Castleman’s (1982) study in which he interviewed the female writer, Lady Pink, an apprentice to and the girlfriend of the famous NYC writer LEE. Young women are also present in the literature as writers in their own right; however, their presence is often limited as the usual focus of these studies is to theorise the graffiti culture as a site for the construction and maintenance of hegemonic masculinity (Hannerz, 2017; Lombard,

2013; Macdonald, 2001; Monto, Machalek, & Anderson, 2013). I am fully aware that this same observation could be levelled at my study presented in this thesis. Despite my intention to achieve a gender balance among participants in this study, I ended up with an all-male cohort, an outcome that I will discuss in detail in chapter three. I am therefore not generalising about graffiti and identity, but about a specific type of community of practice that develops around the learning of skills and cultural knowledge and that results in the production of graffiti pieces.

Despite the limited presence of young women in the literature on graffiti writing, there are a large number of active female writers who have achieved fame and recognition to rival the top male writers. In Australia, there are female-specific gatherings of graffiti writers, particularly the annual ‘Ladie Killerz’ art, music and film event that features an all-female graffiti jam held in a different Australian city each year since its inception in 2008 (FacieB, 2011). ‘Ladie Killerz’ represents a female-only space in which young woman writers can freely express themselves in an

6 open, uncritical and supportive environment free from male ego. These writers show that young women can ‘kill it’ [make a strong impact] in the fame game of graffiti by demonstrating their skills and prowess with the spray can. Pabón-Colón (2017) explores similar themes in a USA context, arguing that women-only events, similar to

‘Ladie Killerz’, open up spaces of artistic expression and empowerment for female graffiti writers and other women-specific Hip-Hop collectives. While issues of masculinity and the inherent gender imbalance in the culture of graffiti are not a core focus of my study, it is worth noting the importance and impact of gender and masculinity within the culture of graffiti writing. While I focus on young male writers learning graffiti writing skills, techniques and culture, the young men in my study were equally involved in a process of becoming that also entails learning how to enact and perform gendered roles that are often marked by hyper-masculine constructions of what it means to be a ‘man’ in the culture of graffiti writing. While an in-depth discussion of masculinity is not the core aim of this thesis, I do acknowledge an understanding of the range of ‘becomings’ that the study participants negotiated via their involvement in a community of like-minded practitioners, including notions of masculinity that shape their gendered roles within the graffiti community, which will be discussed further in chapter five.

Graffiti as a practice is a physical act that uses the body to deliver paint to a surface; in so doing the body is critical to the act. ‘Affect’ is a concept that allows for developing understandings of the embodied ways of being that are incorporated into the physical act of writing graffiti and that serve to act on the physical world and the practitioner. In this way, affect can be described as ‘the ways in which the body can connect with itself and with the world’ (Massumi, 1992). Graffiti is therefore an

7 embodied practice in which the body is privileged as a significant part of the learning of graffiti skills. Learning is routinely conceived of as a disembodied, cognitive function of the mind; however, the learning of the skills of the graffiti writer disrupts such understandings of learning because the appropriate use of the body in graffiti writing is essential to learning the practice and to becoming a skillful graffiti writer.

As I discuss in chapter five, practice inevitably engages with the registers of affect, emotion and embodiment. I tease this out specifically in relation to the theme of embodied learning.

Graffiti writing is a skill. When one moves beyond the ‘tags’ and ‘throw-ups’ and looks at graffiti pieces that adorn the city walls, the artistic skill required to produce these artworks comes into focus. Graffiti pieces incorporate clean, fine lines and intricate details that are perfectly proportioned to the scale of the available space.

Graffiti pieces often incorporate an array of design elements such as arrows, bubbles, stars, colour-fading and complex shading that gives the piece a 3-D effect, as if the piece is coming out of the wall (see Figure 1.2 for examples).

Figure 1.2: JUMBLE and DABS & MYLA. (Above, Brunswick East) and (Below, Coburg North). Photo credit: Ron C. Baird.

Graffiti is commonly created under duress, often in low light conditions, with severe time constraints and under the constant threat of arrest by the police or apprehension by security personnel or angry property owners. To produce these beautiful artworks under such conditions requires a high level of skill. Colour-fading, proportion, scale, and material estimation are art-related skills that people in fact attend art school to

9 learn. Other skills associated with graffiti writing, however, such as surveillance, working accurately under pressure, and knowledge of the urban environment and the unwritten rules denoting who can write where and when, are equally important skills required by graffiti writers, skills not taught in any formal way. So how does a young person learn the skills necessary to be a graffiti writer? This was the initial question that prompted my study, as what is often overlooked is that graffiti writing is a highly-skilled, learnt practice that requires the uptake of specific technical skills and cultural knowledge, all required for a person to become an effective and successful graffiti writer.

There is however relatively little scholarly knowledge about how graffiti is produced, and even less about how graffiti writers learn the skills required to produce these works of art. Given that graffiti has become part of the Melbourne cultural and artistic landscape, it seems timely to begin looking at it from a different perspective, that is, as a recognised ‘art practice’. Graffiti is not usually studied as a learnt practice because it is not carried out in a formal setting; it takes place in public space and often without permission, and therefore does not fit with the normative way that young people are educated and the ways they learn. This thesis therefore intends to shed light on the ways in which young male graffiti writers learn the technical skills of spray-painting graffiti, and to illuminate the cultural knowledge of graffiti by investigating how the practice of graffiti writing is learnt and how the young men who participated in this study experience this learning.

In this introductory chapter I outline the changing perception of graffiti in the urban space as a backdrop to the analysis. This is followed by a short discussion of the place

10 of graffiti in contemporary Melbourne. Next I outline the research focus that drives this thesis. I then move on to a brief discussion of the theoretical framework (which is elaborated in chapter three), before moving on to outline the type of study that was conducted and the contribution that this thesis seeks to make. I conclude with a discussion of the organisation of the thesis, outlining the central focus of the subsequent chapters.

The Shifting Perception of Graffiti in the Urban Space

Graffiti has a long history. It has been a part of social and political commentary for centuries. It was a popular form of commentary in the Ancient world, with a range of graffiti and ancient poetics adorning the walls of Pompeii and other ancient cities

(Baird & Taylor, 2011; Milnor, 2014). Milnor (2014) examined the poetics and language of graffiti as a literary source in a Roman city, exploring the uses of graffiti as a legitimate literary form that produced quotations and inscriptions on walls in

Pompeii as a form of ancient social commentary. Ancient graffiti has also been used as a form of primary evidence by historians and archeologists in exploring the ancient world (Baird & Taylor, 2011), highlighting the importance and power of graffiti to express a given social context in history. While contemporary graffiti has a relatively short history, emerging from New York City and Philadelphia in the 1970s and rapidly spreading around the world, graffiti writing is now a truly global youth cultural practice. In the 45 years or so since, its uptake by the academy as a site of research has generated a diverse and interdisciplinary body of scholarly work on the topic.

11 Graffiti has been studied from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including history, archaeology, sociology, psychology, criminology and urban geography. It has been explored as a masculine subculture, with Macdonald (2001) producing a significant account of research on the masculine nature of graffiti writing articulated within a subcultural theoretical framework, and arguing that masculinity is part and parcel of the subculture. Lombard (2013) asserts that graffiti writers perform a masculinity that is marked by the coloniser’s ideals of a masculinity that is dangerous, aggressive and risk-taking. Monto et al. (2013) explain that graffiti is a domain that reinforces a version of masculinity that values daring, risk, rebelliousness, ingenuity, commitment and sacrifice, undergirded by a flamboyant set of aesthetics. Pabón (2013), Pabón-

Colón (2017) and Fransberg (2018) are the only scholars that specifically address female graffiti writers and the issues that confront young women as participants in a male-dominated culture. Pabón (2013), arguing that graffiti culture is dominated by an outright heterosexist ideology, describes the actions of an all-female graffiti crew who challenged these conceptions by their actions. In doing so, Pabón (2013) shifts the conversation from one of explicit feminist identity to one of a tacit feminism that is located in the female crew’s act of doing graffiti which produces a performative being that enables their participation in graffiti. Pabón (2013) proposes that such forms of activism represent the future of the feminist movement. Fransberg (2018) builds on Pabón’s (2013) work, furthering understandings of women’s performative role within the ‘street art’ and ‘graffiti’ worlds, exploring how they negotiate their positions in these male-dominated subcultures as separate marginal groups. These studies identify graffiti as a site for the development and performance of a hyper- masculinity. My research aligns with these portrayals with the male participants in this present study speaking about the exclusion of female writers which often operates

12 at an implicit level through the culture’s underplaying of the contribution of women graffiti writers. There are occasions however when the wholesale omission of females occurs as a result of male writers delegitimising women’s presence in the graffiti crew by way of active exclusion or portraying young women as only being interested in graffiti to gain the sexual attention of male graffiti writers (Hannerz, 2017;

Macdonald, 2016; Pabón, 2013; Pabón-Colón, 2017).

Female graffiti writers face many more challenges than their male counterparts, as

Hannerz (2017) explores in his study of Swedish graffiti writers. He shows that in terms of risk, female graffiti writers must negotiate a double risk management regime, one related to graffiti (avoiding apprehension, safety along train lines or high-spots) and one related to the gendered body in the city (sexual harassment, rape and violence). In this way the female body is conceived in opposition to the male body that is normalised (Macdonald, 2016) in the context of ‘graffiti’s pursuit of the urban margins at night’ (Hannerz, 2017, p. 375). This can lead to female writers distancing their physical bodies from their graffiti productions to avoid being ‘outed’ as a woman and thus being defined as a ‘girl-writer’ and therefore not taken as seriously as a male writer (Hannerz, 2017). This erasure of gender by female graffiti writers as a protective element compounds the range of factors they must address to be viewed as worthy participants in the culture.

Pabón (2013) and Pabón-Colón (2017) confront this seeming erasure of gender head- on, arguing that in her studies, female graffiti writers place gender at the forefront of their practice by celebrating femininity in the artworks they produce. In this way female graffiti writers challenged gendered norms in such a way that could be

13 described as a form of ‘outlaw femininity’ (Monto et al, 2013, p. 286). This links to a salient point raised by Monto et al (2013) regarding the decoupling of sex and gender, in which they suggest that women’s active presence in a culture does not necessarily make an activity feminine; which is not to say that gendered dynamics are not present and a fundamental element of graffiti cultures. Indeed, as Miller (2002) suggests, female graffiti writers could be viewed as ‘doing masculinity’ in their artistic practice, a controversial point in some regards which relies on normative constructions of masculinity and femininity. Nevertheless, the main point I am making here is that notions of gender are constantly being constructed, deconstructed and reassembled in the complex interplay of action and reaction in the dynamic practices of learning examined in this thesis. While my original intention was to explore the experiences of both men and women involved in the learning of graffiti writing and thus consider gendered aspects relationally, I was unable to do so as despite my best efforts, I was unsuccessful in recruiting female graffiti writers willing to participate in this study.

This in itself speaks to some of the gendered dimensions of graffiti culture, to which I return in chapter 3, chapter 5 and chapter 6.

Graffiti has also been researched as an illegal subculture, with Brewer and Miller

(1990) conducting the first ethnographic study of the culture outside the city of New

York. Their study of a cohort of graffiti writers in Seattle, Washington confirmed a significant number of cultural traits consistent with the largely descriptive early studies of NYC graffiti writers that were conducted by Castleman (1982) and

Chalfant and Prigoff (1987). Brewer and Miller (1990) nevertheless concluded their study with a range of policy recommendations aimed at suppressing and eradicating the culture of graffiti writing. Arguing in a similar vein, Thompson et al. (2012)

14 conducted an empirical study of a range of graffiti-deterrent strategies and programs of both a technical and non-technical (social) nature drawn from international case studies. Craw, Leland Jr, Bussell, Munday, and Walsh (2006) explored the effects of the strategic placement of street art murals as a means of deterring graffiti, finding that, while the initial placement of the mural deterred graffiti in the short term, in the long term it had little to no effect as the mural was eventually heavily tagged. In a similar study conducted in Perth, Western Australia, Taylor and Marais (2009) produced comparable results, suggesting that mural artworks are generally not a viable solution for the problem of graffiti proliferation. Taylor has conducted a number of studies on graffiti writing in Perth that focus on the criminality of the practice, suggesting that graffiti is a gateway crime, and arguing that prolific writers are placed on a trajectory toward more serious offending by their involvement in graffiti (Taylor, 2011; Taylor and Kahn, 2012, 2014). Rowe and Hutton (2012) argue that even graffiti writers recognise that in some contexts graffiti is inappropriate and can have damaging legal and financial consequences for participants. While

Vanderveen and van Eijk (2016) argue that public opinion (value judgments) on disorder, in this case graffiti, varies according to the context in which the public view the images. From the perspective of social and developmental psychology, Brown,

Carrabine, and Young (2014) theorise graffiti as an illegal practice, albeit one that represents an adolescent rite of passage. This is particularly relevant to understandings of graffiti as an illegal site for identity development (Hedegaard,

2014; Watzlawik, 2014). What these studies all share is a focus on graffiti as a deviant act that transgresses societal norms. In this context graffiti is viewed as a problem to be solved rather than a culture to be celebrated. This diverse literature informs this thesis to varying degrees, but my study also seeks to open up some new lines of

15 inquiry by investigating graffiti as a site of communal learning and the production of cultural artefacts.

Given such diversity, Castleman (1982) argues that few generalisations can be made about the type of young person who writes graffiti. That said, there are two central factors in the experience of graffiti writing that connect and define writers, factors affirmed by the field work I have undertaken. First, writers are united in a shared passion for the practice of graffiti writing (Campos, 2013; Castleman, 1982; Ferrell,

1996; Lachmann, 1988; Macdonald, 2001; Snyder, 2009); and second, all writers must learn the practice, which takes time, effort and skill (Avramidis & Drakopoulou,

2012; Avramidis & Drakopoulou, 2015; Lachmann, 1988; Rahn, 2002; Valle &

Weiss, 2010). What is often overlooked is the active role that participation in graffiti can enable for the young people involved in terms of their learning and skills development. As such, my study offers an alternative conceptualisation of graffiti as a space for learning and community which, I argue, involves complex social interactions and in-depth use of informal learning practices that engage observation, experience, bodily practice and production in the conduct of their cultural affiliation.

This view shifts attention to analysis of the sophisticated and highly-skilled practices of graffiti artists, and away from understandings of youth groups (in this case graffiti crews) as deviant, or graffiti artworks as predominantly symbolic subcultural markers, as suggested in the subcultures literature.

The Place of Graffiti in Contemporary Melbourne

The story of the rise of Melbourne’s graffiti culture is described in Cubrilo et al.

(2009) book, Kings Way: The beginnings of Australian Graffiti: Melbourne 1983-

16 1993. This text, in documenting the early work of the founders of Melbourne graffiti culture, captures the essence of an emergent youth culture, with its many images of significant early ‘pieces’. Much like Cooper and Chalfant’s (1984) Subway Art that documented the emergence of graffiti writing on New York City’s metropolitan transit system, Kings Way has become a contemporary classic.

Cubrilo et al. (2009) show that the writing of signature graffiti has been a feature of

Melbourne’s urban landscape since the mid-1980s when it crossed the Pacific from the U.S.A. via the Hip-Hop films Wild Style and Style Wars which depicted graffiti writing on train carriages in New York City’s subway system. Wild Style featured such New York graffiti writing legends as DONDI and ZEPHYR. MTV also played a role in the early uptake of graffiti writing in Melbourne. When MTV began broadcasting in Australia on free-to-air television in 1987, it screened music videos such as Rapture by Blondie that included footage of the mythical NYC graffiti writer

‘LEE’ painting a graffiti ‘piece’, The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious

Five, while Buffalo Gals included footage of ‘DONDI’ painting a graffiti piece and the legendary Rock Steady Crew breakdancing (Cubrilo et al., 2009). The influence of

U.S. graffiti culture was further reinforced with the 1984 publication in Australia of the seminal graffiti text by Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper, ‘Subway Art’, that quickly became known as the Bible of graffiti writing, serving as a basic instructional text for budding graffiti writers in Melbourne during the 1980s (Cubrilo et al., 2009).

These sources set the tone for the birth of Melbourne Graffiti culture. The walls of the city and its connecting train lines would never be the same again.

17 The origins of Melbourne’s Graffiti Scene are thus inextricably tied to the global rise of Hip-Hop culture that originated in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s. It was however Hip-Hop’s urgent vibrancy of DJing (turntables), MCing (rapping), and break-dancing that initiated the rise of Graffiti in Melbourne (Mitchell, 2003). When

Hip-Hop hit Australian shores in the early eighties it ignited a phenomenon that would see the city rise to become a leader in the global graffiti scene. Early writers like DUKE, PERIL, PARIS, RANSOM, HUGH DUNNIT, ZONE, DUEL, MERDA, with a wide range of graffiti ‘crews’6 and other writers, all contributed to the development of Melbourne’s unique graffiti culture through their dedication to the textual form as well as their innovation in technique and style which pushed the boundaries of graffiti to new limits and laid the groundwork for the creation of a distinctly Melbourne style of graffiti writing (Cubrilo et al., 2009).

Research Focus

Graffiti continues to be simultaneously celebrated and vilified, creating some tension and uncertainty regarding the place of graffiti in the contemporary city. This thesis contributes new knowledge about the production of graffiti in major urban areas such as Melbourne, focusing on how young men learn the practice of graffiti writing. In carrying out this analysis, the study asks how graffiti might be understood as a site of informal social learning. Consequently, the focus of this thesis is the ways in which young men aspiring to be graffiti writers learn the technical skills and cultural knowledge of graffiti writing, and specifically how they learn to be graffiti writers in the context of their involvement in graffiti crews, city council aerosol art programs

6 A crew is a close-knit group of like-minded individuals who band together under a shared group name and with a shared passion for graffiti to write under the banner of the crew name. Crews can be friends, perhaps akin to family, and serve the functions of learning, support and protection.

18 and the online graffiti community that includes a variety of graffiti websites,

YouTube and Instagram.

Theoretical Framework

Typically, discussion of learning contexts is primarily focused upon formal learning, such as learning in school-centric environments, according to set times, within a set curriculum, and taught by ‘qualified’ teachers. Learning graffiti, however, opens up alternative ways of conceiving the parameters of learning. Graffiti is a practice that is learnt in an informal social context that privileges learning through participation and observation in a situated context. This, as I show, has many benefits for young male graffiti writers learning the practice.

The concept of ‘Communities of Practice’, attributed to the writings of Lave and

Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998) who were theorising how learning occurs within social practice, plus the linked concepts of ‘situated learning’ and ‘observational learning’, undergird the analytic framework of this thesis. The graffiti crew can be meaningfully explored through the concept of communities of practice in which the graffiti writer is an active and participatory learner who works toward full participation in the graffiti crew. The skills of graffiti writing are learned in an informal environment, emphasising the importance of community, sociality, observation, embodied practice and experiences that are carried out within the context of a graffiti crew.

This analysis is informed by the broader argument that professionals in the workplace learn by being part of a community of practice, engaging with their colleagues in knowledge-sharing and learning by participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger,

19 1998; Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002). Throughout this thesis I show that learning to be a graffiti writer can be understood as being carried out in a similar manner, despite the manifestly different contexts. The thesis explores how graffiti writers enter a graffiti crew and learn from one another while working toward full participation in the crew. In doing so, they shape the practice of the community/crew and, in turn, the community/crew shapes the practice of individual graffiti writers.

This study therefore seeks to broaden our understanding of youth cultures and to move beyond problematising and stigmatising understandings of the youth cultural practice of graffiti writing.

The participants in the study are positioned as producers of artefacts that are significant not only to the culture of graffiti writers but also increasingly to members of the public. This understanding builds on the work of the Chicago School in that it investigates firsthand how a youth group develops its own code of practice, and even its own ‘cultural aesthetics’ and ‘styles’, as articulated in youth subculture approaches.

The idea of subculture has become a core concept within youth studies. Yet its long and complex history is also characterized by debate. For example, the work of

Bennett (1999, 2011); Bennett and Kahn-Harris (2004), Blackman (2005) and

Hodkinson (2016) reveals a significant ongoing debate revolving around the continued relevance of the concept of subculture to youth studies. At the crux of this debate is contestation over the concept of subculture itself, particularly as theorised by the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (BCCCS), an approach that has been subjected to critique from a number of different perspectives (Bennett,

1999; Kahn-Harris, 2004; Miles, 2000; Muggleton, 2000; Redhead, 1997; Redhead,

Wynne, & O’Connor, 1997; Thornton, 1995). A key criticism of what Muggleton

20 (2000, p. 3) refers to as ‘the BCCCS approach’7 is an alleged lack of engagement with the subjective viewpoints of members of the subcultures investigated. A further critique levelled at the Birmingham School’s work derives from its emphasis on a class-based approach to youth cultures research (Woodman & Wyn, 2014, p. 96). A focus that has also been at the expense of more robustly addressing gender relations and identities. These considerations inform my this study as my research methods focused on gathering direct accounts of graffiti writer’s experiences and actions via interviews and observation of their practice.

The idea that youth subcultures are marked by a defiant reaction against mainstream society was brought to the fore by Albert K. Cohen (1955). Cohen was influenced by

Thrasher’s (1927) work and Cohen (1955) was seeking to theorise an understanding of lower class, or working class youth association that moved away from a psychologized understanding of young people’s behaviour as pathological. However, ironically Cohen’s solution to the delinquent pathology was borrowed from Sigmund

Freud’s social defence mechanism theory of ‘reaction formation’ (Vito & Maahs,

2015, p. 132) to explain the process of lower-class youth eschewing middle class values in favour of validation by alternate delinquent means.

Building upon the work of Merton (1938), Cohen (1955) theorised that lower class youth who were denied status in mainstream society would seek to form gangs in order to gain some degree of social status, even if it was of a deviant or delinquent nature. Thus “[t]he delinquent subculture deals with problems by providing criteria of

7 Muggleton (2000) states that ‘the BCCCS approach’ is comprised of a four volume corpus of texts published by scholars affiliated with the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural studies including, Muggleton (2000) Resistance through Rituals; Hall and Jefferson (1993) Working Class Youth Culture; Mungham and Pearson (1976) Profane Culture and Willis (2014) Subculture: The Meaning of Style.

21 status which these children can meet” (Cohen, 1955, p. 121). Cohen’s (1955) work is instructive as it incorporated a distinct link between subcultural theory and youth deviance. Cohen’s primary research focus was, therefore, to explain why ‘juvenile delinquency’, or what Cohen describes as the ‘petty crimes’ committed by young people in groups arises and is thus clearly focused on the subcultural groupings rather than the individual focus of Merton’s (1938) strain theory.

The importance of Cohen’s (1955) study is in his theory building focus as he sought to develop a theory of subcultural group dynamics. As Cohen (1955, p. 173) states, “It would be desirable to continue and expand research on delinquent groups as social systems, that is, research whose object is the structure, the processes, the history and the subculture of the group as such rather than the [individual] delinquent.” Cohen

(1956) thus paves the way for future researchers by suggesting a range of questions and a research approach that favours an emphasis on identifying and explaining subcultures as a collective social process. The emphasis Cohen (1955) places upon researching youth groups is a relevant point for my study. As in a similar way my study is focused upon a social system or a community of practice that can be theorised as a social learning system that is intrinsically linked to group dynamics.

Cloward and Ohlin (1960) built upon the work of Cohen (1955), positing the idea that limited opportunity structures influence subcultural involvement and foster delinquent behaviour. Bloch and Niederhoffer (1956, p. 17) hypothesised that the function of the gang was to provide for lower class youth “the same psychological content and function as the more formalised rituals found in other societies.” In this way, Bloch and Niederhoffer (1956) argue that the gang creates alternative pathways to adulthood

22 for disadvantaged youths. This is an important touchstone as it highlights the developmental and psychological aspects of these theories of subculture that in contrast to Cohen sought to uphold psychosocial understandings of youth subcultures.

These psychological theorisations of subculture are significant as they point to a cause and effect interpretation of ‘delinquent’ youth, thus implying that there is a normative path that young people walk during the course of their development, but that this path can be ‘derailed’ by certain risk factors in adolescence (Arnett, 1999; Mizen, 2004).

This perception that youth are socially constructed as at risk is still a prevalent idea in youth policy today (White & Wyn, 2011). Miller (1958) taking a noteworthy class based focus argued simply that gang involvement and delinquency were nothing more than an extension of lower class youth culture; therefore delinquent subcultures were an expected expression of the youthful underclass. With the publication of Miller’s

(1958) findings the concept of class emerged as a framework for theorising youth subculture and in this way opened up a fresh avenue for future scholars to frame the concept of youth subculture within a class based perspective.

While Miller (1958) argues for a research approach focused on the processes, the history and the subculture of the group, subsequent studies building upon his work continually emphasised the causal relationship between delinquency or ‘youth crime’ and lower class youth culture, with a clear fixation on the criminality of youth subcultural groupings. The above studies suggested that youth subcultures emerged as an oppositional response to unattainable middle-class values and thus resulted in youth delinquency and associated criminality.

23 Williams (2011) points out that following on from the work of Cohen (1955), in subsequent research in the USA there were attempts made to expand the scope of the subcultural concept and improve its analytical usefulness by a focus on ‘contraculture’ (Yinger, 1960) and ‘counter-culture’ (Roberts, 1978). However, despite these useful theoretical advances, the concept of subculture in the USA came to be increasingly associated with ‘youth crime’ and criminological understandings of the concept that made very little attempt to understand young people’s subjective experience of subcultural participation. This has implications for my own study as I seek to explore the experience of young male graffiti writers by adopting a practice theory framework that investigates graffiti writing as an expression of agency from within the culture under study and in this way places primary importance on the connection between being and doing by a focus on the pedagogical and productive aspects of their practice.

While, in the United States the concept of subcultures was being re-conceptualised within a criminological framework a very different trajectory was developing in the

United Kingdom, where there were efforts to shift the focus away from the deviant pathologising of young people to a class based approach to the study of youth subcultures that recovered agency and brought it to the fore in their theorisations of youth subcultures as representing resistance to hegemonic control.

The Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (BCCCS) sought to develop a theory of popular culture that would avoid the pathologising of youth culture (Clarke, Hall, Jefferson and Roberts, 1997), with a specific focus on the structural inequalities encountered by working class youth. This represented a very

24 important shift from functionalist understandings of subculture that focused on the interplay between culture and social structure to a Marxist position that emphasised social class as the essential structural factor in theorising youth subcultures.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the scholarship produced by the BCCCS championed working class subcultures, albeit primarily white and male and notably not female, such as the mods, rockers, teddy boys, punks and school lads as working class resistors to subordination at the hands of the middle-class and elite parent culture.

The theoretical shift advanced by the BCCCS occurred at a significant point in history as Christine Griffin (2011, p. 246) points out, explaining that “[t]he youth sub/cultures project was formed at a particular historical, cultural and political conjuncture, as referenced in the subtitle of ‘Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post- war Britain’.” Griffin (2011) goes on to argue that the years following the close of the

Second World War were marked by the emergence of the ‘teenager’ as a specific and new type of consumer that heralded the emergence of a hitherto unknown ‘youth market’. Politically this era was marked by the loss of empire for the United Kingdom, dramatic increases in migration from the former colonies and a seeming economic boom time as the nation sought to rebuild itself after the war. Subcultures where imbued with political meaning such that their actions were theorised as a counter- hegemonic practice (Griffin, 2011, p. 246).

In their ground-breaking work Resistance through Rituals, first published in 1976

Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson sought to focus on the structural inequalities encountered by working class youth and the acts of resistance they employed by their

25 participation in various subcultures. In many respects the scholars of the BCCCS were successful in shifting the focus away from pathological understandings of youth culture as their work created a research milieu that took youth cultures seriously as a core aspect of youth development and identity (Blackman, 2014, p. 502). Despite the

Birmingham School’s shortcomings related to gender and race and an overt focus on white, male, working class subcultures the BCCCS generated new debate around the concept of youth subcultures that moved conceptions of youth cultures forward in significant ways. The BCCCS approach to subculture placed political considerations front and centre in the youth cultures debate by highlighting the structural inequalities that exist within the concept of youth culture. In this way BCCCS scholars sought to theorise youth subculture in a manner that took subcultures seriously and on their own terms, thus legitimating subculturalist non-conformity as a potential site of resistance in political terms informed by consciousness and agency. The above examples emphasise a shift away from conceptualising youth cultures only in terms of age and generation (Griffin, 2011, p. 246).

Yet, in focusing on class and hegemonic resistance BCCCS scholars paid less attention to the day-to-day lived experiences of young people, including ‘ordinary’ working class youth not affiliated with a subculture and how youth experience changes overtime (See Griffin, 2011; Hodkinson, 2016; MacDonald, 1997; Woodman

& Wyn, 2014). This is ironic, given the BCCCS focus on ‘contemporary culture’ and therefore the lack of focus on subjectivities stands out. For example, the concept of subculture as theorised by the BCCCS placed an emphasis on class and the material and structural inequalities in society that impinged upon youth. This led to a focus on oppositional youth subcultures, which were groupings that set themselves apart from

26 mainstream society. For example, Paul Willis (1977) argued, such youth subcultures sought to resist the gravity of the structural forces of capitalism, which nevertheless worked to perpetuate a society in which ‘working class kids, get working class jobs’.

In this way BCCCS analyses, including Willis' (1977), tended to decode the symbolism of youth subcultures through a strict class lens. However as Macdonald

(2001, p. 43) points out the actions of the ‘school lads’ of Willis’ text could just as readily be interpreted as simply resistance to adult authority and not necessarily be read in class terms as resistance to the dominant culture. Despite the seeming limitations of a class based resistive conception of youth subcultures, this is a theme that has synergies with this study, as the participants in this study are in some ways

‘resisters’ to societal norms of acceptable behaviour. This is evident as the practice of writing graffiti illegally in public space transgresses societal norms of civility and legality.

The BCCCS was also roundly criticised for its focus on working class male subcultures at the expense of representations of women. In 1980 Angela McRobbie published her influential article ‘Settling accounts with Subculture: A Feminist

Critique’ in which she critiqued the influential work of Dick Hebdige’s (1979)

‘Subculture: The meaning of style’ for its lack of attention to female subcultures.

McRobbie (1980) argued that in understanding constructions of youth subcultures, it was important to consider the private sphere of domesticity as much as the public scene as at the time access to mobility and public spaces were much more restricted for girls than for boys. This is a critical point, as the gendered nature of youth studies still owes a legacy to the interest in largely male antisocial behaviour, evident in such work as Nancy Macdonald’s (2001) study of the hyper-masculinity of graffiti culture.

The gendered legacy of youth subcultural studies also frames my own research topic.

Graffiti has traditionally been a male dominated culture, but there are now significant numbers of active female writers (Fransberg 2018; Hannerz 2017; Pabón 2013;

Pabón-Colon 2017). As I discuss in greater detail in Chapter 3, my own study was not able to include any female writers. This is in part because, due to the illegality of graffiti writing, it is a difficult culture to gain access to. It took me quite some time to win the trust of the male participants in this study. Although I actively attempted to recruit female graffiti writers for this study and I was introduced to three female graffiti writers, they were ultimately unwilling to participate in the study. I acknowledge that this is a limitation of my study, one that I acknowledge by recognising the specific masculinity of graffiti culture and (at times) the masculine bravura of the graffiti writers who participated in this study. I acknowledge the gendered nature of graffiti writing by showing how masculinity is formed in relation to and in the practices of graffiti that can serve to exclude or minimise women’s participation.

As the above discussion highlights, from the outset, research into youth subcultures has placed an emphasis on documenting and understanding youth subcultures as expressions of resistance, deviance and delinquency, and on highlighting the agency of the young people. Thrasher’s (1927) pioneering work set the tone for this focus, which built upon by successive generations of youth subcultural scholars. However, this is a distinct point of departure from these traditions, as in my study I sought to shift the framework of understanding from subcultural theory to a practice theory perspective and in so doing I am seeking to distance myself from structural accounts

28 (both Functionalist and Marxist) of youth subculture. My contribution is premised upon the view that graffiti writing, although it is often oppositional, is not defined completely by its ‘oppositional’ stance and in doing so I oppose the idea that graffiti writers are just another ‘folk devil’, in the repertoire of deviant youth subcultures as studied from the Chicago School to the BCCCS. In this way I seek to position an understanding of graffiti as a valued cultural expression and activity that is learned and shared by and amongst its practitioners. My study, therefore reflects an interest in the agency expressed in these young men’s actions (what they do as producers) rather than what they represent (styles/symbols/genre).

In line with Paul Hodkinson (2016), I argue that BCCCS subculture theory has offered much to youth studies, especially in its theorisation of spectacular subcultures as a means for ‘some’ working class young people to negotiate their unequal position between their traditional working class culture and a post-modern culture marked by hyper-consumption and leisure pursuits. Hodkinson (2016) argues that in order to move the subculture/post subculture debate forward in a positive way it is important to:

Contextualise youth cultures with respect to their broader significance… as an

emphasis on the study of youth cultures as part of broader biographies has

much potential to harness and develop common strands between’opposed’

theoretical stances and to provide a nuanced set of understandings of the

signifigance of youth cultures in the context of the rest of life.

Hodkinson’s (2016) views are refreshing and signal the need for a new approach that focusses on the broader framework of young peoples lives. Significantly, Hodkinson

29 argues for a more nuanced approach, one that draws on the important legacies of the subcultural perspective while also incorporating new insights offered by a post- subculture perspective, including multiple forms of belonging and a fluidity of experience. This is not to deny that structural inequalities exist but to acknowledge that siginificant social change has occured that has advanced the relative position of large numbers of young people in contemporary society and it is therefore timely to take a more holistic approach to the study of youth cultures. Therefore, my study builds upon significant aspects of the broader biographies of youth by building upon a strand of subcultural theory that explores aspects of cultural forms of resistance arguing that graffiti as a practice has moved beyond its anti-authoritarian focus on resistance to be perceived as a more legitimate art practice.

The concepts and approaches employed in this study help advance an understanding of graffiti culture that moves beyond focusing on either the question of deviancy or the aesthetic style of graffiti writers. What I show in this study is that it is possible to show how young male graffiti writers are positioned as active agents invested in developing forms of belonging and identity and who create a pedagogical community, as evidenced by their teaching and learning practices described in this thesis.

Overall, this thesis draws its inspiration primarily from the concept of communities of practice, a concept which usually focuses on formal or professional leaning settings, to bring about a shift in how young people’s involvement in graffiti is seen. This shift seeks to substantially change the focus away from seeing graffiti as deviant, or as a subcultural form, towards seeing it as a practice that has a strong pedagogical base oriented to the production of graffiti pieces. In summary, the thesis seeks to show that

30 graffiti writers are not vandals, deviants or resistive subculturalists, but are instead active producers of cultural artefacts.

The Study

The purpose of the study is to examine the practice of graffiti by investigating how graffiti writers learn to write signature graffiti with spray-paint. The study employed a qualitative research methodology utilising two complementary methods: semi- structured interviews with active graffiti writers; and direct observation of graffiti practice via a local city council aerosol arts program. The intention was to examine how young men enter the community of graffiti writers and how they learn the practice of graffiti writing within a community in an informal setting. Importantly, the study explores both face-to-face and virtual communities of graffiti practice.

I conducted multiple narrative interviews (between one and three) with each of the eleven male graffiti writers, a total of twenty-one in-depth interviews. The interview participants ranged in age from 15 to 40, with the average age being 24. The older writers participating in the study were asked to reflect upon their early years of practice and their experiences of learning about graffiti when they were young. In broad terms, the purpose of the interviews was to explore how young male graffiti writers enter a graffiti crew, how they experience graffiti culture, and to examine their embodied learning within that community of practice. The interviews were supplemented with direct observation of graffiti writers in practice.

I observed a number of informal painting sessions among young male writers that were guided by older, experienced male graffiti writers acting in the capacity of

31 mentors to the younger writers participating in the program. These painting sessions were conducted in a legal context at a council youth facility, set up for the purpose of painting graffiti, with blank walls and large plywood poster-boards on which the young people could practice. I also observed legal painting days carried out in the public domain in laneways in the Central Business District, the inner Eastern Suburb of Richmond, and in an inner Western Suburb of Melbourne. These observations allowed me to gain firsthand knowledge of the practice of graffiti writing and the inner workings of graffiti crews that are integral to learning within the graffiti culture.

The direct observation allowed me to see the informal interactions and learning that take place when young male graffiti writers come together to perform their art practice. Of particular interest was observing the participants’ practice talk when at the wall painting, discussed in greater detail in chapter five. Practice talk involved a number of components, including talking within practice (exchanging information about painting) and talking about practice (telling stories). Practice talk is an important means of learning, of modelling behaviour, and of developing attitudes and an identity that accords with understandings of what it means to be a young male graffiti writer. In this way the skills-based learning that occurs is also tied to the gradual construction of an identity marked by a specific framing of masculinity as understood within the culture of graffiti writing that privileges competitiveness, risk- seeking behaviours, aggressive physicality, casual violence and, at times, negative perceptions of women.

32 Contribution

This study aims to contribute fresh insights into the social and cultural nature of graffiti through an investigation of it as a community-based learning practice, one that enables the learning of worthwhile lifelong skills for young writers. These skills have significant benefits for them because their involvement in graffiti writing offers an opportunity to learn transferable skills. Theoretically, the study seeks to open up ways of seeing graffiti as a youth practice with a clear pedagogical foundation. The literature on communities of practice maintains a strong focus on learning that occurs in more formalised environments such as on-the-job training settings and workplace learning environments (see Beckett & Hager, 2002; Bettiol & Sedita, 2011; Fuller et al., 2005), but has very little to say about the learning that transpires in a highly informal environment such as that experienced in a graffiti crew engaged in the production of graffiti pieces.

The focus of this study is youth culture as a site of informal learning; it seeks to contribute to the field of youth studies by showing how graffiti culture involves knowledge, skills and pedagogies for learning. The communities of practice framework is therefore used as a conceptual tool to elucidate an understanding of informally-organised youth cultures as valid sites of learning that can provide the foundation for future learning and skills development, which in turn can provide a career trajectory for young graffiti writers. The study, in opening up avenues for exploring the way we understand how young people learn best, has potential applications for the wider field of education of young people at the senior secondary and post-secondary levels of education.

33 Organisation of the Thesis

In chapter two, the literature review, I examine research on graffiti writing to map its transition from a deviant act to a position of greater acceptance within major urban areas such as Melbourne. I draw upon a range of literature concerned with how graffiti has been studied and understood. The themes and gaps identified in this review framed and gave direction to my research focus and questions. I articulate an understanding of the scholarly field, and position my research in reference to existing scholarship. This includes discussion of the subcultural literature and why it does not adequately address the concerns of my research questions. I argue that it is now time to step back from theories of subculture and engage with graffiti from a practice perspective. There is a large body of work that has focused on various types of graffiti, including historical graffiti, latrinalia (more commonly referred to as restroom/toilet graffiti), political graffiti, prison graffiti, and gang graffiti. While these form part of the backdrop to the concerns of this thesis, they are not examined in detail, as the primary focus of chapter two is a review of literature more exclusively focused on contemporary signature graffiti.

In Chapter three I discuss the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the thesis. I outline the significant aspects of practice theory and discuss how the empirical data was analysed through the lens of communities of practice. I then address the methodological approach and research design of the study. The philosophical foundations are discussed as is the research process, including methods and tools employed to gather, analyse and present the data. The chapter includes a discussion of the steps taken in data analysis and thematic coding of the empirical data that forms the basis of analysis in the study. I adopted semi-structured interviews

34 with, and observations of active graffiti writers in Melbourne, Victoria. I decided to use an ethnographically-informed qualitative approach as this provided a valuable means of gathering rich firsthand accounts of a complex social phenomenon. I was able to observe firsthand the social interactions which informed the line of questioning developed in the interviews (Creswell, 2013; Denzin & Lincoln, 2005).

In chapters four, five and six I present the substantive findings of the study. In

Chapter four I explore how young people begin the journey of becoming graffiti writers by examining the study participants’ entry to practice. The concept of community is a fundamental component of how I theorise the learning that the young men in this study experience when they enter into the practice of graffiti writing. I therefore consider how one becomes a graffiti writer by firstly identifying how the research participants perceive and conceptualise the graffiti crew. The participants discussed notions of family, belonging, shared stories, mutual relationships, acceptance, protection, trust and commitment. These concepts align with an understanding of a community of practice (Wenger, 1998, p. 125). Drawing on the interview data, I explore how a graffiti crew emerges from the shared passions, interests and goals of the community’s members who learn the practice of graffiti writing by engaging in its production. This conceptualisation of a graffiti crew supports the notion that learning best occurs within the social sphere of the community.

Chapter five explores the experience of graffiti writers in-practice. In this chapter I argue that young males involved in the practice of graffiti writing are positioned as

‘situated learners’ within the context of the graffiti crew and that the practice of

35 graffiti can serve as an important pathway for learning, social inclusion and the development of transferable skills. I explore interview narratives that speak to how participants learn the practice of graffiti within a situated learning context, with less experienced writers observing and learning from more experienced writers. In this chapter I also explore the practice of graffiti writing as a masculine act that often portrays women in a demeaning way due to the hyper-masculine nature of graffiti culture, perhaps in this way serving as a community of exclusion. Overall, my findings indicate that graffiti is learnt via observation, participation and innovation within the situated context of the graffiti crew.

In Chapter six I consider the virtual space of on-line communities of practice. The impact of the Internet and social media on the graffiti community has been rapid and dramatic, bringing with it a number of significant transformations that present both opportunities and challenges for the culture of graffiti writing. I explore the impact of the Internet and social media on the graffiti crew, arguing that the rise and uptake of

Internet-mediated social networking platforms such as Instagram and You Tube have offered a range of affordances to the practice of graffiti writing. These include: greater accessibility to the culture for those young people who may be excluded from the real time practice of graffiti writing due to their gender, ability or age; learning opportunities for novice writers; and opportunities for wider distribution and the curation of graffiti pieces. At the same time the Internet and social media challenge the significance of the notion of ‘community’, that is the physical social interaction afforded by participation in real world graffiti crews. While there are thus tangible benefits to the uptake of social media and use of the Internet by both novice and

36 master graffiti writers, ultimately it is the importance of the physical communal bonds experienced within the graffiti crew that are vital to the culture.

Chapter seven, the concluding chapter, discusses the overall findings and contributions of the study, including a reflective evaluation of its scope and its limitations, then makes suggestions for further research. This study has found that graffiti practice offers meaningful outcomes for its practitioners such as skills development in a range of specific aspects of art practice, including technique, drawing, material estimation, and mentoring and leadership skills. The learning gained from participation in a community-based practice offers the graffiti practitioners worthwhile lifelong skills. This skills development provides real world benefits for them, especially for disengaged and socially-stigmatised young men; by involvement in graffiti writing they have the opportunity to learn valuable transferable skills. This learning is experienced by graffiti writers within a community of practice that is marked by the highest level of friendship, camaraderie and trust. As graffiti writing is a high-risk illegal activity, the bond that develops between writers is strong, with the community relying on its members to be reliable, committed and, above all, trustworthy.

37 Chapter 2 Literature Review: Contextualising Graffiti

This chapter offers a critical review of the research literature on graffiti, charting different trends and preoccupations, and noting gaps. As part of the backdrop to that review, I begin by providing an account of the social status of graffiti, given that it partly parallels scholarly assessments of its meaning. In particular I focus on the social and cultural context of graffiti in the large capital city of Melbourne, the city where I live and in which my fieldwork was conducted. Graffiti has arguably shifted from being viewed as a stain on the urban landscape to a more legitimate art form that has had an impact on creative industries around the world, from entertainment to fashion (Waclawek, 2011).

This chapter documents how graffiti writing is now viewed as part of the urban culture of contemporary Melbourne. Graffiti, having become an iconic art form, is a factor in positioning Melbourne as a cultural and artistic hub in the world (Young,

2013). While there are some studies that explore pedagogical aspects of graffiti culture, graffiti writing has yet to be comprehensively examined in a way that seeks to understand it as a learnt practice. In this chapter, I draw upon a range of literature concerned with how graffiti has been studied and understood to explore the shifting perspective of youth through the practice of graffiti writing. In so doing, I show why there is a strong justification for investigating young male graffiti writers from a fresh theoretical perspective.

The chapter begins with a brief discussion of the historical background of graffiti, pointing out that graffiti has a long history that is reflected in the desire for human

38 expression. I then explore the recent history and origins of contemporary signature graffiti that arose with the birth of Hip-Hop culture in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s. As Melbourne is the field site for this qualitative study of graffiti writing, I then explore the origins and shifting landscape of graffiti writing in Melbourne, arguing that the perception of graffiti in Melbourne has slowly shifted and that graffiti now occupies a more legitimate and accepted position within society, thus inviting new perspectives on graffiti writing. This is followed by an examination of key studies of graffiti writing in order to explore how graffiti has been previously researched and framed and to position my study within existing scholarship.

Historical Graffiti

Graffiti has been studied from a range of perspectives including literary, archeological, psychological, sociological and criminological. The word graffiti derives from the

Italian graffito, to scratch, and from Greek graphein, to mark, draw, or write (Baird &

Taylor, 2011). The earliest known forms of graffiti appear in the Paleolithic period in the form of rock art and cave paintings such as those found in the Blombos Cave in

South Africa, and in the Lascaux caves in Dordogne in Southern France which date back to 50,000 BC (Baird & Taylor, 2011). Graffiti, it appears, is as old as human history; it seems to be an element of the human condition to express oneself publicly in this manner by the inscribing of textual or symbolic images on the physical environment, whether on the walls of caves or on contemporary urban structures, as discussed in the paragraph below.

Not usually associated with graffiti writing, the word ‘Eternity’ was tagged across the breadth of the city and the suburbs of Sydney from the 1930s through to the 1960s.

39 Arthur Stace, an illiterate former soldier and devout Christian, wandered the streets at night writing the single word ‘Eternity’ in chalk all across the city and suburbs (Fidler,

2017). See Figure 2.1 below for an example of the smooth-flowing copperplate signature of ‘Eternity’ produced by Stace. It is estimated that Stace wrote the word over half a million times. It is interesting to note that the tag ‘Eternity’ never raised the ire of citizens, government or police, most likely because the tag was executed in the impermanent medium of chalk. The tag ‘Eternity’ became an iconic symbol for

Australians, being celebrated even in Sydney’s New Year’s Eve Fireworks display marking New Year’s Day 2000. Stace’s elegant copperplate word ‘Eternity’ was writ large in sparkling writing emanating from Sydney Harbour Bridge (Williams &

Meyers, 2017).

Figure 2.1: Replica of Eternity tag Sydney Town Hall. Photo Credit: Sardaka (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3976888).

Journalist Richard Fidler, who hosts the Conversations show on ABC Radio National, interviewed Roy Williams, one of the authors of a recently published biography of

Arthur Stace (Fidler, 2017). In this conversation, though neither the words graffiti nor tag were mentioned, it is ironic that in describing how and when Arthur Stace went

40 about writing his word the description of Stace’s practice, related by Williams to

Fidler, aligns with that of the contemporary graffiti writer who sets out late at night or in the very early hours of the morning, walking in the shadows, looking for the best spots to write their word, and waiting for the opportune moment to step to the wall and quickly execute their tag (Fidler, 2017). Whether it is EISR or Eternity does not really matter, as it is all graffiti, a mark made on the city to declare one’s existence –

‘I am here’. I have included this example to highlight the historical significance of graffiti as a very public and expressive act that is understood in context-specific ways that can determine the social status of graffiti and how it is ultimately perceived by those who encounter it.

Contemporary Graffiti

Contemporary signature graffiti has its origins in New York City’s Hip-Hop culture that developed in the 1970s and 1980s (Austin, 2001; Castleman, 1982; Lachmann,

1988). Some argue however that graffiti writing was initially introduced in

Philadelphia in the late 1960s by signature graffiti pioneers such as ‘Cool Earl’ and

‘Cornbread’ who wrote their signature names repeatedly as territorial markers, ascribing a proprietary meaning to urban space (Ley & Cybriwski, 1974; Waclawek,

2011). This set the foundation for tagging, though the now legendary TAKI-183 is the universally accepted pioneer of the signature graffiti tag (Austin, 2001; Castleman,

1982; Lachmann, 1988). His tag could be found written on surfaces all across the five

Burroughs of New York City (Hogan, 1971). These early tags were not stylised, being famous primarily due to the sheer number of times the tag was made. For an example of the type of tag produced by TAKI183 see figure 2.2 below, particularly noting the lack of any stylised aspects to the tag. NYC is also universally recognised (Cooper &

41 Chalfant, 1984) for introducing the world to graffiti writing on train carriages, such that throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s literally every train in the New York

City Metropolitan Transit system was covered in tags and panel pieces. Writers such as PHASE2 and DAZE, who both visited Melbourne in 1988 (Cubrilo et al., 2009), as well as DURO, MAREL139, CASE2, ZEPHYR and DONDI, among many others, became famous for their graffiti pieces, playing an integral part in the birth and international spread of graffiti culture (Cooper & Chalfant, 1984; Cubrilo et al., 2009).

NYC Hip-Hop culture is thus legendary in spawning the form of contemporary signature graffiti practice that is prevalent in the world today, from Melbourne to

Moscow, Santiago to Sydney, and pretty much everywhere in between where one can see graffiti pieces dotting the urban landscape (Irving, 2014).

Figure 2.2: TAKI183 tag This demonstrates the very basic nature of early tags. Photo credit: New York Times.

Graffiti is a paradox existing within a contradictory duality – simultaneously an aesthetic practice and a criminal activity (Halsey & Young, 2006). Graffiti is a street- based practice that is performed in the public domain; as such the streets of the city become a cultural space for young people that is significant in their identity formation

(White, 1990). Graffiti is an emergent art form that developed in the context of the

42 rise of youth culture in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In contrast to the consumer- oriented youth cultural forms of the period, graffiti was a product of a youthful transgressive reclamation of public space (Ferrell, 1996). By staking a claim to a wall, the physical space becomes a site for a symbolic display of stylised colour and dash that proclaims ‘I’ the graffiti writer ‘am here’ (Macdonald, 2001). Graffiti is more than simply the material interface of spray paint and a surface however. There are many factors that come together to develop a graffiti writer and to produce the range of meanings that are attached to the writer’s narrative of practice. Graffiti in this sense is a complex social phenomenon that eludes easy classification. Graffiti has been conceptualised as a classed, racialised and psycho-socialised phenomenon (Dickinson,

2008; Hedegaard, 2014; Lasley, 1995; Othen-Price, 2006; Pani & Sagliaschi, 2009;

Myra Frances Taylor, 2012; Watzlawik, 2014). While these treatments of graffiti offer a number of relevant analyses of various aspects of graffiti, they continue to focus on the behaviour of writers. It is important to note that they impose analytic frames rather than necessarily attending to the experiences of the writers themselves.

The Origins and Shifting Landscape of Melbourne Graffiti

From the early scrawls of Taki-183 that adorned the trains and walls of the Five

Burroughs of New York City (Castleman, 1982), graffiti has grown to become a globalised phenomenon practised by young people the world over. Melbourne is no exception. The graffiti writing scene in Melbourne arguably emerged out of the nascent culture of Hip-Hop that was prominent in Melbourne in the early 1980s, having crossed the Pacific from the United States (Cubrilo et al., 2009; Mitchell,

2003). The Hip-Hop culture from the New York City neighbourhoods of the Bronx and Washington Heights in the late 1970s and early 1980s had an immediate impact

43 on young people, rapidly spreading across the USA and internationally, due in large part to the popularity of Rap music and the films Wild Style, Style Wars and Beat

Street (Irving, 2014; Rose, 1994).

The writing of stylised signature graffiti is one of the four pillars of Hip-Hop, the others being DJing (turntables), MCing (rapping) and Breakdancing (Mitchell, 2003;

Rose, 1994). According to Cubrilo et al. (2009), the origins of Melbourne’s graffiti writing culture are complex; no-one really knows who the first crew or writers to get started were, though they do suggest that writers emerged out of a number of Hip-Hop breakdance crews that branched out to embrace graffiti writing as part of the wider culture of Hip-Hop (Cubrilo et al., 2009). While the links to Hip-Hop culture were significant in the early days of Melbourne graffiti, graffiti has now developed a distinctive culture of its own, and, although respect is still paid to graffiti’s Hip-Hop origins, it is a much less significant part of the culture amongst contemporary

Melbourne graffiti writers.

From its earliest beginnings Melbourne graffiti was received with a mixture of intrigue and disdain (Cubrilo et al., 2009; Dew, 2007). There was some media interest in graffiti as an art form, with headlines such as “Aerosol art becomes respectable”

(Morgan, 1991), “Graffiti? No way – this is art” (1991), and “Graffiti makes its mark”

(Collins, 1991). These more positive articles on graffiti were generated by a successful national exhibition of graffiti pieces on canvas organised by the Victorian

Association of Youth in Communities (VAYC) in 1991. While these articles brought to the fore some of the positive and creative aspects of the culture that was seeking to breakdown the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate art, they were

44 ultimately concerned with the aesthetic value of graffiti and how young people could be guided to undertake legal forms of graffiti. By and large graffiti was met with hostility however and more typically depicted by the mainstream media as “The graffiti disease” (Brundrett, 1990) that was infecting Melbourne youth and creating an outlaw subculture of ‘loutish thugs’ involved in ‘graffiti gangs’ (Drislane, 1990b;

Freeman-Greene, 1989; Harvey, 1990). Graffiti writers, described as ‘train vandals’, were routinely portrayed as gang members associated with a range of criminal activities including assault and theft, including vehicle theft. Graffiti writers in the

1990s were also described as being in the thrall of addiction: ‘…graffiti gang members obtain a real ’buzz’ from irritating adults, eluding apprehension, and performing daredevil stunts on trains’ (Tuckerman, 1990). Articles such as these were routinely published with images of displays of makeshift weapons reportedly seized from public transport users in an apparent effort to equate graffiti writers with violence and criminal behaviour. Much of this sensationalist reporting had very little basis in fact. While a range of issues marred public transport in Melbourne during this period, it was not all attributable to young graffiti writers as the media tried to suggest.

Throughout the 1990s graffiti fired the imaginations of Melbourne’s young people, with their tags and pieces beginning to saturate the metropolitan train system. During this period the press was not always as negative, as noted above; there were stories that attempted to capture the positives of graffiti, or at least to portray it as a new and emerging art form. Articles such as these generated much debate about the artistic merit of graffiti. Terry Lane for instance described graffiti thus: ‘[a]t its best the work of the Melbourne vandals is a tenth-rate imitation of a form that was original in New

York 10 years ago. I have never seen a single stroke of paint on a Melbourne train

45 that could be dignified by the word art’ (Lane, 1988). To counter this view in the debate, special reporter Tim Pie (1990) of the Herald-Sun wrote an article focused on

Melbourne street artist and art teacher Mike Brown which addressed the question,

‘Graffiti, is it art or is it vandalism?’ In the article, Pie explores some of the positive aspects of graffiti culture, such as the increasing practice of commissioning of graffiti writers to produce legal murals in an effort to disrupt illegal tagging in the inner suburbs of Melbourne (Pie, 1990). The increasing acknowledgement of the legitimacy of graffiti as a recognised art form was also evident from Richmond City Council’s supporting an initiative of the Victorian Aerosol Art Committee [VAYC], a community organisation focused on generating opportunities for safe and legal places for young graffiti writers to paint, to produce a large legal mural on the external wall of Richmond Train Station (Freeman-Greene, 1990).

During the 1990s, Melbourne’s young graffiti writers found a home in the Victorian

Association of Youth in Communities (VAYC). Through the efforts of the VAYC and its Executive Director Errol Morris, young graffiti writers in Melbourne soon had vocal support for legal spaces to paint in the city (Cubrilo et al., 2009). Legal walls were established in Melbourne’s City Square, while the VAYC assisted writers to get work doing commissioned graffiti pieces for local businesses and city councils (Ford,

1989; Freeman-Greene, 1990). There was also a softening in the approach to tackling graffiti; a report from the Australian Institute of Criminology signalled a shift in focus from eradication of graffiti to a more meaningful reduction approach that acknowledged the history of graffiti (Drislane, 1990a).

46 As graffiti entered the new millennium, tensions and contradictions in relation to graffiti persisted in Melbourne as a variety of stakeholders continued to grapple with the question of whether or not graffiti was a form of art or vandalism. Throughout the early 2000s and into the present-day, graffiti has slowly but increasingly developed a more credible image, due in part to the rise of street art and its association with graffiti in the eyes of the art world. Robert Lindsay, former curator of creative art at the National Gallery of Victoria, claimed that graffiti is gradually being accepted as a legitimate art form by the art world, though he observes that it will only be fully accepted if it is practised in socially neutral places (Pie, 1990). The idea of a socially neutral space speaks to the primary point of contention in relation to the legitimacy of graffiti, that is, the question of legality that underscores the perennial question of whether graffiti is art or vandalism. Moves toward greater legitimacy were further demonstrated in the opening of the Autopsy Gallery in Melbourne which has held exhibitions of prominent graffiti writers and street artists, such as New York City’s

Aaron Rose and California’s NECKFACE (Bakkar, 2007). The close association between graffiti and street art gives a sense of legitimacy to graffiti writers, with street art having made the transition to the ‘socially neutral’ spaces of galleries. In this fashion the art world has again taken notice of graffiti writing as a valued cultural commodity. Graffiti is thus portrayed in a more positive light through its ascendency in the art world.

Graffiti now features in curated art shows organised by internationally-recognised galleries such as the National Gallery of Victoria. Melbourne has also become a graffiti and street art tourist destination, attracting thousands of domestic and international visitors annually to view the displays of graffiti pieces in the city’s

47 laneways. Melbourne features regularly on ‘Top 10’ Internet lists of best international graffiti locations, and in a range of tourist advertisements about city life and culture

(Young 2011, 2013). The National Gallery of Victoria’s Melbourne Now exhibition featured graffiti and street art including All Your Walls. It was an exhibition described by Alison Young (2011) as a melding of graffiti and street in the heart of Melbourne’s art precinct. ‘All Your Walls is located in the two laneways best known for street art in

Melbourne, Hosier Lane and Rutledge Lane, located just across from the Ian Potter

Centre on Federation Square. The event involved the top-to-bottom repainting of most of the two laneways’ walls with dozens of street art and graffiti pieces’.

There are now several graffiti and street art tours operating in the City of Melbourne, including ‘Urban Scrawl’, ‘Walk to Art’, ‘Melbourne Graffiti Tours’ and ‘Blender

Studios Urban Art Tours’, all of which employ active graffiti writers and street artists as tour guides, further illustrating the growing acceptance of graffiti writing in

Melbourne (MacDowall, 2014; Young, 2010).

To further underscore the transition in the perception of graffiti from a deviant act to graffiti as a form of expression worthy of greater acceptance in society, it is useful to briefly highlight an example. ADNATE is a Melbourne street artist whose work is currently much in demand but whose roots are firmly in Melbourne’s graffiti writing culture, still considered deviant by some. As a young graffiti writer he tagged and pieced ADNATE all across the city. We would not have the acclaimed street art produced by ADNATE if he had not learned how to write graffiti with a spray can when he began tagging on the Upfield Train Line in Melbourne’s inner north as a young man in the AWOL crew. This is an example of the progression of an art form,

48 one that is making the transition to greater acceptance in society. ADNATE’s website describes him as ‘…an artist that realizes his portraits in spray paint. He has moved past his roots in graffiti, utilizing the medium to carry his realist style into the fine art realm’ (ADNATE 2018). In this case, we have a graffiti writer and tagger who is now arguably one of the most successful street artists in Australia, showing that graffiti is now generally viewed as a legitimate art form. Graffiti has therefore become a more recognised art form, even if a contested one. More importantly, however, graffiti is also a cultural practice that marks urban environments in unique ways, therefore warranting a fresh theoretical perspective to examine it. I now turn to mapping debates and concerns about contemporary graffiti as they are discussed in the literature.

Key Themes in Studies of Graffiti

Scholarship on the practice of contemporary signature graffiti is relatively young, having emerged in tandem with the rise of the practice in the 1970s and 1980s. The first text to document graffiti was published at the birth of graffiti writing in 1974.

This text included a photo essay of the emerging culture of graffiti writing along with an essay by Norman Mailer articulating the rich cultural aspects of the new urban art form (Kurlansky, Naar, & Mailer, 1974). This text was devoid of any analysis of the emerging cultural practice. It functioned more as a celebration of an art form created by the city’s young people that challenged the very conception of art and who could legitimately lay claim to it.

Craig Castleman (1982) was the first scholar to attempt a sociological understanding of contemporary graffiti writing, an understanding that moved beyond capturing the

49 aesthetic value of graffiti writing as developed in New York City in the 1970s and

1980s. Apart from Cooper and Chalfant’s (1984) photo study of graffiti and

Castleman’s (1982) seminal research on the emerging culture, there was very little academic interest in examining the phenomenon of graffiti writing (Castleman, 1982).

Castleman (1982) meticulously documented the culture of graffiti writers in New

York City, but Castleman’s focus was on producing a “strictly descriptive study [of graffiti writing], not on an analysis of the overall meaning or social significance of graffiti writing”. This would be left to future scholars to explore. In this way,

Castleman produced the first social documentation of graffiti culture, developing a descriptive outline of this culture that would be filled in with analytic accounts by later scholars. Castleman’s research, while very descriptive, employs no theoretical discussion of graffiti writing; it simply documents the culture by drawing upon extracts of the many interviews conducted for his study with New York City graffiti writers.

While graffiti’s entry to the academy was in its infancy when Castleman was writing, it has grown to be a substantial field of study now, examined from a range of disciplinary perspectives. As Van Loon (2014) argues, graffiti has been examined in a range of sub-disciplines, resulting in a wide variety of fragmented understandings of graffiti writing behaviour. On the whole they do not adequately account for the complex interconnection of factors, including socio-cultural, economic and spatial aspects. Perhaps this fragmentation is not surprising when researchers are trying to understand a complex social practice, particularly as graffiti itself is a powerful form of expression that emerged ‘from below’ via a collective impulse to ‘proclaim I am here’ by the very public placing of a symbolic word. Graffiti, in this sense, is a very

50 personal individual endeavour, one that also functions as a collective activity through participation in graffiti crews. Campos (2013) argues that graffiti can be best understood as a formula for empowerment of its young practitioners who seek to create identities outside the bounds of the dominant social norms via ‘games of identity’ formation that are marked by aspects of performance and skillful inventiveness. Graffiti is therefore ‘an anonymous way to be heard, an act of personal or group empowerment, or a secret language’ (Wacławek, 2011, p. 43).

Space and Graffiti

Scholars have explored graffiti in a wide range of intellectual traditions, engaging with various aspects of graffiti practice to explain, interpret or contextualise graffiti, and working within specific conceptual and theoretical frameworks. Analytical approaches to graffiti reflect a broad range of disciplinary perspectives. An important aspect of graffiti is its fundamental relationship to space and the urban environment

(Bandaranaike, 2001; Chmielewska, 2007; Dovey, Wollan, & Woodcock, 2012;

Haworth, Bruce, & Iveson, 2013; Iveson, 2013; McAuliffe & Iveson, 2011; Mubi

Brighenti, 2010; Pan, 2014). As Ferrel and Weide (2010, p. 48) point out, graffiti

‘cannot be understood outside its urban context’. Graffiti has therefore been conceptualised as a form of urban ‘alternative heritage’ whose authenticity may be challenged by the application of official heritage frameworks and protections

(MacDowall, 2006; Merrill, 2015). van Loon (2014) found that graffiti writers have implicit frameworks that dictate where graffiti is placed in the urban context, mostly determined by geographical factors. van Loon (2014) therefore argues that writers contribute to the production of urban surfaces, creating landscapes that influence social practices. The focus is therefore on writers’ behaviours with regard to the

51 placement of graffiti in urban space; it does not explore the practice orientation of graffiti writing.

The spatial dimensions of graffiti are in some respects self-evident as graffiti is performed in public space, with graffiti writers literally using “the city walls themselves as a canvas for new image-making” (Austin, 2001, p. 33). Graffiti as a textual form in the urban environment is unsanctioned, in this way challenging sanctioned texts that adorn the city, texts such as shop signs, billboards and other forms of advertising (Carrington, 2009). Graffiti is therefore marked by contestation as it emerges within the contested spaces of our cities, and is itself a contested practice that sits uneasily on the fence between art and vandalism, acceptance and rejection.

Graffiti, Deviant Careers and Subcultures

Graffiti has by and large been perceived therefore as a problem to be solved and not as an opportunity to engage young people and to channel their creativity into positive directions. Richard Lachmann (1988), in exploring some of these elements, highlights a missed opportunity by city authorities for engaging young writers in NYC.

Lachmann (1988) studied New York City graffiti from the perspective of its role in developing a ‘deviant career’, that is, he explored the social interaction between writers and their patrons, their audiences, each other, and the police. Lachman (1988) conceptualises graffiti in relation to the sociological literature of subcultures, deviant careers, and art worlds. As Castleman (1982) found previously, Lachmann (1988) argues that gaining fame is a central component of graffiti writing, essential to the development of a writing career. Young writers, he argues, come to the realisation

52 that there is an audience for their work among other writers whom they may also seek as mentors. Older writers, Lachman (1988) argues, will seek out young novices to apprentice, as this has a twofold impact. First, it benefits the novice as their mentor teaches them skills and techniques, and, second, it benefits the mentor, as their young novices will spread the word about their mentor’s skills and exploits, thus furthering the mentor’s fame in the community.

In contrast to Castleman’s (1982) earlier study, Lachmann (1988) argues that class and race play a part in determining who writes graffiti. He found that writers tended to be poor and of black or Hispanic background. Castleman (1982) however suggests that writers come from all class, socio-economic and racial backgrounds. Writing in the mid 2000s, Snyder (2009, p. 2) articulated a very similar point, observing that ‘in

1982 Castleman (1982) wrote that few generalisations could be made about the type of kid who writes graffiti, and that remains true today.’ Graffiti writers come from a range of socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds. While graffiti may have its origins in the African-American Hip-Hop culture that developed in the Bronx, in the present we are not dealing with a ‘black culture’; we are dealing with a global culture.

Lachmann’s (1988) study ultimately portrays graffiti culture in New York as fragmented due to crews splintering as a result of the career choices available to writers. They either pursued a deviant career path (often marked by receiving a retainer from local street gangs to write gang logos exclusively) or pursued success in the art gallery scene that was popular in the 1980s. The gallery option was short-lived, however, as the market for graffiti canvases collapsed in the mid 1980s. Lachmann

(1988) frames his study in a comparative analysis of the deviant career and the more

53 legitimate career, as seen in the gallery scene. In doing so, he draws upon Becker’s

(1963) concept of the deviant career path. This conceptualisation serves to preserve and project the view conveyed in mainstream media depictions of graffiti artists as deviants whose abnormal behaviour is the result of psychological problems (Othen-

Price, 2006; Pani & Sagliaschi, 2009). Until more recently, constructions of graffiti as deviant, and in particular graffiti as representing a deviant subculture, have predominated in the scholarly literature.

The study of graffiti has been dominated by a focus on the writers themselves as a sociological category. The focus has been on them as a youth group viewed in the same way as are street gangs (Docuyanan, 2000; Gomez, 1992; Phillips, 1999) and other urban youth subcultural groups (Ferrell, 1996, 1998; Lasley, 1995; Macdonald,

2001; Mitchell, 2003; Rahn, 2002; Snyder, 2006; Taylor, 2013; Taylor & Khan, 2012).

There is a need to move beyond conceptions of youth groups as subcultures and to conceptualise a youth group such as a graffiti crew as a learning community that sits alongside mainstream youth cultures. A ‘deviance’ focus can obscure important aspects of life that are best addressed through a focus on learning and cultural production. In my study, this idea of a learning community is ‘married’ with communities of practice, a concept that is most usually employed in a formal educational or workplace context, to create new knowledge about how graffiti culture involves the production of knowledge, skills development and pedagogies for learning.

The Chicago School of Sociology was influential in defining youth groupings (such as immigrant street gangs and other urban youth subcultural groups) in terms of their

‘deviant’ or ‘delinquent’ behaviour. Blackman (2014) rightly argues that the Chicago

54 School described these forms of deviancy in terms of their cultural and community meanings, insofar as it promoted social cohesion and a sense of community amongst subcultural groups like the ‘gang’. Significantly, Chicago School scholars explained this use of communal understandings of deviancy as standing in opposition to a pathological understanding of deviance and in this way my study has some synergies with this early approach.

The emphasis placed upon notions of social cohesion amongst poor urban youth in marginalised neighbourhoods is best exemplified in Frederick Thrasher’s (1927) theorisation of the relationship between poverty and criminality. Thrasher’s (1927) study generated a considerable body of research on the topic of youth groups and neighbourhood association. In this way, subcultural theory sought to examine and explain the social function of urban youth groups, such as a gang. Subcultural studies can therefore risk obscuring or excluding the significance of a youth culture such as graffiti culture in which graffiti is a practice for learning. Thrasher’s (1927) work set the tone of the research agenda on youth deviance for future generations of youth researchers, influencing scholars such as Albert K. Cohen (1955) who further developed and championed the notion of subculture in an effort to explain male youth deviance in socially disorganised urban neighbourhoods. Many studies focused on young males in poor urban areas in an attempt to explain their delinquency in terms of a ‘normal’ response to their marginalised social position.

Thrasher’s (1927) study laid the groundwork for understanding urban youth collectives, such as gangs, as communities in their own right. His work enabled a focus on youth as a collective entity (Gelder, 2007). In this way, his work opened up

55 new ways of conceptualising youth association, but it did not go so far as to suggest that young people be examined from the perspective of what they do in practice, for example, by exploring the significance of what they do and the relevance of this to contemporary society. Despite this, the Chicago school, and Frederick Thrasher’s work in particular, has continued to influence youth studies’ research, such that the pioneering work on urban youth subcultures undertaken by Cohen (1955), Miller

(1958), Cloward and Ohlin (1960), and Yablonsky (1962) among others, has tended to be reflected today in a continued readiness to see youth cultures, such as graffiti writing, as ‘deviant’ behaviour. Subcultural theories have thus led to the studying of graffiti in a particular way that does not allow me to readily answer my research questions in this study. The functionalist framing of these studies obscures specific and important points. They focused almost exclusively on the social practices of the group, concentrating on their cultural practices and social norms, thus rendering the productive aspect of these practices invisible. In this way the present study repositions the way graffiti is analysed by investigating its pedagogic potential.

Numerous studies, such as those cited above, suggested that youth subcultures emerged as an oppositional response to unattainable middle-class values, and thus resulted in youth alienation, delinquency and associated criminality. Driven by functionalist understandings of ‘youth deviance’, the methodological choices and conceptual frameworks of this scholarship were necessarily limiting as they often relied when drawing their conclusions solely on quantitative statistical data drawn from police, court, social service and mental health records or survey results. They tended not to enter the world of young people to obtain firsthand accounts of the social worlds they inhabited in order to understand how young people made meaning

56 from their own experiences. In the present study I entered into the world of graffiti writers, spending considerable time with them in order to understand more fully their experiences and the meanings they derived from their practice.

While previous studies opened up the opportunity to study youth subcultures from the perspective of the group, particularly those of the Chicago School and the BCCCS, the emphasis was largely on explaining their social marginalisation rather than exploring the active relationship between being (culture and meaning) and doing

(production, skills and learning). This study will therefore contribute to youth studies by explaining what young graffiti writers do in practice in the informal social context of the graffiti crew, and what this can tell us about learning in this informal setting.

Graffiti writing has often been studied from a criminalised and pathologised perspective, drawing upon criminological and psychological frameworks that characterise graffiti as a criminal or anti-social subculture (Gomez, 1992; Keizer,

Lindenberg, & Steg, 2008; Moreau & Alderman, 2011; Morgan & Louis, 2009;

Othen-Price, 2006; Pani & Sagliaschi, 2009; Taylor & Khan, 2012; Taylor & Khan,

2013, 2014; Thompson et al., 2012; Wilson & Atkinson, 2005). My study on the other hand seeks to shift this conception of youth culture by adopting a practice theory framework that places primary importance on the connection between being and doing by investigating the actual practices of young men involved in graffiti writing culture. This conception of graffiti aligns with the positive shift that is beginning to view graffiti as a culturally significant urban artefact that is part of the artistic culture of many contemporary cities.

Identity, Self-Making and Graffiti

The influence of subcultural accounts is evident in Campos’ (2013) mixed methods ethnographic study (including visual methods, observations/informal conversations and semi-structured interviews) of young people involved in the graffiti subculture in

Lisbon, Portugal. Campos (2013) found that there are some universal traits in the graffiti sub-world that have resonances with graffiti research conducted in other geographic locations, including London, New York, Denver, Colorado, Amsterdam,

Melbourne, Perth, and Western Australia (Castleman, 1982; Ferrell, 1996; Halsey &

Young, 2006; Macdonald, 2001; Snyder, 2009; Taylor, 2011; Taylor, 2012; van Loon,

2014). In short, these studies echo the observation that graffiti is an act in which risk and danger are key cultural elements with writers often describing the intensity of performing graffiti as an addiction. Campos (2013) argues strongly that graffiti should be understood as a “domain where identities are rehearsed and different personal skills are tried out” (Campos, 2013, p. 156). His overall argument is that an individual’s commitment to graffiti writing can be understood as a performative game in which imagination plays a significant role in identity formation as a ‘hero-vandal’.

Here Campos (2013) draws on a conceptualisation of the figured world of the superhero who expresses an identity or alter ego in the ‘tag’, seeing it as a metaphor for the graffiti writer who seeks to transgress mundane aspects of daily life regulated by institutions such as school, family or work.

The notion of the ‘figured world’ of graffiti is similarly discussed by Valle and Weiss

(2010) who argue that graffiti is a figured world in which a writer’s identity is displayed as a visual symbolic artefact via their ‘tag’ or street name. In this context

58 Campos (2013) conceives graffiti as a game marked by the development of an heroic biography employed by graffiti writers, which Campos (2013) argues is consistent with an understanding of the graffiti writer as ‘superhero’. He writes that ‘…the removing and placing of masks, the constant interchanging of worlds, the taking on of divergent roles – [like the superhero] all these are part of a graffiti writer’s routine’

(2013, p. 162). Identity is therefore experienced in a dual manner by graffiti writers who occupy one persona in some aspects of their lives, as student, daughter or employee perhaps, while at other times taking on the persona of the graffiti writer who is governed by the personality associated with their tag. In the final analysis,

Campos (2013) argues that graffiti can be best understood as a formula for empowerment for its young practitioners.

Risk and Pleasure

An important second line of reasoning developed by Campos (2013) suggests that graffiti writing is marked by high levels of transgressive pleasure-seeking that is strongly associated with risk, adventure and adrenaline-producing behaviour.

Addiction to risk and adrenaline-seeking behaviour is also discussed at length by

Othen-Price (2006), Taylor (2012) and Pani and Sagliaschi (2009). Othen-Price

(2006) explores the connection between the excitement of illegal graffiti writing and the problems associated with adolescence, while Taylor (2012) concludes that graffiti writers experience a rush experience that can become addictive, leading to the formation of a non-conforming social identity. Drawing on the qualitative analysis of their study participants’ responses, Pani and Sagliaschi (2009) suggest that graffiti writers adopt behaviours associated with a strong desire for immediate gratification arising from a sense of meaninglessness, boredom, and loneliness. These studies,

59 largely situated within a psychological paradigm, focus on the writers’ behaviours, their need for internal gratification, or their problems, discussing the impact this has on society. In effect, the line of reasoning in these studies pathologises the act of graffiti writing, obscuring vital aspects of the practice such as its learning and teaching potential, whereas in my study I emphasise the practice orientation of graffiti that focuses on what young people actually do, their actions and interactions within the context of the graffiti crew.

Learning and Graffiti

While there has been some research undertaken that investigates aspects of learning within the graffiti culture, it is largely concerned with the use of graffiti in the classroom as a means of engaging marginalised young people in learning (Baszile,

2009; Franco, 2010; Iddings, 2009; Iddings, McCafferty, & Silva, 2011; Kan, 2001).

The theme of graffiti as an apprenticeship has been explored by Avramidis and

Drakopoulou (2012) and Christen (2003), but neither of these essays draw on empirical studies; rather they use secondary sources to argue their points. Studies that focus on the career trajectory of graffiti writers have some productive resonance with the focus of my study (Lachmann, 1988; Rahn, 2002; Snyder, 2009).

There are only three studies of which I am aware that draw upon the concept of community of practice in their consideration of learning and literacy, but the concept is applied in quite different settings and in different ways (Abou-Setta, 2015;

MacGillivray & Curwen, 2007; Valle & Weiss, 2010). The focus of these studies is more squarely upon learning of literacy skills and political ideas (Abou-Setta, 2015;

MacGillivray & Curwen, 2007). MacGillivary and Curwen (2007) examined a group

60 of Los Angeles graffiti taggers, arguing that tagging provides opportunities for literacy development amongst young Latinos who are disengaged from formal schooling. In this way MacGillivary and Curwen’s (2007) study investigates the

‘taggers’ as a marginalised group or subculture, examining what the study participants gain from the act of tagging, literacy skills in this case. The framework of analysis in this study is limited in scope, however, because it positions the taggers as a problematised subculture. Abbou-Setta’s (2015) study focused on young adults’ production of political graffiti in Egypt associated with the ‘Arab Spring’ protests and does not consider Hip-Hop-style signature graffiti at all. It examines the learning of political ideas and their artistic expression via the spray-painting of political slogans during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, though it does make some valid points about social learning in relation to these political ideas and the production of political graffiti. In particular, it suggests that using communities of practice to investigate the social learning of political ideas can tell us a lot about how people’s political identity develops within a group context. While these studies are interested in learning, they are focussed on learning that is different from the learning of graffiti (such as literacy skills or political ideals and their expression), whereas my study emphasises a practice orientation, that is, a focus on activity, what people actually do, their actions and interactions within the context of the graffiti crew.

Like Lave and Wenger (1991), Valle and Weis (2010) use the community of practice concept to theorise aspects of the learning that occurs within a graffiti crew. As such this work has a productive resonance with my study, lending credibility to my chosen conceptual framework. The data used in Valle and Weiss’s (2010) study was drawn from Immuris Valle’s Master’s thesis, which I was able to source; however, it is

61 written entirely in Spanish and beyond my language skills. The work of Valle and

Weiss (2010) was a small study, conducted in Mexico City, of two graffiti crews that focused its analysis on the graffiti crew as a figured world that provided communal opportunities for learning. In this way, Valle and Weiss’s (2010) study affirmed the value of the conceptual direction that I took in this present study of young graffiti writers in Melbourne, Australia.

The focus of my study therefore is to elucidate the affirmative, experiential and embodied aspects of graffiti writing in preference to the ‘deviance’ focus that has tended to dominate. As the ‘cultural’ aspects of graffiti writing have been less visible in the literature, my study approaches the phenomenon of graffiti from the perspective of the participants’ learning in order to create new knowledge about how graffiti cultures involve knowledge, skills and pedagogies for learning. In this way my conceptual framework attends to culture. Culture is paired with the concept of communities of practice that is not usually associated with the study of informal youth cultures such as that of graffiti writing; it is more commonly employed in formal educational settings or workplace learning contexts (Bettiol & Sedita, 2011; Fuller et al., 2005; Kim, Hong, & Suh, 2012; Li et al., 2009; van Baalen, Bloemhof-Ruwaard,

& van Heck, 2005). My study adds to the youth studies’ literature by developing an understanding of youth cultural groups as sites of learning and social engagement.

Conclusion

This chapter has plotted the shifting landscape that graffiti has traversed over the past forty-five years and highlighted the significant position that graffiti has now achieved, despite its continued contestation in certain circles. This chapter argued that graffiti

62 writing is now viewed as a culturally significant urban artefact that is part of the artistic culture of contemporary urban environments. The review of the literature highlights the diversity of perspectives on graffiti across disciplines and reveals its place within the academy; yet, an underexplored aspect of graffiti writing remains, that is, its orientation as a community-based learning practice. I argue that there is a need to move beyond conceptions of youth groups as subcultures and to conceptualise youth groups such as graffiti crews as learning communities that sit alongside mainstream youth cultures. What distinguishes this study and sets it apart from earlier studies, specifically those that take a subcultural perspective, is its focus on the pedagogical basis of the youth group and its capacity to operate as a producer of cultural artefacts. In this way my study shifts the interpretation of youth group cultures from a deviance perspective to a cultural perspective, one that privileges community, learning, and production. That interpretation represents the backdrop of this investigation.

In Chapter three I will elaborate on the theoretical and methodological framework of the study, explaining why I am turning to a practice theory framework as I focus on the pedagogical aspects of graffiti culture.

63 Chapter 3 Theoretical and Methodological Framework

This chapter presents the theoretical framework that informs this study, its methodological approach, and its research design. I draw upon communities of practice and situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) as the principal theoretical concepts that guide this study, while to a lesser degree I employ aspects of observational learning (Paradise & Rogoff, 2009) and reflection in action (Schön,

1987). I also acknowledge the embodied and affective dimensions of practice, and how these dimensions are crucial to understanding the culture and ‘feel’ of graffiti learning for participants. I discuss the research design, beginning with how I gained access to the research cohort. This includes discussion of the ethical dimensions of the study, from formal ethical approval to conduct the study to the broader ethical issues raised when working with groups of young people who may be stigmatised and whose artistic activities are, on some occasions, illegal. I then move on to explain the selection process of the study that involved the identification of potential and possible field sites. The chapter concludes with a detailed discussion of the process of data analysis and thematic coding, as outlined by Corbin and Strauss (2008). By designing the study around an action-oriented practice framework, it is possible to re- conceptualise a youth cultural practice that draws out the educative aspects of graffiti writing.

Practice Theory

This section of the chapter will introduce practice theory, discuss its significance for my study, and explain how I engage with it to address my research questions.

64 Informed by the following research questions: ‘in what ways do young men become graffiti writers?’ and ‘in what ways do young males experience this learning?’ I am offering another way of examining and explaining the practice of graffiti writing, not solely from the perspective of theoretical innovation but by developing an understanding of how young men learn to produce graffiti and of how their practices develop over time. The focus of this research is therefore on production, that is, on what these young men actually do when they participate in a graffiti crew and perform the actual physical act of painting a graffiti ‘piece’.

Practice theory focuses on experiential and situated learning within a community of practice, providing the framework that was used to shape the study and guide my fieldwork, the methods selected, and the process of analysis. To begin with, it is important to develop an understanding of what is meant by ‘practice’ in the social sciences. Theodore Schatzki (2012, p. 2) argues that

…a wide variety of theorists today use the expressions ‘practices’ or ‘social practices’ in the absence of an elaborated or even explicit conception of practices. These expressions are also often used almost unreflectively, in a way that suggests that the writer or speaker believes that his or her subject matter is a form of or rooted in human activities.

This section will therefore provide an overview of what I mean when I use the term

‘practice’ with its link to doing and production, including its use in communities of practice, reflective practice and observational learning, in order to explain how I decided to employ these conceptual tools in my study. Despite Pierre Bourdieu’s status as an eminent scholar of practice theory, a theory initially articulated in his influential work Outline of a theory of Practice (Bourdieu, 1977), I have consciously chosen not to rely on Bourdieu’s work in this study. The empirical data collected for this study could be conceptualised via Bourdieu’s (1977) theory, and the culture of

65 the graffiti crew could be understood within Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, which could be argued is a product of graffiti writers’ experiences, class background and upbringing. My decision not to draw upon Bourdieu’s work in this study was made because I was interested in exploring the pedagogical potential of the graffiti crew.

The communities of practice concept offers a better conceptual fit for the purposes of my study.

Practice theorists are interested in the study of human action and interaction and how they are produced and continually re-produced over time (Schatzki, 2012, p. 2).

Ortner (1984, p. 146) argues that the study of practice is “not an antagonistic alternative to the study of systems and structures but a necessary complement to it”.

In this way, the social sciences have perceived culture as a ‘thing-like’ system or structure that can impact upon and shape social actors. But from where does the

‘thingness’ of society derive? How is the structure given shape and power to influence individuals and societies if not by ‘human agency’ or the actions of individual and collective social beings to shape, influence and in fact drive human history by their individual and collective actions or practices? Ortner (1984) argues that this is the point of departure for a practice-oriented social science. This is a point that my study sought to extend by investigating the actions of individuals who come together in the collective practice of producing graffiti; the emphasis is therefore on collective actions, doings and the production of cultural artefacts.

History is not a static force that shapes human action; rather it is a product of the force of will or human action exerted by social actors (Geertz, 2008). In the Durkheimian tradition, sociologists would explain this production and re-production of the social

66 order as ‘ritual’ (Giddens, 1979). Ortner (1984, p. 147) argues that it “was through the enactment of rituals of various kinds that actors were seen as coming to be wedded to the norms and values of their culture…”. A North American functionalist framing of social action, such as that articulated by Talcott Parsons (1949) would ascribe it to the socialisation processes prevalent in society; however, a social science approach that favours a ‘practice’ orientation reasserts the concept of human agency as shaping the system/structure by practice (actively doing) and social phenomena (producing graffiti). This has relevance for my study because the social phenomenon under analysis is the practice of ‘learning how to produce graffiti’, the act of learning a highly-skilled and technical practice that positions the concept of human agency in the forefront of this experience of learning. This study builds upon understandings of practice theory by applying communities of practice to an informal youth culture, whereas to date it has been largely used to theorise learning in the workplace or formal school settings. Further, this study highlights some noteworthy limitations of the communities of practice approach by exploring aspects of identity work, affective practice, gender/masculinity and exclusion that are left underexplored within Lave and Wenger’s (1991) and Wenger’s (1998) articulation of communities of practice.

In this way, practice can be perceived as a social phenomenon involving multiple human actors. Schatzki (2012, p. 2) argues that “a practice, on my understanding, is an open-ended spatially-temporally dispersed nexus of doings and sayings”. Here

Schatzki (2012) is privileging human action or activity. Coupled with the idea of communication, however, this dual interpretation of practice as ‘doings and sayings’ clearly positions practice in the realm of ‘bodily abilities’, one’s will or ability to affect their environment or its inhabitants by ‘doing’, that is, acting by painting one’s

67 name either by writing a tag or executing a graffiti piece. As Schatzki (2012) explains, human action is science, power, organisations and social change that is rooted in psychosocial factors such as reason, identity, learning and communication, the basic premise being that people do what makes sense for them to do. The emphasis in this study is therefore on what people actually do, their actions and interactions in the production of graffiti pieces.

Theoretical Framework: Communities of Practice, Intent Observation and Reflection-In-Action

This thesis is first and foremost an articulation of a study of graffiti learning, practice and production. As identified in Table 3.1, this thesis draws on communities of practice and situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) as the principal theoretical frameworks guiding this study, while to a lesser degree I employ aspects of observational learning (Paradise & Rogoff, 2009) and reflection in action (Schön,

1987). By designing the study around these concepts and analysing the data through these lenses it is possible to conceptualise a youth cultural practice that draws out the educative aspects of graffiti writing; hence my study theorises the culture of graffiti writing in terms of a community of practice that is focused on the connection between actions, being and doing that coalesce in the production of graffiti.

Table 3.1: Theoretical Framework Principal Theoretical Framework: Communities of Practice Legitimate peripheral participation Lave and Wenger (1991) Situated Learning Lave and Wenger (1991) Mutual Engagement, a joint enterprise Wenger (1998) and a shared repertoire Shared passion and interest Wenger (1998) Secondary Theories Observational and participative learning Paradise and Rogoff (2009) Reflection in action and tacit knowledge Schön (1987)

68 Communities of Practice

The literature on communities of practice maintains a strong focus on learning that occurs in more formalised environments, such as seen in on-the-job training settings and workplace learning (Beckett & Hager, 2002; Bettiol & Sedita, 2011; Billett, 2001;

Boud & Garrick, 1999; Engeström, 2001; Evans, Hodkinson, & Unwin, 2002; Fuller et al., 2005; Fuller & Unwin, 2003; Guile & Young, 1998). The concept of communities of practice has not been used extensively to investigate informal sites of learning such as that encountered in a graffiti crew. Communities of practice is a continually-evolving theory developed out of the concept of situated learning which derives from the early work of educational anthropologist Jean Lave and educational theorist Etienne Wenger’s (1991) formative work Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. In Situated learning, Lave and Wenger (1991) initially articulated the idea of communities of practice when they began to re-conceptualise learning as a distinct social phenomenon in its own right, distinguished and separated from formal teaching in a highly-structured classroom setting. What they observed in their analysis of a range of studies into apprenticeships and other forms of workplace learning was the informal and social nature of learning that involves direct interaction in the learning process on the part of those entering the community. The theory has not been used extensively to explore informal learning environments such as that encountered in a graffiti crew. Table 3.2 depicts the distinctive elements of a community of practice.

69 Table 3.2: Elements of a Community of Practice

Elements of a Community of Practice What’s the Who How Clear What Holds How Long purpose Belongs? are the Them do They Boundaries together Last Community To create, Self- Fuzzy Passion, Evolve and of practice expand, and selection commitment end exchange based on and organically knowledge, expertise identification (last as long and to or passion with the as there is develop for a group and its relevance to capabilities topic expertise the topic and value and interest in learning together) (Wenger, 2010, p. 42)

Communities of Practice: Core Concepts for Data Analysis

Community of practice is an evolving theory first articulated by Jean Lave and

Étienne Wenger in 1991. There are several elements to the community of practice theory, but I will draw upon a specific set of concepts from Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998) to aid my analysis of the interview and observational data. These concepts are as follows:

1. Legitimate peripheral participation;

2. Situated learning;

3. The three dimensions of practice: mutual engagement, joint enterprise and a

shared repertoire, as evidenced by the fourteen indicators of the emergence of

a community of practice; and

4. A shared interest and passion.

Legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991) conceives of novices entering a community of practice as peripheral participants who must work toward mastery as a full participant of the community, but the basis on which the community

70 determines a members’ legitimacy is not explored in Lave and Wenger’s (1991) work, raising questions about the factors that determine who gains entry to and legitimation within the community. This is a theme that will be explored in this thesis. The concept of situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991) identifies learning that occurs within a specific bounded site comprised of a group of like-minded practitioners, in this case the graffiti crew. Wenger (1998) distinguishes three dimensions of practice which are essential for the emergence of a community of practice, these being ‘mutual engagement’, ‘joint enterprise’ and ‘a shared repertoire’. Wenger (1998) explains that participants enter a community of practice united by a shared interest and passion in a core activity, the production of graffiti pieces in this study. By engaging with this array of concepts drawn from the larger theory of communities of practice, my study broadens our understanding of youth cultures and refuses the more usual binary constructions of this manifestation of youth culture as either ‘deviant’ or ‘resistant’.

Legitimate Peripheral Participation

Lave and Wenger (1991) argue that learning occurs as one participates in a community of practice that produces a tangible something, be it knowledge or an expertly-rendered graffiti piece. In a community of practice, participation is initially peripheral as it takes place at the margins of the community while a novice participant observes the practice of community members. Over time, as the participant becomes more engaged and their practice more complex, they move toward full participation in the community as recognised practitioners.

Lave and Wenger (1991, p. 29) propose that ‘[a] person’s intentions to learn are engaged and the meaning of learning is configured through the process of becoming a

71 full participant in a sociocultural practice.’ Therefore, Lave and Wenger (1991) argue that the concept of legitimate peripheral participation “provides a way to speak about the relations between newcomers and old timers, and about activities, identities, artefacts and communities of knowledge and practice. It concerns the process by which newcomers become part of a community of practice” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p.

29). The processes by which someone is granted the status of a legitimate participant seem somewhat underplayed in Lave’s and Wenger’s (1991) and Wenger’s (1998) work as they do not account for gendered understandings of legitimate peripheral participants. This study therefore extends the concept of communities of practice by exploring, in chapter five, the gendered aspects of community that unfold in the hyper-masculine environment of the graffiti crew, arguing that the graffiti crew can also operate as a community of exclusion.

Situated Learning

The significance of situated learning to this study is that learning is first and foremost a social endeavour and a process of participation that is embedded within activity, context and culture (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Learning is thus an organic occurrence that takes place naturally amongst a communal group participating in a shared activity.

Social interactions within a communal context represent an authentic space in which knowledge is shared and learning occurs between like-minded individuals.

The Three Dimensions of Practice: Mutual Engagement, Joint Enterprise and a Shared Repertoire

Wenger (1998) explains the three dimensions of practice that form the property of a community, these dimensions being mutual engagement, joint enterprise and a shared

72 repertoire. For a community to be identified as a ‘community of practice’ these dimensions of practice must be present. Mutual engagement entails the presence of people who are engaged in shared actions whose meanings are negotiated within the context of the community, while joint enterprise relates to the shared accountability in negotiating their practice in relation to both internal and external conditions. The community’s responses to these conditions are interconnected in their joint enterprise of producing graffiti pieces. The shared repertoire of a community of practice relates to a shared set of resources that serve to define their community, including the discourse with which they make meaning about their world. These resources may include ‘words, routines, tools, ways of doing things, stories and symbols’ (Wenger,

1998, p. 83).

In order to identify that a community of practice has formed, Wenger (1998, p. 125) identifies fourteen indicators or characteristics that demonstrate that emergence.

These characteristics suggest that the three dimensions of a community of practice discussed above (mutual engagement, joint enterprise and a shared repertoire) are present to a substantial degree. I use these fourteen characteristics (listed below) in my analysis of the research data discussed in chapter five to demonstrate that a graffiti crew is a community of practice.

1. Sustained mutual relationships, harmonious or conflictual 2. Shared ways of engaging in doing things together 3. The rapid flow of information and propagation of innovation 4. Absence of introductory preambles, as if conversations and interactions were merely the continuation of an ongoing process 5. Very quick set-up of a problem to be discussed 6. Substantial overlap in participants’ descriptions of who belongs 7. Knowing what others know, what they can do, and how they can contribute to an enterprise 8. Mutually-defining identities 9. The ability to assess the appropriateness of actions and products 10. Specific tools, representations, and other artefacts

73 11. Local lore, shared stories, inside jokes, knowing laughter 12. Jargon and shortcuts to communication as well as the ease of producing new ones 13. Certain styles recognised as displaying membership 14. A shared discourse reflecting a certain perspective on the world

As graffiti writing is a practice marked by high levels of risk, I add a fifteenth indicator: a ‘shared participation in high-risk activities’. All of these indicators are represented to a greater or lesser degree in study participants’ responses to a line of questioning about their conception of a graffiti crew, discussed in chapter four, that aligns with an understanding of a community of practice. It is also worth noting that traditional communities of practice theories, while paying lip service to ‘experience’, do not really acknowledge affect in any meaningful way. This is another area in which my study extends the communities of practice concept as my work opens up understanding about the affective dimensions of practice, as, without doubt, practice meshes with the index of affect, emotion and embodiment.

A Shared Interest and Passion

Communities of practice are groups of people who hold a shared interest or passion in an activity, and who develop their understanding and skill in this activity by regularly working together in a collaborative way. Etienne Wenger (1998, p. 47) explains that

‘[t]he concept of practice connotes doing, but not just doing in and of itself. It is doing in a historical and social context that gives structure and meaning to what we do’

(1998, p. 47). The act of doing is thus conceived as being comprised of the antecedents of actions and traditions that coalesce within a social sphere and give rise to the meaningful structure of action experienced within a community of practice.

74 Observational Learning Through Intent Participation

Direct involvement and commitment to a community are the hallmarks of observational learning, that is, being involved in the everyday routinised activities of the group who come together to perform a communal practice. In this theorisation of how learners learn, the belonging of the learner in a community is of central importance in understanding how young people learn by participation and observation that begins with belonging (Paradise & Rogoff, 2009). This arises from the nature of observational learning that takes place within a community, which is a “more flexibly defined interactional space and communal organisation” (Paradise & Rogoff, 2009, p.

105). This implies that the learning can be a two-way enterprise as there is not necessarily a clear distinction made between expert and novice within a community of practice; the learner can equally act as teacher or master. Paradise and Rogoff (2009) argue that observational learning derives from purposeful participation in a community in which the learner belongs and exercises active agency and initiative by learning and participating in the activities of the community. This aligns with the importance placed upon legitimacy by Lave and Wenger (1991) when they discuss legitimate peripheral participation, because the concept of community necessarily involves notions of belonging and acceptance amongst like-minded individuals that underpin informal group interaction.

While communities of practice as a concept privileges the interdependency of agent and world, activity and learning that coalesce and give meaning to the actions of persons in collective activity, affective investments in learning are minimal and not explored in any depth. Thus, drawing upon Paradise and Rogoff’s (2009) concept of observational learning by pitching in has close synergies with the concept of

75 communities of practice, serving a vital function in the analysis of the field data and allowing for a more nuanced and in-depth understanding of the learning that occurs within the situated context of a graffiti crew.

Reflection in Action

Schön’s (1987) concept of reflective practice provides a framework for exploring aspects of tacit knowledge in relation to learning within a graffiti crew. Schön (1987) breaks down the concept of ‘reflective practice’ into forms of action (knowing in action, reflection in action and reflection on reflection in action). Knowing in action is derived from an understanding of tacit knowledge that we possess about certain skills, acts or doings that can be effectively and expertly carried out by an individual but cannot readily be explained by the doer, such as riding a bike, as the knowing is in the action itself. Reflection in action is the conscious rethinking of an aspect or process of our knowing-in-action, which occurs when we encounter a surprise that results in a problem that then triggers a series of on-the-spot experimentation that affects the outcome of our action. Reflection in action can thus be described as on-the-go correctives derived from thinking critically about an action to address an error that results when carrying out an activity.

Schön (1988) describes practice as ‘reflection in action’ or learning by doing and developing the ability for continued learning, which is clearly echoed in the conception of ‘situated learning’ articulated in the work of Jean Lave and Etienne

Wenger (1987). The concept of reflective practice is evident in graffiti writers’ understanding of the tacit dimensions of practice when discussing the use of the spray-paint can as a tool, as discussed in chapter five. Schön (1987) argued for a new

76 epistemology of practice governed by the concept of reflection in action that involves competence and artistry embedded in skillful practice, that is, his conception of practice as reflection-in-action. Schön (1987) discusses practice in terms of the professions or adult learning. He argues that professional education should draw upon traditions of education for practice, such as in studies of art and design studios, conservatories of music, or dance and craft apprenticeships, as these examples all privilege coaching and learning by doing. This concept of “learning by doing” has very strong echoes in the work of Lave and Wenger (1991) on situated learning and legitimate peripheral participation.

I will now turn my focus to explaining the methodological approach and the methods adopted for this study and to showing how this reflects the conceptual interests and questions outlined above. I will discuss the study methodology and methods, outlining the steps taken in the research design, including participant recruitment, data collection and analysis.

Methodology

This study extends previous research by building on older traditions of place-based ethnographic research, and by using the idea of practice to add a new dimension to the experiences of so-called deviant youth groups. In this way my study investigates how young people learn the technical skills and cultural knowledge of the practice. The available research as discussed in previous chapters reflects a continued focus on the deviancy of the act and on debates about graffiti’s legitimacy as an art form. Little is known however about how graffiti is produced, and even less is known about how graffiti writers learn the skills required to produce their graffiti masterpieces.

77 Investigating how graffiti is learned opens up an exploration of the productive capacity of a youth group such that it shifts the focus from deviancy to the production of creative artefacts; rather than viewing graffiti writers as vandals we can begin to conceive of them anew, as producers of culture. Apart from a focus on communal learning therefore, this study extends our understanding of a community of practice by exploring the identity work that occurs within the community, particularly with regard to masculinity.

Research aim and questions

The aim of my study is to advance knowledge about youth culture as a site of informal learning by investigating graffiti as a communally-situated practice. More broadly, this study explores how communities of affiliation and connection develop through these practices. This is achieved by cultivating an understanding of the ways in which young male graffiti writers connect within a community and learn how to produce artwork using spray-paint as a medium, as well as seeking to understand the cultural knowledge of graffiti writing by investigating how the practice of graffiti writing is learnt and how young men experience this learning. The core research questions for this study are: ‘How do young men learn the practice of graffiti writing?’ and ‘how do young men experience this learning?’

Philosophical Assumptions of the Study

Social research is not without its biases. By entering into this field, the investigator brings with them a specific worldview: “All research is interpretive; it is guided by the researcher’s set of beliefs and feelings about the world and how it should be understood and studied” (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005, p. 22). Addressing one’s beliefs

78 allows the researcher to make practical decisions about the methodological position that will affect the choice of research methods employed in a study (Birks & Mills,

2011). In line with naturalistic inquiry that seeks to examine a social phenomenon in its naturally-occurring state, the methodology underpinning this study draws on an ethnographically-informed approach to the study design (Creswell, 2013; Patton,

2002; Wolcott, 1999). Naturalistic inquiry is a discovery-oriented approach that contrasts with controlled experimental designs where the researcher seeks to control all aspects of the study conditions (Guba & Lincoln, 1985). As the focus of this study is a specific object of human experience, it thus privileges a social constructivist worldview. van Manen (1990, p. 16) argues that by taking a qualitative approach focused on a specific social phenomenon, the researcher can “grasp the very nature of the thing” or object of study, which in this case is the experience of becoming a graffiti writer, including the identity work and the learning of graffiti skills and techniques. In this way, while this is not a phenomenological study, the research approach has resonances with phenomenology as it seeks to study firsthand the lived experiences of individuals involved in a group process (van Manen, 1990).

As this study is concerned with understanding the lived experience of graffiti writers, a social constructivist ontology is appropriate. A social constructivist position denotes that the subjective experience of graffiti writers and the meanings they make from their involvement in the culture are negotiated socially, in specific times and places, and thus privileges the participants’ experience as related to the researcher (Creswell,

2013; Lincoln & Guba, 2000). A social constructivist position entails an understanding of the world that is built upon individual and collective knowledge of the social reality of our lives as we interact, live and work. A foundational principle

79 is that we are cognitive social beings and as such are continually seeking to understand and develop knowledge and extract meaning from our experiences of the world we inhabit (Creswell, 2013; Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). John Creswell (2013, p.

24) argues that, as a qualitative investigator, ‘the goal of research, then, is to rely as much as possible on the participants’ views of the situation.’ Thus the methods used to answer the research questions of this study align with the ontological position taken; hence this study employed ethnographic observations and open-ended semi- structured interviews. It privileges the voice of the participants who are at the heart of the study, specifically those young men who engage in writing signature graffiti in both illegal and legal contexts. With regard to the generalisability of methodological frameworks, Birks and Mills (2011, p. 17) explain that “research that is primarily interpretive is not usually intended to be generalisable as the research is driven by specific questions in unique situations that cannot be addressed by findings from studies conducted in similar yet disparate settings.”

The methodological tools employed to gather the data for this research used ethnographically-informed semi-structured interviews with active graffiti writers and observations of graffiti practice. Semi-structured interviews, with their open-ended quality, work to elicit detailed and in-depth responses that are guided by prepared questions while allowing for informants to explore other facets of the culture as the interview progresses (Wolcott, 1999). I was interested in using an ethnographically- informed approach as this is a useful means of gathering rich firsthand accounts of a social experience such as that of involvement in a graffiti crew (Denzin & Lincoln,

2005; Silverman, 2001; Wolcott, 1999). Ethnographic research has proven to be an appropriate method for understanding the experience of graffiti writing (Ferrell, 1996;

80 Fransberg, 2018; Macdonald, 2001; Snyder, 2009). It is a proven, powerful and relevant means of gathering research data on the culture of graffiti writing, especially data that highlights the agency of the research subjects and brings to the fore the voice of the respondent that is often absent. Creswell (2013) argues that we use qualitative research methods, such as ethnography, when there is a need to hear silenced voices.

The voice of young graffiti writers is often silent and unheard as these young men are involved in an illegal and hence highly secretive practice that is very difficult to identify and access.

Human Research Ethics Considerations

The research related in this thesis was conducted with the approval of the University of Melbourne’s Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC). The HREC Ethics ID for this study is 1136639.2. Human ethics approval was granted for the research to proceed by the HREC on 9 April 2014 (see appendix 1 for a copy of the HREC approval letter). The research was governed by the ethical guidelines of the

University of Melbourne and as such each research participant was provided with a

Plain Language Statement (PLS) (see appendix 2 for a copy of the Plain Language

Statement) that set out the parameters of the study including the aims, methods and anticipated benefits as well as the possible risks and hazards of participating in the research. The participants were informed that, with their permission, the interviews would be audio-recorded and transcribed. Participants were also informed that they could decide not to continue with the interview process at any time or ask me to exclude certain comments they had made, and told that they could opt not to answer any question if they felt uncomfortable in doing so. The participants were also instructed that, with their permission, I would view their social media sites like

81 Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube so that I could see how they represented their art in these forums.

Participants were informed that their participation was wholly voluntary, that their participation would be confidential, and that I would protect their privacy within the limits of the law. Participants were asked to select a pseudonym to be used in the research and in any research outputs. They were also informed that their real names would not appear in any research document, including the interview transcripts, the thesis, any journal article, or any conference proceedings. I also informed them that their signature graffiti word would not be linked to their real identity or their pseudonym. The participants were also informed that, due to the small sample size, there was a small possibility that some people in the graffiti writing community might guess their pseudonym and identity. The participants signed a consent form that acknowledged their acceptance of the research terms as set out in the PLS (see appendix 3 for a copy of the consent form).

There were also ethical issues related to myself as the researcher that were primarily focused on a concern with my safety and on my witnessing illegal aspects of the culture. The two research sites and other observation sites described in this thesis were all legally-sanctioned sites of graffiti practice. While I neither accompanied nor observed writers during any illegal painting sessions, I conducted the research with the awareness that participants may have talked about illegal painting activities. When this occurred I stopped the interview momentarily to remind the participant about point 5 of the research consent form, which stated in part that “statements will be

82 confidential, within the limits of the law”. All images of graffiti writing depicted in this thesis were taken at extant field sites in and around Melbourne and in other cities in Europe and North America. Images in this thesis that depict writers engaged in the actual practice of spray-painting graffiti were all photographed by me at legal painting sessions and graffiti jams at which I was present to observe the practice of graffiti writing. All of the interviews were conducted at either Blender Studios in North

Melbourne or at the council youth facility in Melbourne’s Western Suburbs, so I was never placed in an unsafe or illegal situation during the course of data collection for this study. I can therefore confirm that to the best of my knowledge the research conducted for this study was carried out within the ethical guidelines articulated by the University of Melbourne’s Human Research Ethics Committee with the aim of protecting the safety and privacy of my research participants.

Data Generation and Collection

The data presented in this study of eleven active male graffiti writers used an ethnographically-informed qualitative research approach that combined a mix of research strategies including open-ended semi-structured interviews, direct field observations of graffiti writing practice, and field notes. Data Collection commenced on the 9th April 2014 and was completed approximately 18 months later when I conducted my final interview on the 13th of October 2015. The length of the study reflected the ethnographic style design of the study which requires a significant length of time and immersion in the field sites; it also reflects some of the difficulties I encountered in arranging interview times or having participants cancel at short notice.

83 Getting In: Gaining Access to the Culture and Research Sites

As an ethnographically-informed study that focused on obtaining firsthand accounts of the culture of graffiti writing at two field sites within the Melbourne graffiti writing community, gaining access to a suitable cohort of informed and knowledgeable members of the culture was crucial to this study. Additionally, graffiti being an illegal practice and graffiti writers being correspondingly a highly secretive group, gaining access to the field sites and participants for the study proved extremely difficult and time-consuming. Navigating the fieldwork sites, a complex part of the research process, represents a significant component of conducting ethnographic fieldwork.

Getting in was therefore very, very hard. Once ‘in’ I had to develop relationships, win each writer’s trust, and constantly work to maintain these relationships over a period of eighteen months, while also trying to remain the objective researcher.

While gaining access to the study sites was problematic and presented a range of issues for me the ethnographic researcher (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Wolcott, 1999,

2016), there were particular challenges for my study given the social and legal status of the activity I wished to understand. I therefore required a gatekeeper to assist me in identifying and gaining access to the relevant groups of young people. In order to locate an appropriate gatekeeper, I began by establishing which areas of the city showed a prevalence of signature graffiti pieces. This was achieved by visual identification of graffiti within a given municipality during my routine travels around the city and its suburban environs. It quickly became clear that the City of Melbourne and its inner suburban areas, particularly those in the inner Western, Inner Southern and South Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne, contained high concentrations of graffiti pieces. I then contacted city council youth service teams in these municipalities in

84 order to discuss my research proposal and to ascertain their willingness to assist me in gaining access to a cohort of active graffiti writers. In this selection approach I was limiting myself initially to working with groups of socially-sanctioned and legal graffiti programs. This was partly pragmatism, intended to facilitate access and to comply with the formal ethical review requirements of the HREC. I found, however, that the boundaries between sanctioned and illegal graffiti activity are not so clear-cut.

Early in the process of contacting municipal authorities I was fortunate to contact a youth services’ manager from a city council in Melbourne’s Inner Western Suburbs who was willing to meet with me. At the meeting we discussed my research proposal and project aims, including how matters of ethics and anonymity of participants were to be addressed. The youth services’ manager was very amenable to my project, eagerly offering his assistance. He invited me to begin attending the council’s aerosol art program for at-risk young people, which was held at a council-run youth centre on

Tuesday afternoons between 4:00 pm and 6:30 pm. The youth services’ manager, who requested that he and his council remain anonymous, also introduced me to a former graffiti writer and artist, Adrian Doyle. Adrian Doyle, or Doyle as he prefers to be known, is the director of Blender Studios, an artists’ collective that during my research data collection was located in Franklin Street, Melbourne that houses a number of eclectic artists working in a range of mediums, including a number of active graffiti writers who rent studio space there. The name of the studio is instructive as it refers to the blending of artistic styles represented within the studio community. It includes street artists, sculptors, stencil artists, found object artists, installation artists, painters working in oil on canvas, aerosol artists and muralists.

Data collection and observations occurred primarily at these two sites, though I also

85 observed graffiti-painting practice at a variety of other sites that will be outlined below.

Once I gained access, winning graffiti writers’ trust was critical, particularly with the young male graffiti writers who attended the council-run aerosol arts program. It was slightly less difficult when I attended Blender Studios. I began attending the aerosol art program weekly on Tuesday evenings, notebook and voice-recorder in hand. A mix of young people would attend, mainly young males and occasionally a few young females between the ages of 14 and 19. I observed the graffiti writers talk, draw in their sketchbooks (piece books) and paint graffiti pieces with council-supplied spray- paint. The program was led by two artist mentors who were themselves dedicated graffiti writers. As the weeks passed and I observed these graffiti writers at work, they slowly began to accept my presence and started sharing their stories. I talked to young male graffiti writers and their mentors about what they were doing, observing them as they interacted, talked, planned pieces, shared tips about painting technique, shook cans of spray-paint and painted pieces (graffiti murals), but they continued to remain suspicious of my motives for being there.

I had been introduced as a social researcher and therefore, as expected, I asked a lot of questions of the young men present and regularly took notes. I was routinely met with responses such as “You’re a cop”, or “That’s a question a cop would ask”. One young man even commented to his mates: “Look at his shoes. He’s wearing cop shoes”. (I was wearing black rubber and canvas high top trainers and, truth be told, they did look a little like police tactical boots). I promptly retired those shoes and wore only

Vans, a popular USA brand of skateboarding shoes, to program meetings from then

86 on. Given this reception, I was reticent to ask for a recorded interview, so while the voice-recorder remained in my backpack I continued to attend the workshops, to observe and take notes. Critical in breaking the ice and winning the young male graffiti writers’ trust was a mentor in the program, Jack, who became my key informant. In ethnographic methods a ‘key informant’ is a specific research participant who is particularly knowledgeable about the inquiry setting or culture and with whom the researcher develops a close relationship. A ‘key informant’ is not the main informant; they are a study participant who reveals critical insights, explanations and details of the culture group and its inner workings that may otherwise escape the researcher’s attention (Patton, 2002). In this way Jack ‘schooled me in’ on the wider culture of graffiti writing, including its rules, guidelines, rituals, traditions and history, in our many formal, informal, and ad hoc discussions. Once Jack became a participant in the study, others in the group relaxed and I was able to secure a number of other interview participants with Jack’s assistance.

On Friday nights, I attended Blender Studios in Franklin Street near Melbourne’s

Victoria Market as several graffiti writers had studio space there. Doyle, who also participated in this study, had suggested that I should come and ‘hang out’ at the studio on Friday nights, as there were always artists, including several graffiti writers, who would congregate in the studio, have a drink and socialise. More particularly, graffiti writers would often meet up at Blender to discuss their graffiti pieces before heading out into the City on painting or bombing missions. This provided me with the opportunity to learn about the culture of graffiti writing and to mingle with and meet a number of prominent writers. Some artists would continue working while others engaged in the sociality of the evening. I encountered much less suspicion from the

87 graffiti writers at Blender Studios than at the Council program, which I put down to the fact that Doyle was a known participant in the study; his simultaneous role as gatekeeper and supporter of the study eased the apprehension of the potential informants at Blender Studios.

On my first Friday evening at Blender, Doyle introduced me as someone who was writing a book about graffiti, saying that I would be present at Blender Studios over the coming twelve months. He gave them the option to talk to me and tell me about graffiti. In this way their willingness to engage in conversation with me and let me observe their work and interactions were wholly voluntary and developed organically.

When I visited this site, I noticed that a lot of time was spent simply talking.

Sometimes I would engage in the conversations, but often I would just sit back, listen, observe and take notes in a small notebook as activities unfolded and the conversations ebbed and flowed. The talk ranged across an array of topics, but would invariably turn to graffiti when the participants would discuss a range of themes, including: upcoming legal painting days; whose work was ‘fresh’ (good); other writers they had painted with recently; who had got ‘capped’ (their graffiti piece was gone over or slashed by another writer); who had got ‘burned’ (outdone); the best nibs

(spray paint nozzles) to use; and the like. This talk would sometimes confuse me as it was riddled with lots of slang graffiti terminology. These initial conversations were to become a fruitful early component of my fieldwork data.

As I listened to graffiti writers talking about ‘bombing’ (covering an area with a tag),

‘piecing’ (producing graffiti murals), ‘racking’ (stealing) paint and running from the police, it evoked images of an active and very masculine culture. These conversations

88 also made me privy to insider knowledge of graffiti writing culture that is usually only discussed among other graffiti writers. As I listened and learned, it became clear that there was something more to these discussions than writers just telling colourful stories about their experiences of painting, both legally and illegally. These were not young people simply engaged in vandalism or ritual enactments of youthful rebellion; this was a rich and dynamic culture worthy of investigation.

Researcher Positionality

An inescapable fact is that I am male researcher investigating a male population in a highly masculine culture. My positionality as a middle-class male researcher is therefore bound to have had an impact upon my time in the field with regard to how my informants responded to me. There may also be implicit biases in my analysis and in the meanings I draw from interview and observation data that as a male researcher I may have subconsciously overlooked, or I may have avoided focusing on aspects of the hyper-masculine facets of the data. As graffiti writing is perceived as a masculine and masculinised activity, my study may inadvertently feed this perception. In reflecting on my interactions with the study participants while in the field, I consider how they behaved in my presence and whether their responses or behaviour may have been different if a woman were conducting this study. There were times when particularly the younger participants in the council program would engage in sexist or homophobic talk or use derogatory comments to each other, such as ‘You are such a fag’ or that is a ‘gay-ass piece’. There was also a particular incident when one of the participants asked one of the graffiti mentors, Jack, ‘Are you gonna cop [get] some pussy tonight?’ in reference to the fact that Jack was a little bit more dressed up than usual as he was going to his parents’ place for dinner after the workshop. Jack

89 chastised the young writer and implored him to speak more respectfully of women, but this may have just been for my benefit in order to appear a responsible mentor.

The discussions were not always derogatory. Young writers often related performative stories that connect with the masculine quest tradition, stories about epic missions, painting all night in a train yard, or making narrow escapes from the police by jumping fences and running across rooftops. The writers enthusiastically shared stories with me of evading detection by guile and skill. Tyrone, for example, related a story about avoiding the police by use of deceptive language and the performance of an accepted and readily identifiable Australian male persona, the Australian Rules football fan.

It's kind of - you feel a bit like Jason Bourne or something, because you've got to be able to talk your way out of shit. Sometimes you've got a whole lot of paint on you. You've just been painting. The cops come and you walk past them and you're talking to your mate, oh, the footy in the last quarter, oh, yeah, Johnny kicked that goal. You pretend like - you put on some voice and talk like you're someone else and they just walk past you. – Tyrone

The language that Tyrone used to describe the interaction definitely taps into a masculine hero narrative; he avoids capture in a similar way to the hyper-masculine soldier hero character of Jason Bourne (an action hero ‘CIA’ assassin character popularised in film versions of the novels by author Robert Ludlum and played by actor Matt Damon). My gender gave me access to this very masculine world, enabling me to hear stories about these ‘epic missions’ and to appreciate the camaraderie, bravery and male bonding that occurs in a graffiti crew. My gender equally allowed me to witness the sometimes derogatory aspects of the culture that can serve to exclude women. It is clear how the presence of the researcher can impact upon the

90 field experience, the interactions observed, the data collected, and the subsequent reporting of the research.

How then can I truly know that what I describe is an authentic representation of the culture of graffiti writing? This question highlights the crisis of representation within ethnographic methods. The crisis of representation refers to the notion that language does not have the capacity to fully capture or represent reality (Denzin & Lincoln,

2005). Within a social constructivist ontology, knowledge is viewed as being relative to time and place; hence a reality is dependent upon cultural understandings in a site- specific context. In this way, reality is linked to the ideological interests of humans, such that arriving at a clearly-articulated truth is impossible with a multiplicity of cultures all upholding competing ‘truths’. The social world is constructed, so the world of human perception is not real in an absolutist sense but is ‘made up’, moulded by the constructs of culture and language (Patton, 2002). That said, let’s be clear that social constructivism ‘refers to constructing knowledge about reality, not reality itself”

(Shadish, 1995, p. 67). In this study therefore I am investigating a community within a specific time and place; hence no absolute claims can be made regarding this culture.

In this way, I as a researcher have tried to present an honest interpretation and description of the patterns and themes that appeared to me to be present in the data. I therefore present the ‘findings’ of this study as my perspective based upon my interpretation and analysis of the data collected for this study using the conceptual framework discussed above.

91 Sampling and Selection

A purposeful sampling model was utilised in this study: ‘this means that the inquirer selects individuals and sites for study because they can purposefully inform an understanding of the research problem and central phenomenon in the study’

(Creswell, 2013, p. 156). The sample of graffiti writers was therefore selected based upon their relevance to the research questions of the study. Even so, it is important to emphasise that recruiting participants for the study was difficult due to the challenge of recruiting from a hard-to-reach population that is shrouded in secrecy as a result of its often illegal pursuits.

The participants were recruited at the two field sites described above. There were a number of possible research participants present at each of the two sites, but decisions about who to recruit for interviews were also made by drawing upon opportunities as they arose in the field: opportunistic sampling as it is termed in the research methods literature (Creswell, 2013; Patton, 2002). Early in my fieldwork, for example, at both sites I would regularly mingle and enter into conversations with members of the graffiti community who were present, these discussions providing opportunities for me to ask if they would be amenable to participating in a more formal interview for my study. Once I had secured a small number of participants, and particularly my key informant Jack who was able to introduce me to a number of other graffiti writers whom I could approach for interviews, I was able to build my research cohort via the snowball sampling method (Creswell, 2013; Patton, 2002). This method of participant recruitment relies on study participants recommending or introducing the researcher to potential participants for the study. An example of snowball sampling involved

Diego introducing me to his friend and fellow crewmember Peace at a graffiti jam

92 (large scale legal painting day) and my taking the opportunity to immediately interview Peace on the spot.

This study draws upon observations of graffiti practice and excerpts from interviews conducted with the young male graffiti writers who participated in this study. The interview and observational data were further supported by additional and more informal discussions and conversations that occurred during the course of carrying out the research for this study. I had conversations with distributors of graffiti paint, nozzles and associated graffiti paraphernalia, with a number of graffiti writers encountered during the course of my research, and also with two youth workers, one employed by the City of Melbourne and another by a city council in the Western suburbs of Melbourne who wish to remain anonymous.

As graffiti writing is an illegal activity, it was very difficult to gain access to the culture, so, as discussed above, I was required to spend a lengthy time in the field before I began conducting formal interviews with the study participants. The first six months of my fieldwork were spent just getting to know the participants before I began formal data collection. During this period I was nevertheless able to observe a number of painting sessions involving a range of interactions between the participants, including the sharing of both cultural and technical knowledge and instruction on a range of graffiti techniques.

Semi-Structured Open-Ended Interviews

I conducted multiple interviews involving a minimum of one interview and a maximum of three interviews with each one of the eleven graffiti writers who

93 participated in this study, a total of twenty-one interviews in all (See Appendixes 4, 5 and 6 for the interview schedules for each of the three interviews). Crucially, these interviews were embedded in extensive observations of the two communities and informed by comprehensive field notes. Table 3.3 below provides details of the eleven participants interviewed for this study. The reference to Blender Studios and the Aerosol Art Program in Table 3.3 identifies where the participant was recruited and interviewed.

Table 3.3: Participant details. Name Age at time of Number of Artist Blender Aerosol first interview interviews Mentor Studios Art Program Diego 20 2 No X

Doyle 38 1 Yes X

Jack 23 3 Yes X X

James 19 1 No X

J.D. 40 2 Yes X

Joe 15 2 No X

Kyle 18 1 No X

Mark 35 2 Yes X

Peace 19 1 No X

Scott 17 1 No X

Tyrone 29 3 No X

All eleven research participants were male. I had intended to conduct interviews with female graffiti writers, of which there are quite a few in Melbourne, but the process was much more difficult than I had envisaged and it proved extremely difficult to recruit young women to the study; hence the interview data was derived from male

94 participants only. The culture of graffiti writing is by nature a very secretive practice; dedicated writers are not in the habit of advertising what they do under the cover of darkness and it is therefore a very difficult culture to access. There is no archetypical personality or look associated with graffiti writers (Snyder, 2009). They come from all races, genders and social and economic backgrounds. You cannot easily distinguish a graffiti writer among the general population unless you look closely at their hands for tell-tale signs of spray-paint. In fact, one London writer was an investment banker by day and a hardcore graffiti writer by night (Judd, 2013). As has been extensively documented (Fransberg, 2018; Hannerz, 2017; Lombard, 2013;

Macdonald, 2001; Monto et al., 2013; Pabón, 2013; Pabón-Colón, 2017; Tirohl, 2016), graffiti tends to be a largely masculine pursuit, though there are large numbers of young women who write signature graffiti.

I was keen to develop as full and accurate an account of graffiti writing practice as possible and thus my intention was to recruit both male and female writers in order to gain a fuller picture from interrogating both male and female writers’ perspectives. I was hoping that this would inform gendered aspects of learning and experience within the culture. During my time at Blender Studios there were simply no female writers present, and while a few young women attended the council-run aerosol arts program the same young women did not attend the program consistently enough for me to develop a rapport with them or to recruit them into the study.

I did have some luck when a colleague introduced me to a prominent writer in

Melbourne whose wife was a friend of an up-and-coming female writer. Through this connection I was introduced to this young woman writer who agreed to participate in

95 the study and who undertook to assist me in accessing other female writers. I actually conducted one interview with the young woman in question, which provided some excellent insight into the culture of graffiti writing from a female perspective, particularly the very masculine nature of the culture. Unfortunately, the young woman subsequently asked to withdraw from participation in the study, so that material was lost. The loss of the only female participant in this study was a real setback in my participant recruitment and was particularly acute as she had been willing to help me recruit other female writers.

I was provided with two other possible leads for recruiting female participants for my study. I was given the name of a well-known female graffiti writer by my contact at the local government council with which I was working. I was subsequently introduced to her, enjoying a good conversation with her about graffiti and my research study at a local graffiti jam in the Western Suburbs of Melbourne. At our initial meeting she was amenable to participating, providing me with an email address so that I could contact her to arrange an interview. I contacted her via email a number of times, but she never returned my emails so I could not pursue that lead. Another colleague informed me that she knew a young woman who was a close family friend as well as an active graffiti writer. When my colleague discussed my project with her friend and asked if she would be interested in participating in my study she agreed.

After my colleague gave me the young woman’s mobile telephone number we had a number of telephone conversations, but we were finding it difficult to arrange a mutually-convenient time for an interview and she was not amenable to a phone interview. I continued to have sporadic contact with this young woman via text message for a few months, but ultimately she did not agree to participate.

96 Ironically in early 2016, not long after I had completed my fieldwork, I was teaching a subject on youth crime and discussing my research with my students. After class I was approached by one of my female students who informed me that she was a graffiti writer and that she felt I had given a very accurate and authentic account of the culture of graffiti writing, which I was very pleased to hear. She also indicated that she would be interested in participating in my study. Unfortunately I had to inform her that I had concluded my fieldwork and that my Human Research Ethics approval had expired, making further interviews impossible. Recruiting and gaining the trust of participants in a hard-to-reach and very secretive culture proved to be very difficult indeed. However, despite my best efforts I was unable to recruit any young women graffiti writers to my study, alas the study was conducted with only male participants.

The research participants ranged in age from 15 to 40, with the average age being 24.

As the study is focused upon how young men learn the practice of graffiti writing, and how it is part of their becoming as they experience this learning, the older graffiti writers were asked to reflect upon their early years of practice and their experience of entering a graffiti crew and learning graffiti skills when young. During the period of data collection, all the participants were active graffiti writers, painting regularly in both illegal and legal contexts. The participants were asked to select a pseudonym in order to protect their privacy and ensure anonymity. All references to the participants in this study use their pseudonyms, apart from the references to Doyle who did not wish to remain anonymous as he wanted it known that he was a supporter of the study and of the art practice of graffiti writing.

97 The purpose of the interviews was to explore the culture of graffiti writing in an effort to answer the research questions: to ascertain how young male graffiti writers learn the practice and how they experience this learning. Using open-ended interviews was vital for eliciting a thick descriptive account (Geertz, 2008) of the participants’ lived experience of the graffiti writing culture. As Patton argues, ‘…the open ended responses permit one to understand the world as seen by the respondents’ (Patton,

2002, p. 21); thus thick descriptive accounts serve to explain the actions and behaviours of social actors within their cultural context such that it is rendered understandable to those outside the culture (Geertz, 1975). By eliciting firsthand accounts directly from participants, the researcher gains a unique insight into the world of the participants that can generate excellent data from which to interpret the culture under study. As Patton (2002, p. 21) says ‘Direct quotations are a basic source of raw data in qualitative inquiry, revealing respondents’ depth of emotion, the ways they have organised their world, their thoughts about what is happening, their experiences and their basic perceptions’.

Interview transcripts: The 21 semi-structured interviews, each of which are approximately 60 to 90 minutes in duration, were digitally-recorded and then transcribed. All digitally-recorded interviews were conducted with the consent of the research participants, while a third-party professional transcriber subsequently transcribed the digital recordings. The textual transcripts along with the original recordings formed the basis of the analysis of this component of the data. Thinking systematically about the key concepts informing the data analysis involved a reciprocal dialogue between the data, research scholarship, and concepts to generate a written interpretation of the social phenomena being investigated. As Thomas

98 Schwandt (1998, p. 237) observes, ‘we invent concepts, models and schemes to make sense of experience and, further, we continually test and modify these constructs in light of new experience’.

Direct Observation of Graffiti Practice

The methods of data collection for this study also included direct observations, which were made at the two primary field sites described above and at various informal and sponsored gatherings, including a range of informal interactions while graffiti writers were painting at a wall. I began by observing the graffiti culture in situ, looking for discernible patterns within the ordinary interactions of the group by observing what they did and what they said (behaviours and language) while painting at the wall

(LeCompte, Millroy, & Preissle, 1992).

I approached the observation of actual practice in a systematic manner, initially taking a passive and unobtrusive role as a silent witness to the events as they unfolded, writing down notes of points that, from my perspective as an outsider, seemed important or worth knowing. I also recorded my reflections of the events and brief descriptions of the site context, who was present, and the mood of the painting session.

During this time, which lasted for approximately four to six weeks, I did not ask very many questions, though, as I became more comfortable with the environment and the participants became more accepting of my presence, I began to engage with the graffiti writers and ask what they were doing or what they said. While observing the interactions of graffiti writers in practice, I combined note-taking with asking questions as they worked, though there were times when I waited for them to talk about their work to one another so that I could observe naturally-occurring

99 conversation or ‘practice talk’ that is discussed in chapter five. The steps I took to ensure that I did not interfere with the authenticity of the practice involved taking a very slow approach to entering into the field sites and spending a relatively long time in the field. It enabled me to develop a good rapport with the writers and to win their trust by demonstrating my genuine interest in their practice and my commitment to documenting their world. The idea of commitment is highly valued among graffiti writers, so I was able to gain their respect as a dedicated researcher and writer of words in my own right.

During these painting sessions I was able to observe the teaching and learning of graffiti skills, primarily at the Council Aerosol Art program I attended on Tuesday evenings from June to December 2014, as well as at other locations mentioned above.

During the city council aerosol art program, I observed a number of informal painting sessions that were staffed by older, experienced graffiti writers who acted in the capacity of artist mentor to the younger writers participating in the program. The direct observation allowed me to observe authentic informal interactions and the learning that takes place when young male graffiti writers come together to perform their art practice. Of particular interest was observing the participants’ practice talk when at the wall painting, as this provided rich insight into the informal learning that occurs organically when writers are engaged in practice. As the observations were carried out in a naturalistic setting (Patton, 2002), authentic practice was observed at the field sites. There is a caveat however: as a researcher observing and witnessing the writers in action as they produced their artwork, my presence no doubt affected the authenticity of the event. While I made every effort to be as unobtrusive as possible, my presence still represented an intrusion on the natural interactions amongst the

100 graffiti writers. I observed similar behaviour and interactions at legal painting days in

Richmond, in Blender Lane, and in an unnamed laneway off Franklin Street in

Melbourne. These observations allowed me to gain firsthand knowledge of the culture, of the learning associated with the practice of graffiti writing, and of the inner workings of graffiti crews that are integral to the life world of graffiti writing.

Data Analysis

Corbin and Strauss (2008, p. 16) state that ‘qualitative analysis is many things, but it is not a process that can be rigidly codified’. That said, it is important to outline and follow a systematic set of processes and procedures in carrying out the analysis of qualitative data. The analysis of the data in this study drew upon analytic methods described by Corbin and Strauss (2008), that is, qualitative analysis aiming for thick and rich description of graffiti culture by identifying a set of themes from the data, particularly the use of constant comparative analysis as articulated by Barney Glasser

(1969). I drew upon a qualitative analytic method of analysis to make meaning from the data, that is, purposeful sampling and initial open-coding of the data which involved close readings of the interview transcripts. This process included concurrent data generation and collection of semi-structured open-ended interview notes, field observations, and field notes. I carried out constant comparative analysis of the emerging themes and codes, leading to thematic category identification. The data analysis process then involved further intermediate coding and the selection of core categories (themes and codes). I combined the analysis of the data with writing, working and back and forth between the interview transcripts, observational data, and the developing textual account of the study.

101 Initial Coding and Categorisation of the Data

An inductive approach was taken in the analysis of the data such that core concepts were not defined prior to coding but emerged during the process of data analysis as a pattern of meaning appeared from the lived experiences of the participants as related to the researcher (Creswell, 2013). An inductive, hypothesis-generating approach rather than a hypothesis-testing approach to analysis was adopted (Corbin & Strauss,

2008; Glasser & Strauss, 1967). As Charmaz (2004, p. 981) argues, ‘a few descriptive codes and a powerful computer program do not suffice’ for rigorous analysis, therefore the first stage of data analysis involved my listening to the audio recording of the interview while reading the hard copy transcript. This was done for two reasons.

First, as I had not personally transcribed the interviews, I conducted this step with each of the interviews in order to ensure clarity of transcription and, second, to begin the process of initial coding and categorisation of the data. I simultaneously carried out the initial coding of my observational field notes, that is, reading the transcribed text of my field notes looking for broad themes and developing codes and categories.

This mirrored the process employed with the interview transcripts by noting down initial codes and themes in the margins of the transcribed materials.

Initial or open-coding was the first step in the data analysis process. During this time, it was important for me to read the data (transcripts and observational field notes) with a critical eye as I was looking to identify important words or extended narratives that would lend themselves to the development of broad themes, then labelling them accordingly. Codes were assigned to the words and excerpts that were taken verbatim from the participants’ own language. These are termed In Vivo codes as they are taken from the verbatim words of participants that are then used to label the relevant

102 codes, such as ‘learning’ or ‘skills’. Categories, which are groups of related codes such as ‘learning graffiti skills’, were connected to emerging codes in my observational field notes.

The next step in the process of data analysis was to develop an understanding of how practicing graffiti writers perceived and experienced the culture of graffiti writing.

This understanding was drawn from the initial interviews conducted with each of the participants. Following Corbin and Strauss (2008) and Miles and Huberman (1994), I took a systematic approach in my analysis of the data. I followed this process by first reading each participant’s interview transcript in its entirety several times, writing margin notes on the interview transcripts in order to highlight broad themes that emerged within each of the interviews. I found that this allowed me to become familiar with the data and understand the interview in its entirety. Going back and again listening to the recording of the interviews while simultaneously taking down more comprehensive notes of the interview transcript enhanced my understanding of the whole interview even further (van Manen, 1990). The aim was to immerse myself in the interview and to gain an appreciation of the whole interview before breaking it up into themes and codes.

Concurrent data generation and analysis involved my writing up my observation notes as soon as possible after each field work session at the council aerosol arts program and Blender Studios, noting everything that occurred and was observed, in order to develop core understandings of the culture of graffiti writing. Concurrent data generation and analysis was conducted throughout the duration of the fieldwork and collection phases of my study. This entailed coding themes in the patterns of the

103 participants’ narratives as soon as each interview was transcribed. This allowed for the initial coding of the data to occur concurrently as the data was generated in the field.

The idea of ‘sensitivity’ is critical in the conduct of qualitative research and analysis.

Sensitivity refers to the researcher subjectively immersing themselves in the research, that is, tuning into the data and picking up on important points or events in the data

(Corbin & Strauss, 2008). As I carried out data collection and analysis concurrently, I was able to code a transcript and identify initial meanings and interpretations of the interview transcript or observational notes prior to the next interview or field observation. This afforded me the opportunity to follow up or clarify a particular point, theme or observation when next observing at the field site, or when conducting the next interview with the relevant participant.

Writing memos: Memos are the written records of the thought process that a researcher experiences when analysing data (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). As I analysed the data and themes, and as codes developed, I wrote descriptive memos or interrogated the data by asking questions of it, while conceptualising the early themes developed in my initial reading of the transcripts. In writing a memo, I was forced to think critically about the data, reflecting on its significance; in this way analysis of the particular excerpt of the transcript was occurring. Memos in qualitative analysis have been described as ‘intellectual capital in the bank’ (Clarke, 2005, p. 85). I believe

Clarke (2005) means that in writing memos while engaged in analysis much of the formal writing of the thesis is achieved along with the analysis of the data. These memos were a core component of my data analysis, developing into analysis that was

104 ultimately incorporated into the text that eventually formed the findings chapters of this thesis.

Intermediate coding: During this stage of the coding process, substantive codes were developed out of the intermediate coding. I returned to the broad emergent themes of the intermediate coding with a new critical eye, re-reading the transcripts and subsequent themes again before distilling them further to develop solid coding categories around five broad themes. Each theme was assigned a name that represented the emergent theme of each section. The five broad themes that emerged were: 1) ‘graffiti is a rule-driven practice with clear guidelines’; 2) 'graffiti is an iterative practice that requires time and repetition in order to learn the practice’; 3)

‘graffiti requires mastery, much like an apprenticeship’; 4) ‘graffiti is a skill-driven practice’; and 5) ‘knowledge acquisition is very important, not just technical skills, but cultural knowledge as well’. Such cultural knowledge includes the history of the culture, its origins and genesis, and who the masters are, as well as knowledge of the rules of the practice that enable authentic participation in the graffiti writing culture.

The themes and codes emerged from perceptions articulated in the firsthand accounts of the participants, meaning I did not begin the coding process with a predetermined set of codes. This process allowed for ‘opening up the codes to reflect the view of participants in a traditional qualitative way’ (Creswell, 2007, p. 152). I thus developed the codes by focusing on the words of the participants themselves. In reading the transcripts of the interview data, it became increasingly clear to me that graffiti writers and the crews they formed were much more multifaceted and complex than the vandalistic hooligans that are depicted in the media. As I continued reading

105 through the transcripts, a shared story began to unfold of the steps taken by each participant to become a graffiti writer. It soon became clear by comparing a number of different extracts from the transcripts that what was being described to me was a range of behaviours carried out by writers that comprised a practice, and that developing those behaviours involved a form of learning. Reading these accounts of becoming led me to start thinking about the graffiti community through the theoretical lenses of learning and community, as articulated in the accounts of the graffiti writers involved. These multiple articulations of practice revealed in the interview data in many ways began to resemble an apprenticeship; it was then that the emergent concept of the graffiti crew as a community of practice began to form. Thus a broad theme emerged from my active and regular engagement with the interview data collected for this study.

I went through several stages to develop the codes with which I worked. I first identified a list of codes that emerged from the interviews under each theme before moving to the process of refinement since I found that the codes were too broad and there were too many overlaps and/or I found that some of the codes did not actually reflect any of the broad themes identified. I therefore reviewed and re-reviewed the codes in electronic files, subsequently reducing and combining codes under each theme as I reviewed each transcription. This refinement and reduction process allowed me to develop codes that best described the graffiti writers’ views under each theme. The codes under each theme allowed me to begin a dissection of the participants’ views of the graffiti practice and the inner workings of the culture of graffiti writing, and to see how each of the participants experienced it. In order to develop an understanding of participants’ views, I classified each of the codes

106 pertaining to each theme into categories that represented the individual views of the participants involved.

Selecting Core Categories

In the final phase of data analysis, I began to condense the five broad themes that emerged from the initial analysis and to synthesise these themes in line with the conceptual framework employed in this study. As the data was being examined from within the theoretical framework of communities of practice, the five broad themes were broken down and synthesised into three focused themes that aligned with the practice theory frameworks being utilised in this study: physical communities, learning within a community, and digitally-mediated communities. From this level of analysis, the three themes were developed into the substantive findings chapters that represent the core of this thesis. These chapters affirm that:

1. Graffiti writers enter into a community for practice;

2. Becoming a graffiti writer is a process which involves learning and perfecting

graffiti writing skills within the situated learning context of the graffiti crew, as

well as developing the attitude, boldness and identity of a graffiti writer, an

identity that is permeated by a masculine outlook; and

3. The Internet and social media provide an online space for new forms of

community that offer a range of affordances and challenges to the culture of

graffiti writing.

Organisation of the Data for Analysis (Data Management)

The interview data (audio and transcripts), along with the transcribed observational field notes, were organised into computer files using Microsoft Office to help me

107 manage the data. I used comment boxes in Microsoft WORD to write memos during the coding process, which allowed me to organise my observations and to develop an understanding of the culture of graffiti writing and the meanings attached to participants’ engagement as graffiti writers. I first entered the broad themes identified into comment boxes on the electronic copies of the interview transcripts using

Microsoft WORD, and then, under each theme, I developed codes for each of the points made by the participants that reflected their views in relation to the emergent themes. Using Microsoft WORD as a data management tool allowed me to move from reading and noting broad themes from the hard copy transcript to developing codes on the electronic document to allow the participants’ views and experience of the graffiti culture to emerge; that is, I was able to highlight and colour-code the emerging themes and search the electronic documents for associated themes and codes. This was achieved by transferring the initial handwritten notes from the hardcopy transcript into a series of comment boxes on the electronic copy of the transcript. This was followed by a re-reading of the transcripts in electronic format through which I identified the themes and developed further codes as they emerged.

Conclusion

The focus of this study is graffiti as a site of informal learning and production.

Drawing on a practice theory framework, my study emphasises how young men learn to produce cultural artefacts. In this chapter it has been argued that graffiti writing has often been conceptualised from a deficit perspective, and that fresh conceptual tools are required to focus on what graffiti writers actually do in practice. By using a theory of practice to analyse graffiti writing, this study shifts the analysis away from its subcultural framing, to position graffiti writing more centrally within mainstream

108 understandings of how aesthetic practices and crafts are learned by novices. Such learning turns experienced graffiti writers into leaders of their art form, and reveals the complex learning practices associated with graffiti writing. It also shifts the focus from individual members of ‘subcultures’ or ‘gangs’ to their practice, that is, the

‘production’ of graffiti writing.

This chapter has also outlined the rationale for the methodology adopted in this study.

It explained the methods employed to investigate the culture of graffiti writing and to ascertain how young men learn the technical skills and acquire the cultural knowledge involved in writing signature graffiti with spray-paint. The chapter also describes how they experience this learning. The world is a symbolic representation, and in this way the world is knowable; however, this knowledge of the world is contingent upon a range of factors, including the meanings we make about the world and how these meanings are made via actions and interactions that are augmented by emotions as we develop in our relationships and understandings of each other and the social spaces that we inhabit. This process is underpinned by reflection upon the decisions we make and the understanding that derives as a result of our reflexive engagement with the world around us. The world is complex, yet knowable, despite their being a multiplicity of possible knowable realities and experiences.

This study is therefore concerned with investigating the production of graffiti writing and the learning practices that underpin this production. Theories that can be adapted to elucidate aspects of knowing and learning within an informal community of practice, such as that encountered within a graffiti crew, are an important analytical tool for interpreting the data and understanding the social spaces that young people

109 inhabit. By acquiring multiple perspectives from a range of graffiti writers via interviews and observations, this study investigates the culture of graffiti writing. The multiple voices describing the culture of graffiti practice are important. They allow for the development of an in-depth analysis that helps to frame the respondents’ experiences and to aid in the development of strategies to make meaning from the life world of the graffiti writers that I investigate. The following three chapters present the analysis of the substantive findings of this study.

110 Chapter 4 Entry to Practice: Becoming a Graffiti Writer

At the outset, I discuss how a young man becomes a graffiti writer by examining the characteristics of graffiti crews as identified and discussed by the study participants.

The graffiti writers interviewed and observed in this study conceptualise their crew as a complex and interactive group that involves notions of family, belonging, and sharing. They explain that the graffiti crew, for them, is more than just ‘crime’ or

‘vandalism’; it is a group that provides individual members with protection; it is a place of trust where secrecy is protected and the members of the crew work together to maintain group coherence. As discussed in chapter two, this study advances the analysis of youth groups past the functionalist approaches of earlier ‘deviance’ theorists (for example: Cloward & Ohlin, 1960; Cohen, 1955; Yablonsky, 1962) to an approach that focuses on learning and production - not simply re-production. This study also moves beyond the limitations of ‘subcultural’ theorists; the learning communities focus builds on the work of the subcultures approach, but develops it further by linking it with the learning of skills and the production of cultural artefacts.

The participants in the study spoke openly and candidly about their conceptualisation of the graffiti crew and what the crew meant to them. Their conceptualisation of the crew aligns with and can be explained through the theoretical concept of communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) and legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In this chapter I therefore explore how young men enter a community and begin the journey of becoming graffiti writers, a journey that includes the learning of graffiti skills, techniques and cultural knowledge. The social learning that also occurs encompasses the making of particular identities and

111 affiliations because, by entering into the crew, novice writers commence a process of becoming a writer within a graffiti crew. The concept of community is therefore central to my theorisation of the learning and production of graffiti writing in a graffiti crew. Ettienne Wenger (1998, p. 125) describes a community of practice as possessing ‘belonging, mutual relationships, acceptance, shared stories and commitment’, all features that align with graffiti writers’ conceptualisation of a crew and what it means to them. This study seeks to extend Wenger’s (1998) construct of community by investigating an informally-organised youth group with defined boundaries, boundaries that can determine who enters and who is excluded. This chapter shows how the graffiti crew members, within those boundaries, share participation in high-risk activities that help to shape the culture and ‘feel’ of graffiti learning for the participants. Drawing on the interview data, I explore how the shared passion, interests and goals of the community’s members emerge, and where the path to learning the practice of graffiti begins.

The Crew: Notions of Family and Belonging

The graffiti crew is more than a ‘learning community of practice’; it is also an affective and relational community in which concerns about exclusion are also present, as I further explore in Chapter Five. While the aim of participation in a graffiti crew is the learning and production of graffiti pieces, as will be shown in this thesis, inclusion within the community was equally important to the study participants’ experience of the graffiti crew. In this way the aims of involvement also include sociality and acceptance by one’s peers in the crew. The importance of inclusion and the possibility of exclusion are themes that regularly surfaced in participants’ accounts of their involvement in a graffiti crew. To explore the ideas of

112 inclusion, exclusion and community, I asked the participants to define a graffiti crew and to explain what it meant to them. A common response among participants was that a graffiti crew is akin to a family and/or close friendship, as indicated in the following excerpts:

I think your crew should be people that are close to you like family, like you wouldn’t treat them any differently to how you would treat somebody in your family. - Mark

OK crew to me has now evolved to pretty much be my family, that’s pretty much how it is now. – JD

This view of the crew as family resonated with participants at both research sites, many of whom felt that their particular crew had developed a very strong and personal sense of closeness. Tyrone, in the comment below, described how the idea of the crew is conceived differently depending on the age and life stage of the writer, explaining that when you are young the crew represents your family.

I think it’s different depending on your age. When you’re young it’s pretty much your family. Because when you’re like a teenager your own family seems so distant and so old and out of touch with what you’re dealing with that your friends and your crew are your family. - Tyrone

Tyrone’s experience was a feeling of alienation from his own family, a feeling common to many adolescents (Hill & Wager, 2009; Kehily, 2009) who view their family, particularly parents, as alien and unable to understand their thoughts, feelings and desires. In Tyrone’s case the peers in his crew were extremely important to him.

They operated much like a family, providing support, because they could relate to him as a member of their community, sharing similar needs and goals. Tyrone’s comment also raises issues of gender, as the informants in the study are not simply participants but young men who hold (or are learning) specific, gendered codes of understanding and belonging that frame their participation in the graffiti crew and in this way creates

113 the masculine ideal and a conceived homosociality (Hannerz, 2017). What we see operating here is their affirmation of filial brotherly bonds and the development of relationships. This is important to them, but it is arguably at odds with familiar binary understandings of, and stereotypes attached to overt expressions of feelings and emotions within a masculine youth culture such as graffiti writing.

The significance of belonging to a crew was further corroborated by JD:

So that was a very interesting time trying to feel like you belong to something or in the crew you earnestly felt like you belonged to something, you know. And I guess that even if you take that right back that becomes quite a primal tribalistic kind of thing, you know what I mean. - JD

The importance of belonging to a crew is further evident in participants’ accounts of the crew as being like a close-knit group of like-minded individuals who band together, in this case under a shared group name and a shared passion for graffiti, to write together under the banner of the crew name. In this context the participants privilege an understanding of the graffiti crew as marked by a particularly high level of friendship that is cemented within ‘a united practice’ and a strong, mutually- engaged work ethic, as demonstrated in the following excerpt:

I think for me personally crew has been pretty closely linked to friendship and a kind of united, yeah, a united way of working, a united practice. – Jack

The friendship Jack describes involves mutual engagement in a joint enterprise that privileges a ‘united practice’ which involves working together in a common way.

Mutual engagement entails a degree of negotiation, as the individual actors who make up the crew must interact in a shared collective practice that forms the core focus of their community, the production of graffiti pieces and the garnering of a reputation within the wider culture of graffiti writers. In this sense the success of a graffiti crew

114 demands complex interactions between its members to ensure that the crew achieves its aims. In other words, the actions and meanings associated with the crew are negotiated.

There is a wide array of risks prevalent in the culture of graffiti writing. These include, but are not limited to, apprehension, arrest, serious injury, or death, given that writers routinely paint in high-risk areas such as around train lines, train yards, freeway overpasses, tall buildings and other prominent urban infrastructure (Campos, 2013;

Halsey & Young, 2006; Macdonald, 2001; Snyder, 2009). From this perspective, it is apparent that the members of the crew must bond together in a high-risk activity to demonstrate their conviction, commitment and dedication to one another and to the activity of the crew. By engaging together in this high-risk activity, Tyrone highlights how graffiti practitioners develop strong relationships that can be understood as aligning with elements of a community of practice:

I mean it’s just camaraderie. They collect people that go to war together or are in the fire brigade together, it’s like a bond because you do stupid things and risk-taking things. When you do that with someone you’re kind of closer. If you’ve both run from the police together or you’ve both fallen off a roof together or something like that it’s more of a bond than you would get in a normal type of scenario. - Tyrone

The above reflection illustrates that the participants are doing things together (mutual engagement) in an activity marked by mutual accountability (joint enterprise) that develops shared stories, historical recollections, and their associated actions, discourses and concepts (shared repertoire). Thus the bonds that unite a graffiti crew are filtered through a matrix of interactions and negotiation that serve to support the communal interaction of the graffiti crew. What differentiates a graffiti crew from other communities of practice, however, is their ‘shared participation in high-risk

115 activities’, which I have added as a 15th indicator to Wenger’s (1998, p. 125) 14 indicators showing that a community of practice has formed. Participating in high-risk activities together creates a much closer bond between participants, a bond that requires them to work together and shows that it's a practice that is not done alone.

Therefore, risk accentuates group cohesion. For the crew to function efficiently in risky environments they need to rely on the collective skills of the crew in producing high quality graffiti pieces under duress in dangerous and risky situations.

A Shared Activity

The nature of the organisation of a graffiti crew privileges an informal structure of communal interaction among its members, be they ‘old-timers’ (master writers) or

‘newcomers’ (toys – novice writers). This is highlighted by Scott when relating his understanding of what a graffiti crew means to him:

It’s just a group of friends really. Like there’s no like leader, we are all just in it together to paint. – Scott

Scott speaks of the lack of an organised hierarchy, in that there are no leaders as such, with the community members bringing to the practice a range of different skills and experiences that are shared amongst the crew. There are, however, more experienced or longer term members, or, according to Lave and Wenger (1991), ‘old-timers’ who may police the boundaries of the crew, particularly with regard to who is allowed entry or who is granted legitimacy within the crew. That means it may be seen as a community of exclusion, which will be explored further in the next chapter.

Knowledge, skills and experience are commodities that each crew member possesses and shares with the graffiti crew. In this context, ‘…it is in the opportunities for

116 negotiating meaning creatively that the learning of an organisation resides’ (Wenger,

1998, p. 262). This understanding of the crew again highlights the shared ways of engaging in practice that are characterised by a common interest in and passion for painting that brings the members of the crew together.

Notions of loyalty and fidelity were prevalent in the participants’ responses to the question of what a crew is, as indicated in the following comments from Mark and

Kyle:

Crew, it’s like … I don’t know, I guess the highest level of friendship. - Mark

Yeah, I got some good mates out of the crew, loyal ones; you know they’ve got your back, shit like that. – Kyle

This again evokes the tripartite conception of a community of practice (mutual engagement, joint enterprise and a shared repertoire) as articulated by Wenger (1998).

The concept of mutual engagement speaks to the development of strong and sustained mutual relationships within the crew, as participants can make connections on a more profound level than is apparent in simple social familiarity. In this sense, a community of practice can become a very tight cluster of interpersonal relationships

(Wenger et al., 2002). As the above comments from participants suggest, the investment made by these individuals in their crew results in the development of very strong mutual relationships born out of the participants’ shared passion for graffiti writing. The strength of those relationships is heightened by their shared participation in high-risk activities such that a deep sense of loyalty to one another and the crew provides a solid foundation for learning and for the production of high quality graffiti pieces.

117 Protection

All of the participants in the study agree that the crew offers camaraderie and a sense of belonging while providing a means of protection, both physically for individual writers when out painting, and literally for the products of the crew, that is, their artworks that depict the crew name and the members’ tags, throwies and pieces, as JD highlights:

But definitely I think like a strong tight-knit crew that rolls together that is solid is gonna be a force to be reckoned with ‘cause it’s not just one person you’re dealing with. - JD

The protection of the crew’s art was further exemplified when the participants spoke about how they physically do this. If another writer performs the highly disrespectful act of ‘slashing’8 a piece or ‘throwie’ done by a fellow crew member, the offending writer will have to contend not only with the individual writer that they have slashed, but they will also have to deal with the entire crew. In this respect, the crew operates as a protective collective for its members. This speaks to the development of a particular form of identity that aligns with masculine aspects of a youth group that are demonstrated in intimidation or threats of violence. In this way the graffiti crew can be perceived as a defensive fighting entity that will protect their art with their physicality. The protective behaviour of a graffiti crew is corroborated in the following reflections:

Crew, well the crew is definitely important to me because you stand by your crew no matter what. Like no matter who you’re beefing [arguing] with, like if one gets into a punch-on you’ll all be there. – Kyle

Crew means a lot of things like you back each other up if someone’s in trouble, with fighting which is obviously not necessarily the best thing but, you know, one of the things is that if someone in the crew’s in trouble then everyone else is supposed to help. – Mark

8 Intentionally painting a line through a tag, throwie, or piece, or painting over a tag, throwie or piece.

118 Kyle and Mark both elaborate on the importance of protecting fellow crew members if they become involved in a conflict with another crew or individual writer. This understanding of what crew means to them aligns with the eighth characteristic identified by Wenger (1998), namely the characteristic of ‘mutual defining identities’.

Wenger (1998) argues that people do not necessarily think of their identities in terms of a community of practice; however, the identities formed around collective engagement in a shared practice, such as that exemplified in a graffiti crew, speak to a level of community coherence that forms the basis of the practice of writing graffiti.

Immersion in and dedication to the aims and goals of the community means that, if challenged, members of the community will cohere and jointly respond to the threat.

This ultimately extends to the crew members’ determination to protect the crew name and maintain its reputation within the wider culture of graffiti writing. Arguably this defensive aspect is amplified in a graffiti crew because of the high-risk and illegal nature of its activity. It may also relate to the affirmation that these young men seek, possibly arising from a mix of previous educational and learning experiences that may not have been positive (Rahn, 2002).

Despite identity work being performed by individual graffiti writers in the communal context of the crew, the sometimes violent and egotistical nature of graffiti culture can affect the identity work experienced. As Tyrone explains, one’s individual identity can easily be subsumed by the ‘alter-ego’ of the graffiti writer and the alternative identity that is created by one’s ‘tag’, as well as the ensuing urban mythology that is created around a writer’s word:

Tyrone: It’s kind of like that with graffiti, I mean you get an ethos around your name that you’ve created and it generates steam and sometimes it can steamroll you as an individual out of the way.

119 This speaks to the idea of individual performativity in relation to the practice of graffiti writing, as the aim of the practice is the development of a street reputation for the crew that affirms their ability, skills and dedication. In their individual performances, however, writers project a specific, highly-masculine image that is based on the urban mythology associated with their ‘tag’, that aligns with Campos’

(2017) understanding of the graffiti writer as a ‘masked superhero’. This ‘masked’ individual behind the ‘tag’ becomes the known and accepted version of who this person is. The reality of this person’s life can be subsumed by their ‘tag identity’, while their ‘true self’ can become lost, as was the case for Tyrone:

So for a long time I had a bit of a reputation for certain things such as bashing people and being an asshole and don’t fuck around with that guy, he’s the bad graffiti guy. And I necessarily wasn’t like that but that was the character portrayed in my art so it was like don’t go over that guy’s graffiti, he protects it with his physicality, even though there were many facets to me such as my family and my friends and girlfriends and loving, caring, dah, dah, dah, that’s not known. So this other character emerged and for a long time I got lost within a character knowing that it wasn’t really who I am but it became who I was, I had problems with drugs, alcohol, violence, all the rest and there was a muddiness of who I was. – Tyrone

The type of experience articulated by Tyrone’s comments above can lead to identity issues for the graffiti writer which can result in their having trouble separating their art from real life. As Tyrone’s experience shows, this can generate a range of personal and health issues. The sense of community that develops around a graffiti crew does not always therefore make writers immune from the negative aspects of the culture that can surface in the identity work of individual writers, as was evident in Tyrone’s experiences.

The crew is the essential and fundamental site where the active practice of graffiti occurs, and it this shared practice that creates the participatory, close-knit and

120 protective character of the crew. This aligns with Wenger’s (1998) indicator one,

‘sustained mutual relationships’, indicator six ‘substantial overlap in participants’ descriptions of who belongs’, and indicator eight, ‘mutually defining identities’. The sense of camaraderie, closeness and identity experienced by graffiti crew members results in the crew closing ranks to protect each other and their artwork, but the protective nature of the crew does not always insulate individual writers from the negative aspects of the culture associated with their ‘tag identity’, as was the case for

Tyrone. In this way the belonging and mutual relationships that are forged by participation in high-risk activities and that serve to define the graffiti crew can be equated with trust, as graffiti writers must routinely rely on and trust their fellow crew members with their lives, liberty and wellbeing.

Trust

Trust is a critical component of community cohesion, a component that was evident in participants’ descriptions of their crew experience. Trust was paramount, and that required knowing well the other crew members with whom each writer was working.

JD elaborates on his experience of trust in a way that that resonates with Wenger’s

(1998) Indicator 7, ‘knowing what others know, what they can do, and how they can contribute to an enterprise’:

So I think when you paint with a crew of dudes and you know how they paint or you’ve painted with them that much under duress in different situations, man I know I can trust those dudes, I know that it doesn’t matter how things are gonna work out it’s gonna be, you know, it’s gonna look cool. – JD

This speaks to the notion of joint enterprise as a source of community cohesion in that each member of the crew works together with other members of the community in a negotiated context. In that context each crew member is aware of the rhythms and

121 interpretations of the others in the crew; each crew member is aware of how each other paints; and they know how they will react under stress. In this way, there is a relationship between the ability to stay calm and collected and the capacity to work together to produce an aesthetically-pleasing, high quality piece, supported by a collective process of negotiation in spite of any fear or threat of apprehension.

Wenger’s (1998) notion of joint enterprise helps in understanding this phenomenon.

By participating in a joint enterprise, the participants’ actions and interactions belong to them in a deep way, despite all the forces (painting under duress in difficult, high- risk situations) and influences that are beyond their control. Dealing with the forces that are out of a writer’s control is part and parcel of the graffiti crew’s experience.

Due to the very sensitive (high-risk, dangerous and illegal) nature of the practice of graffiti writing, trust is a vital component in crew formation and production, as

Tyrone explains:

Obviously they’ve got to hang out together and know each other and trust each other because that’s a big thing. You’ve got to trust the person because if you’re doing something that’s frowned upon by a lot of society the person better not be a snitch -Tyrone

This point was also touched on by Mark, who stated:

You know, you have a high level of trust and, you know, it goes beyond just painting. – Mark

These comments refer to a fundamental requirement that comes with participation in a graffiti crew, that is, the imperative for individual writers to have the utmost confidence in their fellow community members. Specifically, each and every member of the crew can and must be relied upon to not let down their fellow crew members in a crisis. This is particularly the case with graffiti writing, as Tyrone points out, because it is often performed in an illegal context; writers have got to be sure that

122 their fellow crew members will not inform on them to the police or identify other writers if questioned while out on an illegal graffiti writing mission. This understanding of trust echoes Wenger’s (1998, p. 125) indicator 14 of the emergence of a community of practice, ‘a shared discourse reflecting a certain perspective on the world.’ Given that graffiti is an illegal practice, the shared worldview of writers is generally anti-authoritarian as the crew is focused on gaining notoriety by painting illegally in high-risk, high-profile positions around the city. Of utmost importance then is the trust that emerges within a crew. Graffiti writers are mutually engaged in a high-risk joint enterprise that requires members to be trustworthy and to be focused on protecting the crew and their fellow writers.

Secrecy

The idea that a graffiti crew operates as a community of practice in relation to ‘a shared discourse reflecting a certain perspective on the world’ (Wenger, 1998, p. 126) is further elaborated by Jack below. Jack suggests that a core aspect of the culture of graffiti writing relates to it being a highly secretive and illegal practice that requires loyalty to a specific worldview:

It’s really cool to see that graffiti is… by and large it’s still essentially about having very strong bonds of friendship. A little bit like, you know, if you’re all doing something illegally under this one name it’s like, you know, just by doing that you’re kind of like close, you know, ‘cause it’s that kind of secretive thing. – Jack

In the traditional understanding of a community of practice articulated by Lave and

Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998), the boundaries of a community are fuzzy or porous allowing for ‘self selection based on expertise or passion for a topic’ (Wenger et al., 2002, p. 42). See Table 4.1 below that demonstrates the distinctions between a

123 community of practice and a graffiti crew; the points in bold font in the graffiti crew row highlight the relevant distinctions between the two structures.

Table 4.1: Distinctions Between a Community of Practice and a Graffiti Crew. Distinctions Between a Community of Practice and a Graffiti Crew What’s the Who How Clear What Holds How Long purpose Belongs? are the Them do They Last Boundaries together Community To create, Self- Fuzzy Passion, Evolve and of Practice expand, and selection commitment end exchange based on and organically knowledge, expertise or identification (last as long as and to passion for a with the group there is develop topic and its relevance to capabilities expertise the topic and value and interest in learning together) Graffiti To create, Selective Fixed Passion, Evolve and Crew expand, and entry by boundary commitment, end exchange more Reputation organically knowledge, experienced and (last as long as and to and long identification there is develop term with the group relevance to capabilities members of and its the topic and and the crew expertise value and identities based on interest in ability and learning and potential producing together) Adapted from Wenger’s (2010, p. 42) Distinctions Between Communities of Practice and Other Structures.

Due to the often illegal nature of the practice of graffiti writing and its very secretive character, the boundaries of the crew are policed to ensure that the issues of who belongs and who is invited into the crew are negotiated, with decisions vetted by the more experienced, long-term members of the crew in their efforts to protect the crew and its members. This is a very important component of the community’s experience, as Tyrone’s account of the structure of his crew attests:

124 Like we didn’t just put everyone in it [the crew], like it was people that showed that they were our mates and wanted to be friends with us and party with us and paint with us. - Tyrone

Here, Tyrone articulates a specific understanding of crew development that demonstrates dedication and commitment to the crew. Tyrone’s crew was very selective in admitting people who not only had an interest in the crew as friends and as a site of sociality, but equally had an interest in what Wenger (1998, p. 73) identifies as ‘mutual engagement’, that is, painting graffiti together in a community context marked by strong relationships and social complexity. In our discussion of crew formation and development, Tyrone further explained:

Then you’re like is that right, is that right, is that building your crew, is that like a dream team in sport, you know what I mean, because once your crew’s got a rep [reputation] you can sort of … if there’s an up and coming writer you can think maybe we school this guy into this crew or whatever. - Tyrone

Tyrone here discusses crew selection and who belongs in terms of designing or building the perfect crew by ensuring that you have the right people, those who will contribute to the production of high quality artwork and hence further the reputation of the crew. In this way, contrary to Wenger et al. (2002), the boundaries of the crew are fixed, with members invited in according to their skills and potential. This was shown by the importance placed on furthering the reputation of the crew by selecting writers with particular skills. Tyrone refers to the selection process as being critical in ensuring the right mix of people with the right skills who will further the goals and grow the reputation of the crew. Again, there is a competitive sports team analogy in

Tyrone’s reference to building up the crew ‘like a dream team’, a perfect team that has all the best players with a diverse skill set, making them unbeatable. This highlights the significance of recruiting young writers (male or female) who demonstrate talent and skills so that they can contribute to the developing street

125 credibility of the graffiti crew. Furthermore, the fixed boundaries and selective entry that is policed by ‘old-timers’ within the crew differentiates my conception of the crew from traditional communities of practice, and they reflect the nuanced interpretation of the empirical work conducted for this study within the graffiti community.

Recruiting the best writers is not the only important consideration in crew development; the writer also needs to be in accord with the social and community- oriented aspects of the crew when they are being considered for membership.

Otherwise, crew cohesion or safety may be compromised.

… I mean the painting part of it really to me is like not as big a part of it as the people themselves if that makes sense. Like a lot of the time when I go painting with my crew it’s like, you know, I enjoy painting but I enjoy seeing them and hanging out with them more, probably, than I enjoy the painting. – Mark

Thus the type of people let into the community is just as important as their skill in painting. This is consistent with Wenger’s indicator 6 (1998, p. 125), namely ‘overlap

[shared understanding] in participants’ descriptions of who belongs’. Being around good people in the crew is just as important in order to build community and a sense of belonging, which speaks to who doesn’t belong and how the boundaries of the crew are policed, as Mark explains:

… I guess it’s the difference between whether somebody’s a good person or if they’re a good writer, you know. Like ideally they’re both in a perfect world but at the end of the day I’d rather be in a crew with someone who’s a good person than somebody who’s just a good writer. People would just be like oh that person can paint, you should put them in the crew ‘cause it’s gonna make the crew look better. It’s like well what if they’re an asshole, you know, like nobody wants to hang out with an asshole. – Mark

126 The right mix of people is important to ensure camaraderie, support and crew cohesion. Ultimately, the success of a graffiti crew is dependent upon it having the right people who demonstrate commitment, dedication, and trustworthiness, not only to painting but to the crew. Who belongs therefore is not simply reducible to one’s skill set since attitude and demeanour are equally important in deciding who gains entry. Ultimately the graffiti crew can and does at times operate as a community of exclusion when it comes to determining who is worthy of membership. As has been discussed, this can be attributed to a number of factors, including trustworthiness, skills, physical ability, artistic potential, attitude, and personality, all of which can serve as criteria for membership or exclusion depending on the type of crew or the attitude of the more experienced members of the crew who make decisions on writers’ entry into the crew. The concept of communities of exclusion, particularly in relation to female graffiti writers, will be explored in more detail in Chapter 5.

Maintaining Group Cohesion

The interviews with the participants revealed that it is a common occurrence for the crew to go out ‘bombing’ or ‘piecing’ together. This type of mutual engagement in the shared activity of writing together helps to reinforce the sense of cohesion that bonds the crew (Austin 2001; Lachman 1988; van Loon 2014). To achieve such coherence requires ongoing work that can be understood as community maintenance.

To illustrate this point, I draw on two examples from the interviews that discuss the symbolic placing of the crew name or crew members’ tags on or in close proximity to their completed ‘piece’ or ‘throw-up’ as a mark of membership and respect for the crew:

127 … everyone I know who’s in like a good crew always chucks up the crew next to their stuff, it’s kind of like a responsibility, if you’re in the crew you’re kind of obligated to or obliged to do that, yeah. - Jack

But I mean, yeah, really like most people would put the crew up every single time. I mean it’s kind of like I guess a bit of like a nod to your friends, like hey, you know. ‘Cause when somebody puts the crew up it represents everybody in the crew so, you know, it’s like … and some people like every now and again they’ll put up one or two people or maybe three people that they’re friends with or whatever but the crew name kind of covers everybody. - Mark

Crew recognition is part of the community symbolism that can be understood as an act of community maintenance (Wenger, 1998). Putting up the crew name along with your own piece is an obligation of community membership, as Jack points out. Mark explains that in this way the individual writer is acknowledging the entirety of the crew and not just their solitary artistic contribution. Using the crew’s name identifies a graffiti crew as engaged in an activity marked by a shared repertoire utilising specific symbolic markers and styles to define their unique community. Being part of a community of practice therefore provides graffiti writers, both novice writers (toys) and experienced writers (masters), with a group identity, sociality, emotional support, protection, belonging, and meaning, all of which enable the learning of the skills of graffiti writing and producing artworks.

Entry to a Community for Practice

In order to understand how a young man learns the practice of graffiti writing, it is important to explore how young male writers come to be involved in it. To illustrate how young men become aware of graffiti writing, and to explore the subsequent motivations for involvement in the practice, I will draw upon quotes that illuminate this process, from three participants. In response to a question about how he came to be involved in graffiti, JD explained:

128 So yeah I mean it’s definitely an interesting one because back then, you know, you either knew people or you saw stuff. So I used to ride my bike around and see… because I was interested in art anyway, I’d see signatures, tags, you know, whatever you want to call them, really interesting pieces. I was fortunate enough to actually grow up in an area where there was actually pretty good graffiti to look at, you know. And, before I even knew anything about anything I got my hands on pens and would just start, you know, I had so many different ‘tag’ aliases because I didn’t even know what I was doing, and ‘cause I was good at drawing I’d actually sit on the concrete in the daytime man and like do a drawing with pens. – JD

JD, with his abiding interest in art and drawing from a young age, would regularly view tags, throwies and graffiti pieces while riding around his neighbourhood on his bike. This provided the creative impetus for his interest in learning how to write signature graffiti.

Like JD, Tyrone’s first encounters with graffiti occurred during his bike-riding along the train lines of inner southeast Melbourne that had been marked by the prominent graffiti crews of the early 1990s, as Tyrone reflected:

You can’t live in Melbourne and not be aware of graffiti like pretty much. [laughs] It’s pretty much … if you live near a train line, which I did, I grew up really close to the train line. My dad and I used to ride our bikes along the train line, near Prahran Station there was this massive piece [mural] done in 1992 (the Style Machine) by JULES and MARS and PARIS, these DMA [Da Mad Artists, a Melbourne crew active in the 1990s] graffiti artists, and it’s still there. That was something that I used to make dad ride past, like even when I was on the little back seat of the bike, you know, like when I was a tiny little kid.

Viewing the Style Machine piece at Prahran Station was a watershed moment for

Tyrone. As a young boy riding to Prahran Market with his dad, he saw this seminal piece of Melbourne graffiti history, the image capturing his youthful imagination. As will be discussed further in Chapter 5, the Style Machine stuck with Tyrone, leading him to explore and learn more about the practice of graffiti writing by watching older writers along the train line.

129

In an interview, Diego spoke at length about a streetwear clothing label from the

United States, Alife. Graffiti being one of the four pillars of Hip-Hop (Waclawek,

2011), along with DJ-ing, MC-ing and Breakdancing, Hip-Hop style and clothing represent central motifs in signifying affiliation. Hip-Hop clothing has become synonymous with streetwear. Streetwear entrepreneur, Bobby Hundreds (2011), explains its significance: “True traditional streetwear is a genre of contemporary apparel, united between sportswear and military looks, and is one that speaks to a spectrum of subcultures [skateboarding and hip-hop mostly]… the two most integral components of what makes a brand streetwear: T-shirts and exclusivity.” Alife is a highly-successful streetwear brand that got its start in New York City in 1999. The brand quickly achieved a high level of regard amongst fans in the hip-hop subculture due to its unique and exclusive short-run t-shirts that brought Alife international recognition among the industry’s biggest players (Icons of Style: T-Shirts, 2015).

While Alife t-shirts can now be ordered online, when Diego first encountered them they were expensive, highly sought after, and difficult to come by in Australia, so when Diego finally purchased one it was a significant moment for him. As Diego explains, the t-shirt represented much more than simply an article of clothing; the experience of actually buying it opened up a whole new world for Diego. The Alife t- shirt was a symbolic totem for him, one that marked his entry into graffiti culture; he had recently begun actively writing after a time spent dabbling in graffiti-style designs in art class and in his school notebook.

But like that t-shirt actually … it’s just a t-shirt, you know, people would say it’s stupid but from there it opened up a whole new world for me like for graffiti, for the way you dress, for what you listen to, for just like … I don’t know, this space in my mind was filled with street culture, you know, and like throughout school that’s where my mind was at, like drawing Alife. - Diego

130 Every writer I interviewed for this study offered similar versions of the vignettes of

JD, Tyrone, and Diego related above. The narrative follows a common pattern: early childhood creative interest in art and drawing; visual stimulation/encouragement from seeing graffiti in their communities (particularly if they lived near train lines); and finally a significant event, object or person that stimulated their curiosity and urged them to begin exploring the possibility of practice by seeking out like-minded individuals at school, reading books and magazines about graffiti, or searching the emerging graffiti content in online graffiti forums and websites.

My interviews with writers revealed a shared interest and passion for graffiti writing that contributed to the participants becoming aware of graffiti writing and becoming involved in a graffiti crew, as exemplified by Jack who responded as follows when asked how he came to be involved in graffiti writing:

… I mean there were influences not just within the art of it but also just the feeling of being involved in it, you know… But the way I feel about it is that like despite all these things that I found influential and interesting I just kind of really wanted to… there was something about the idea of tagging and lettering that’s kind of like hard to describe but it hooked me in. It’s like listening to a new form of music that you haven’t heard before, you know, and then you listen to it and you really want to get involved. [laughs] – Jack

Jack here describes in very impassioned terms the strong sense of attraction to the letterforms of graffiti and the physical act of writing graffiti. His words demonstrate his passion and dedication to the form that led to his subsequent involvement in graffiti writing. In order to learn the skills of graffiti writing one must enter into a community of like-minded practitioners and involve oneself firsthand in the practice.

From there one learns by doing, and from the experience of participation in the graffiti crew.

131 Other participants in the study voiced a similar strong and passionate interest in graffiti writing, as Kyle explains:

‘Cause like I love doing it, it’s just fun and gets your heart racing, it’s like an addiction, it just gives you an adrenaline rush and stuff like that. Obviously that and shit, it’s just good. You meet new people through the scene. It’s just different, it’s just like when I put my name and the crew’s name up on a train or on a wall or something, it’s like another world, it makes me feel free. - Kyle

Mark, in the comment below, gave a somewhat more subdued account of his initial encounters with graffiti writing, but there was something about the aesthetic quality and particularly the large scale of the pieces he observed that captured his imagination and fired his already creative aspirations:

Well the first time I actually saw graffiti I was kind of intrigued by it because I didn’t know really what it was. And they were just working on a really big scale and I was really impressed by the scale that they were working on, I was like OK that’s pretty cool. And then, you know, I guess that kind of triggered the looking for that again from that point. You know, like working on a big scale is really interesting because I mean it’s unusual so, yeah, that was kind of what was interesting. And I guess with painting it’s kind of it’s a creative thing and having always done creative stuff as a kid like doing any sort of arts programs or whatever at school and loving it, graffiti was a pretty obvious thing to be into. – Mark

Graffiti writers often come to the practice equipped with a range of experience, including their own artistic knowledge and creative ideas that tend to colour and influence their experience of the crew. Study participants also discussed their extant interest in art, drawing and creativity as a central motivating factor, which speaks to the idea of aspiration as being a decisive element in the development of a community oriented around a specific practice, as suggested in the comments from Mark, Diego and Jack:

I always liked art anyway so it was kind of like I was always drawing stuff and whatever so that was, you know, always something that I’d been doing. – Mark

132 Like it was weird ‘cause I was really … I was into art. I grew up, like my older brother introduced me to hip hop like when I was younger so I always knew … I actually have a drawing that I found the other day I did ten years ago, yeah ten years ago to this month, and yeah like the stuff I was drawing there it was like graffiti-orientated, you know, so I always had a background in art. – Diego

And I thought I was a really good drawer so I thought I had a good chance of being able to do graffiti as well. - Jack

Each of these writers speaks of the importance of their early creative interests and the aspirations it generated in them, as Jack suggests when equating his ability to draw well with his aspiration to do graffiti. A successful community of practice will flourish when the goals and requirements of the community overlap with the passions and aspirations of its members (Wenger et al., 2002). All of the study participants articulated similar stories when they related to me how they came to be involved in the practice of graffiti writing.

My fieldwork suggests that young male writers enter into a community for the purpose of practice, that is, the learning of graffiti skills, techniques, cultural knowledge and identity within a social context. Practice also encompasses the act of doing, that is, performing a specific activity that brings a group together in a productive capacity. In order for novice writers to become a graffiti writer, including all that that it entails - identity work, attitude and cultural knowledge - and to perfect the art of graffiti writing, they must enter into a community of like-minded practitioners such as the graffiti crew that shows apprenticeship characteristics, as JD explains:

Because eventually then I started to meet writers that knew a little bit more and could show you like little tips and their little tricks. But it wasn’t until I got down with the crew that I’m still in now and I still work, um, that I think I actually properly got taught, like no, no man, if you paint like this you fill it in man. - JD

133

Learning within the community is reciprocal; it involves a two-way exchange between writers in the crew. There is consequently an investment in learning and a responsibility to learn on the part of the novice writer, not only to achieve their own goals but also to further the goals of the crew, as JD explains:

… Like I was always about going and painting something beautiful man, I wanted to paint something that was really, really cool and I could see it would be inspiring to myself and my crew. - JD

As discussed above, graffiti crew members perform a variety of functions, from protection to emotional support; however, a central purpose of the crew is the facilitation of informal opportunities to learn the skills associated with the practice of graffiti writing. My fieldwork reveals that the skills of the graffiti writer are learnt and developed in a graffiti crew where there are opportunities for interaction and guidance as well as opportunities to observe the practice firsthand and to benefit from such moments of observational learning. To further develop my argument that a graffiti crew is a platform for the purpose of learning and production, I will draw upon Lave and Wenger’s (1991) concept of legitimate peripheral participation.

Entry to a Community for Learning via Legitimate Peripheral Participation

Learning within the crew occurs in a situated learning context marked by legitimate peripheral participation in the community of practice. This communal learning is characterised by observational learning that supplants the highly-structured and formalised learning encountered in a formal learning environment such as in a classroom or in on-the-job training. In this regard, learning is a phenomenon that occurs organically within the social interactions of the graffiti crew as members

134 engage in their everyday practice and rituals. As novice writers take up the can and begin to write their word, a process is begun that results in practice:

Everyone starts off as a toy man, you know what I mean, that’s just how it is, you know. - JD And then I got to the point where I was like OK I want to try and do this, like I want to learn how to do graffiti, then from there it was like well no one’s gonna just hand it to me, like you’ve got to make it happen, you’ve got to learn how to do it, you’ve got to put the time in and learn. - Mark

The comments above highlight two central features of graffiti as a learned social practice. Everyone starts on the periphery as a ‘toy’ (novice) and everyone must

‘learn’ (participation in practice) how to write graffiti. ‘Toy’ is a nuanced term that has multiple meanings among graffiti writers, here referring to a novice writer who does not yet possess very much knowledge of the culture or technical skills for writing graffiti. In this context, the novice graffiti writer or ‘toy’ is analogous to a legitimate peripheral participant. In this way, as will be discussed in the next chapter, the learning of graffiti writing is analogous to apprenticeship learning and to the related gendered aspect of learning a trade on the job with male masters, a kind of learning that in some instances can work to exclude the participation of young women, the very young, or the disabled.

How one develops skills, gains knowledge, and achieves maturity is through practice, that is, active participation in the crew. As JD explained above, every writer enters into practice as an uninitiated ‘toy’ who has a limited understanding of the practice of graffiti writing or only basic artistic ability in relation to that practice. As Mark explains in the excerpt above, novice writers must learn the practice of graffiti writing by diligently applying themselves to gaining knowledge of how to paint with a spray- can. One might be creative or be able to draw, but painting with a can of spray-paint

135 is completely different, drawing as it does on a diverse skill set that must be learnt, as

Jack highlights in the comment below:

We [my crew] were cool drawers, we could all draw cool stuff for our age, but graffiti’s a different beast. If you haven’t already practiced graffiti then even if you’re a really great drawer you won’t necessarily be good at graffiti, you know, it’s like its own thing. It’s a way of drawing and thinking that you have to learn even if you’re a good drawer already. - Jack

Thus, while one may be a skillful artist, successfully translating those skills from paper or canvas to an exterior urban wall or steel train surface, and replacing a pen or brush with a spray-can, requires a completely different skill set, a set of skills that must be learnt within the social framework and practice of the graffiti crew.

A prominent theme emerging from the data was how the attraction to graffiti was described as a social process involving a range of factors. This is consistent with an understanding of learning and of legitimate peripheral participation as articulated within the communities of practice framework, though who is granted legitimacy within the crew is sometimes contested with legitimacy sometimes withheld, particularly in the case of female writers, as will be explored further in Chapter 5. In explaining how a novice writer learns within a crew, Jack gave an accurate description of legitimate peripheral participation without ever having encountered the concept:

You learn from each other a lot. And I think probably certainly … with certain crews I’m sure that they would have the people that established the crew, the founders, and then they would be bringing in new members and those new members would be expected to start off doing the kind of rudimentary tasks on the wall and paying attention to the more experienced painters and what they’re doing and then learning from them and eventually kind of climbing the rungs until they’re considered good enough to paint their own individual stuff alongside the more experienced guys. It’s definitely a kind of tiered learning process. - Jack

136 The nature of the social process Jack describes here is linked directly to the learning associated with the practice of graffiti writing and with the subsequent significance attached to developing from a novice on the periphery to a full participant in the crew.

Young writers enter the crew as peripheral participants and move gradually towards full participation or mastery as a recognised full member of the crew. In this way, as

Mark describes in the comment below, novice writers who regularly engage in the practices and develop their skills can achieve full participation through such engagement.

You know, obviously it helps if you can ask the person questions and say how did you do this and then they can explain it. - Mark

Wenger’s (1998) framework allows us to conceive of learning as a fundamental component of a group’s lived experience, and further, if learning is seen as a social phenomenon, it is not difficult to understand the benefits of the concept of legitimate peripheral participation. Legitimate peripheral participation helps to explain entry to a practice which is marked by an incremental process of participation, initially legitimately peripheral and then slowly increasing to direct participation and increased complexity of involvement. Knowledge of accepted writing practice is shared amongst the peers in a crew as Tyrone points out:

But, you know, you would teach [younger writers], you school them in, like you do this, you don’t do that. But you’d probably learn a bit from them as well because they’ve got a newer, younger, up-and-coming way of doing things. It’s like a two-way thing. - Tyrone

In the context of the crew, therefore, learning is often a two-way interaction as graffiti writers participate in the shared practice and joint enterprise of producing graffiti pieces.

137 Moving from ‘toy’ status (peripheral participant) to being a master (full participant), a recognised member of the crew, therefore takes time. It involves having a strong work ethic and a dedication to ‘getting up’ (painting one’s tag, throwie or piece) as often as possible. ‘Toys’, being new to the crew, are eager to prove themselves by participation in regular painting missions, and they are equally keen to improve the aesthetic quality of their work. As Wenger (1998, p. 96) points out, ‘such learning has to do with the development of our practices and our ability to negotiate meaning. It is not just the acquisition of memories, habits, and skills, but the formation of an identity.’ The findings suggest that ‘negotiating meaning’ within a crew is marked by mutual relationships, joint enterprise and a shared repertoire, all of which are important in shaping the practice and production of graffiti writing.

Conclusion

This chapter demonstrated that a graffiti crew is much more than a deviant subculture.

The graffiti writer is positioned as an active and participative learner who enters the graffiti crew as one enters into a learning community. In this process, a range of common understandings that are shared by graffiti writers frames the writer’s learning and production of graffiti pieces. These include notions of family, belonging, acceptance, dedication, commitment, innovation, and shared repertoire that are shared by members of the graffiti crew. There was however some suggestion emerging from the data that writers are also entering a masculine space such that the learning that occurs may be inflected with masculinised understandings of what it means to be a graffiti writer. This was highlighted when participants spoke about protecting the crew and its members. Overall, the findings suggest that the purpose of a graffiti crew goes well beyond the formation of a social group; rather, participants view the crew as

138 family, and as a place of belonging, protection and trust. It is this view that reflects what it means to enter and belong to a graffiti crew, and it is those group characteristics that provide the basis for learning and production to occur. The graffiti crew, as a site at which the learning of graffiti writing occurs, is therefore viewed as a situated activity whose core characteristic is a process that Lave and Wenger (1991) term legitimate peripheral participation.

The formative experiences of the graffiti crew highlighted in this chapter appear to be integral to the genesis of involvement and the learning of graffiti skills and techniques, and to the acquisition of the cultural knowledge that permeates the world of graffiti writing. As I have shown, the motivation for entering the community of a graffiti crew largely derives from an innate interest in art and creativity that develops in aspiring writers into a passion and interest in graffiti writing. Viewed through the theoretical lens of the community of practice, the data examined in this chapter shows that learning of graffiti occurs as one enters into a the community of a graffiti crew, and this is the beginning of a journey of learning and production of graffiti pieces.

In the next chapter I will examine the experience of graffiti writers in practice by honing-in on the specific act of doing. I explore how graffiti writers paint, how they learn the skills and techniques of graffiti writing, and how the identity work associated with a situated learning context is done. Through this exploration we can discover whether learning and production is in fact inflected with a masculine bias about what it means to be a graffiti writer. So far the data suggests that novice writers are entering a masculine space; however, it is only when we come to explore actual practice that we will be able to discern this.

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140 Chapter 5 In Practice: The Situated Learning of Graffiti Writing

As has been argued in the previous chapter, the concept of community of practice is a meaningful conceptual tool for investigating the practices of graffiti writing. Novice writers enter and become part of a community of like-minded practitioners for the purpose of learning how to produce signature graffiti. This is framed by a range of common understandings of what a graffiti crew is. I argued that the graffiti crew is a community that is more than a social group; the participants experience the crew as a site of belonging, acceptance and trust that supports them in learning the practice of graffiti writing. A theme that emerged from the data is the notion that graffiti is a highly masculine sphere that can serve to exclude women. This will be explored through the analysis of graffiti writers’ actual practice.

The findings indicate that participation in a graffiti crew using the tools related to the situated learning context is important as these artefacts convey understanding of graffiti writing traditions and the meanings associated with the tools of production that are vital to the production of graffiti artworks. Artefacts are therefore as important for cultural transmission as they are for learning the practice itself. Overall, my findings indicate that graffiti writing is learnt via observation, participation and innovation within the situated context of the graffiti crew. This conceptualisation advances our understanding of youth association as I explore the creative motivations of a graffiti crew focussed on the production of cultural artefacts in their painting of graffiti pieces. Rather than being understood as an act of deviance, resistance or stylistic abstraction, this study emphasises that graffiti writing is an act of dedication to artistic expression through a focus on learning and production. In this chapter I also

141 explore the practice of graffiti writing as a masculine pursuit that often portrays women in a demeaning way due to the hyper-masculine nature of graffiti culture. In this way the graffiti community can equally be a community of exclusion.

Situated Learning within the Graffiti Crew

The act of graffiti writing can be performed alone, but more often it is performed in a group setting in which observational and guided learning often takes place. Within the social interaction of the painting mission, learning takes place as less experienced writers observe and learn from more experienced writers. This can occur via explicit instruction with an experienced writer showing a novice writer a particular technique, or it can be informal observation of more experienced writers on the part of the novice writers, who then seek to emulate what they are observing. In developing their influential theory of situated learning, Lave and Wenger (1991, pp. 71-72) describe similar processes among a range of communities, including apprentice tailors in

Liberia who also learn via observation and participation. In the extract below, Tyrone expertly sums up his experience in the crew of learning by doing while painting along a train line, an experience that aligns with the concept of situated learning:

… like sometimes you might show a few things but it’s more like you learn by doing with each other, so you might be painting on the line and then someone next to you does something and then next week you’re doing that on the wall and you’re like ha ha ha I accidentally stole your thing. And ‘cause they’re in your crew it’s like you learn off each other… Tyrone

Learning together in the crew draws upon and aligns well with an understanding of learning by observing in a community of practice, contextually embedded in a shared socio-cultural community. In the context of the graffiti crew, writers are invested in furthering the goals of the crew by ‘getting-up’ their tags and pieces and by being

142 prominent in the city-scape, and therefore known within the culture. This is a two- way exchange of benefit that emphasises the shared goal of fame on the part of individual writers and reputational enhancement for the collective crew. Tyrone reinforced the concept of the two-way, reciprocal learning that takes place in a graffiti crew when I asked him if writing in a crew was like an apprenticeship. He responded in the following manner: “In some ways I think so yeah, because you want them to get better as well as keep getting up lots”. When they get better they improve their individual writing skills and when they “get up lots” they improve the image and standing of the crew within the culture of graffiti writers.

As younger graffiti practitioners gain knowledge and skills, they slowly come to align their skills with the core competencies of the crew. This learning can be a two-way exchange between individuals within the crew, or between the writer and the crew itself. As Tyrone indicates above, crew members have their own knowledge and develop a range of competencies in the practice of graffiti writing that can be explicitly conveyed to the rest of the crew or simply picked up by them in the process of engaging in practice. Wenger-Trayner, Fenton-O'Creevy, Hutchinson, Kubiak, and

Wenger-Trayner (2015, p. 15) explain that ‘a member can find a new solution to a problem [or in Tyrone’s case a new painting technique] and attempt to convince the community it is better than existing practice’. The point of the two-way exchange encountered in the informal learning process is further illustrated by Tyrone who described in our discussions the mentoring and learning that takes place within the graffiti crew between an experienced writer like Tyrone and a novice member of his crew:

…but yeah, you would teach [a new writer], you school them in, like you do this, you don’t do that. But you’d probably learn a bit from them as well

143 because they’ve got a newer, younger, up-and-coming way of doing things. It’s like a two-way thing. – Tyrone

This has resonances with Paradise’s and Rogoff’s (2009) conception of those who are learning also being able to teach or contribute to the communal learning that takes place within the context of the graffiti crew. In a same vein, while in conversation with Jack, he responded as follows to my question, “Do you learn from the kids you mentor?”

Yeah I do. Well the workshop I work in now definitely a couple of the guys there I think have probably influenced my style visually a little bit maybe without me even realising it but now when I look at it I can see there are probably certain things that I liked a lot in their stuff that I’ve now kind of absorbed slightly into mine. Not in any way like imitating their style but just certain things and certain aesthetics and stuff like that. - Jack

Graffiti missions often took place in a group setting in which social interaction was a central focus as much as the task at hand was, such as when painting a graffiti piece on a wall or train with practice examples often set or led by an experienced writer who acted as a mentor or master to the less experienced apprentice writers in the crew.

In painting a large scale piece, for example, a crew will work within a hierarchy of designated roles with the more experienced writers doing the outlines and more detailed work while the less experienced writers are relegated to the periphery, completing tasks like filling in sections of the piece (Castleman, 1982; Rahn, 2002;

Valle & Weiss, 2010). Jack attests to the peripheral nature of novice writers who are working toward full participation in the crew:

There’ll be somebody who almost … who always will be doing a background with a certain thing in it and, you know, assigns tasks based on their abilities and all that kind of stuff. Then there’s definitely times where a member of the crew is gonna go “you’ll have to stop doing that and go and do this, we’re gonna paint over it ‘cause it’s not up to scratch”. So there’s sometimes a hierarchy and things like that, yeah. - Jack

144 The act or process of producing the piece is carried out in a communal manner with an experienced writer taking a lead role, like a master instructing an apprentice, and in this way skill development that aligns with the culture of the practice is carried out.

Novice writers participate in the communal aspect of a crew, completing a graffiti piece as either active observers or passive observers serving as lookouts (Austin, 2001, p. 120). In participating as observers with the expectation that they will contribute to creating pieces with the crew at some point, novice writers in the crew observe with intense concentration, as is illustrated by Paradise and Rogoff (2009, p. 110) when they comment that “[t]he act of observing is often pursued with concentrated energy, attuned in keen perception for finding out about the activity, to be able to participate

[at a future time]”. Graffiti pieces are created in an interesting manner that is in reverse order. For graffiti, the background colours are painted first, the outline is overlaid on top of this, and then final details, fades and flourishes (such as stars, bubbles, crowns and arrows) are added. Doing a ‘fill’ (filling in the body of the piece with paint) is therefore a straightforward task that does not require as much skill with a spray-can as does doing the outline which requires excellent control of the can to execute straight, clean lines without drips. The task of filling in a piece with spray-can or rollers therefore is often given to the least skilled writers, who are then in a position to observe the experienced writers carrying out the more detailed outlining and shading work to produce the final product (see Figure 5.1 below). It is in this communal practice that peripheral participation in the graffiti culture often takes place.

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Figure 5.1: An experienced writer Photo credit: Ron C. Baird

What this highlights is a shared accountability amongst the crew for the successful production of the piece. The piece is not just painted by an individual writer; the piece will portray the whole crew’s identity and thus it is a shared production creating a shared meaning. Shared accountability is critical as the crew’s reputation is at stake.

Graffiti writing is therefore very much a shared practice in which graffiti practitioners interact socially and vocationally and in so doing acquire the knowledge, skills and cultural understandings of graffiti writing. As Jack implies in the comment below, observational learning is often the best approach for young writers who wish to learn the practice of signature graffiti writing:

So the technical side of it I think is important and I think like just watching people paint gives you an idea, so probably the observing like, you know, rather than try and give them the step-by-step explanation. If I just say to them I’m just gonna finish your piece for you and you can watch what I’ve done to make it look stronger. - Jack

146 Observational learning privileges the incorporation of active examples on the part of more experienced writers tasked with schooling-in novice writers in the crew. This is best exemplified by drawing upon the work of Paradise and Rogoff (2009, p. 115) who illustrate this point by arguing that “[l]earning through observation may involve active demonstration by the person being observed…”. The scene described by Jack above clearly illustrates the importance of utilising action-centered strategies rather than attempting to verbally explain actions involved in completing the graffiti piece.

The act of observation being a much more vital way to learn and retain the knowledge for later application, the observed knowledge thus gained can then be taken away and practised by the novice writers in their own tags, throwies and pieces. Graffiti is therefore learnt through the iterative practice of doing graffiti.

Depicted in Figure 5.2 below is a less experienced writer observing the technique of a more experienced writer and in this way is learning by observing actual practice. In this context, language is superseded by active or modelled demonstration, allowing unimpeded observation of the technique being shown. In Jack’s example of observational learning, quoted above, language plays only a support role, (…if I just say … rather than try and give them the step by step explanation…) but it is not the primary focus; the primary focus is the embodied physical act of Jack finishing the novice writer’s piece while the novice writer observes what is done to create a good piece. In this way language takes the back seat to observed practice which differentiates the learning that one would find in a normative classroom setting, a setting that is highly structured and involves a heavy reliance upon language as a medium of instruction (Schunk, 2012).

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Figure 5.2: Observational learning. Photo credit: Ron C. Baird.

Learning by Doing: Participation, Observation and Practice

Learning by observation and doing is a central theme in the culture of graffiti writing, one that emerged in all of the interviews that I conducted with the eleven graffiti writers who participated in this study. Young men interested in graffiti enter the culture, become integrated into a graffiti crew with shared values and goals, and proceed to learn the practice via observation, experience and action in the situated context of the graffiti crew. According to Lave and Wenger (1991), learning takes place in a situated context within informal communities of practice in which there is a shared belief in the value of a practice and common goals, both are apparent in a graffiti crew. The shared belief and common goals exhibited within a graffiti crew are: a commitment to consistent skill development; a commitment to constant writing

(painting); getting up (artwork being seen); and seeking recognition and fame in

148 which legitimate peripheral participation occurs by way of involvement in the practice of graffiti writing, as Tyrone describes:

…with graffiti you have to earn your stripes, right, you’ve got to punch on, you’ve got to show that you’re around, you’ve got to get up, you’ve got to get better, you’ve got to do a lot, proliferation, you’ve got to cover areas, you’ve got to do pieces, the throwies, the tags, the panels, everything. - Tyrone

Paradise and Rogoff (2009) highlight the importance of shared cultural practices within close-knit social groupings (family and community) that support informal learning. With regard to the learning that takes place within the context of communal participation, Paradise and Rogoff (2009, p. 104) argue that ‘We want to convey an intensity and purposefulness of participation, beyond simply being present. This could involve studious attention to surrounding events, but it could also involve a general alertness to the patterns of everyday life in which one is involved’. The lived experience of graffiti writers is marked by communal social interactions involving active informal learning carried out by participating in the activities of the crew, such as painting missions and observing experienced writers at work. This observational learning is therefore practice-based, as young writers put the observed knowledge into practice within the graffiti crew. Jack describes the learning of graffiti in this way:

I think the main way that you learn graffiti is purely just by being very aware of the kind of stylistic trends of the scene when you’re getting into it and then perhaps to try and pay attention to what came before you and to see the patterns running through it and you’ll start to … you’d start to pick it up definitely - Jack

The above description involves a number of specific characteristics that align with spontaneous knowing-in-action (Schön, 1987), observational and experiential learning, including awareness, paying attention, observation and experience (Paradise &

Rogoff, 2009), and in this way highlights the importance of framing my analysis by drawing upon theories of practice and observational learning.

149 Graffiti is practice based; it is governed by a Do It Yourself ethic in which one learns by observation and doing, as Mark explains:

But I guess graffiti is very much, it’s very much geared around the whole like DIY, you know, like if you want to learn how to … if you want to do something you learn how to do it. - Mark

In order to learn one must be in a position to observe the practice firsthand, to see how the practice is carried out in a situated learning context. The novice graffiti writer must be able to access an experienced writer or crew and then position themselves in a situated learning context as either a passive (watching) or active (participant) observer of the act of painting a graffiti piece. Sometimes, passive observation is achieved without the formal consent or knowledge of the experienced writer; sometimes it is completely peripheral, as Paradise and Rogoff (2009, p. 116) suggest.

This was the case with Tyrone when he commenced his writing career as a young man, observing older graffiti writers at work on the train lines, observing the practice from a distance, being sure to take in all that they were doing. In this case, the older writers were not intending to teach the skills of graffiti writing; they were simply being surreptitiously observed in practice, but opportunities for this sort of situated observation of practice were vital for Tyrone and his friends in the learning of graffiti writing techniques.

I didn’t know these guys, I was like, you know, I was a little kid, I was sort of scared of these guys… But I always looked at it [graffiti] along the train line. That’s sort of what got me into it just exploration of different urban areas I guess and then bumping into people doing it and seeing it happen in the [large storm water] drains. … I just had to learn myself by watching.

The experience of situated learning can be achieved in an active crew setting or simply by approaching writers at work and watching them as they paint. In this way a novice writer can gain an appreciation of the basic skills required for the application

150 of spray-paint to produce a graffiti piece. The core learning, however, will only develop within the situated context of the graffiti crew.

The participants in this study often provided explanations of their graffiti writing work that aligned with conceptions of observational learning, without consciously realising it. They described observational learning strategies to explain how they learned the cultural knowledge and technical skills of graffiti writing. This is exemplified by Mark who describes how, as a teenager, he began his graffiti writing career and the steps he took as a youngster to learn about the culture and how to write graffiti.

Like when I was a kid like I remember seeing people painting and then asking them questions about it, like this is way before I started painting, you know, and so the interest was always there. - Mark

Mark goes on to state that his experience of learning to be a graffiti writer had a huge impact upon him as a person. The skills and types of learning that he experienced as a young novice to the world of graffiti culture are still with him. He explains that it is how he still learns today. In many respects, what Mark is describing is lifelong learning, a practice acquired through his experiences as a graffiti writer in a culture that privileges social learning, particularly observational learning, which is then supported by practice or the act of learning by observing and doing. Learning by observing and doing is grounded in sociocultural practices and the associated communities in which these practices occur (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 1994;

Rogoff, Paradise, Arauz, Correa-Chávez, & Angelillo, 2003).

But I mean I still learn stuff day-to-day outside of graffiti the same way that I learnt graffiti, you know, so I want to learn how to do something I’ll ask some questions or try and find out what I need to find out. That if there’s somebody there who knows how to do it I’ll ask them, you know, watch other people doing it, it’s the easiest way. - Mark

151 What Mark describes above is observational learning that is ‘contextually embedded’ in a shared sociocultural community of practice. Paradise and Rogoff (2009) argue that observational learning, particularly within a family or community setting, is learning that is ‘contextually embedded’ as it has meaning apart from the act of learning - the practice is learnt precisely because it is meaningful to the community.

In this respect notions of community reflect the communal and familial characteristics of a graffiti crew. Learning by observing in the context of the graffiti crew has a very similar, contextually-embedded focus. The work carried out by novice writers engaged in learning the practice of graffiti by keen observation and participation demonstrates their investment in furthering the goals of the crew, with the mutual gaol being to become prominent and known within graffiti culture for producing high quality graffiti pieces (Austin, 2001; Castleman, 1982; Macdonald, 2001). This is a situation that is of value to both the crew and the young writer engaged in the act of learning graffiti practice. It is indicative of integration into the social sphere of work and community life, emphasising the groundedness of the learning experience

(Paradise & Rogoff, 2009). This understanding of the nature of a graffiti crew shows how the crew is defined through something much larger than a deviance or subcultural lens would allow. It demonstrates that a youth group such as a graffiti crew is heavily invested in communal learning that results in a productive output. By drawing on a practice theory framework, I develop an understanding of the graffiti crew as a communal site of learning and teaching.

At the council-run aerosol art program meetings that I attended, I noticed that older graffiti writers who were employed as mentors would offer tips and advice to aspiring young graffiti writers. In this way, learning is carried out by observation and

152 participation in a shared practice. Learning is an active process of practice that involves the interaction of agent and world (Hall, 1990). As an experienced graffiti writer and mentor, Jack succinctly sums up the learning process of graffiti that privileges practice:

I think the funny thing is you can’t really teach somebody how to spray-paint, you know, they just have to do it, you know, you can give them ideas and try and explain things simply and be very helpful but they only learn from doing it themselves. - Jack

The practice of graffiti writing involves a unique skill set that must be mastered for a novice to become an effective writer. There is a wide range of often complex skills that require cognitive, social, emotional and bodily engagement of the graffiti practitioner which coalesce at the site of practice, and serve to inform the learning of the practice by novice graffiti writers. These complex skills are framed by Mark as a set of challenges:

Painting illegally involves different, um, what’s the word I’m looking for, different challenges that need to be overcome. A lot of the time you’re painting in the dark, you know, you’ve got to be aware of your surroundings, you’ve got to be listening out for every sound and making sure that you’re not gonna get caught, you’re not gonna get in trouble. But then you’ve also got to factor in who you’re painting with, how well you know that person, like are they trustworthy, like what if one person got caught can you trust them not to, you know, drag you into the mess and all these other kinds of factors. - Mark

The complexities of doing graffiti illegally, as Mark has outlined above, involve a variety of different challenges that must be effectively overcome in order to carry out the practice of graffiti writing. These are learned behaviors that are significant components of the shared repertoire of participants in the graffiti culture. A lot of the challenges listed by Mark are indicative of hands-on engagement in the real-world practice of graffiti writing. They correspond to a series of learning states encountered in the situated learning context when novice writers learn by direct participative

153 involvement in the social practice of the graffiti crew, including learning how to paint in the dark and avoid detection. These complex skills encompass cognitive aspects of skill development and learning coupled with the perceptual orientation of the practitioner in the context of the site of practice, such as when painting in a train yard at night with limited vision and a heightened sense of awareness to avoid detection, for example.

The graffiti skill set also draws upon the extended functional aspects of the embodied writer, including keen attention to detail, and a keen perception and awareness of one’s spatial position at the site of practice, whether an illegal mission in a train yard or a legal project on a city wall that may require the practitioner to draw upon different skill sets.

That if you’re painting legally what you’re worried about is how clean does the piece look, you know, how coherent is the entire theme, you know, does it have enough characters on the wall, like all these things that when people are painting illegally I guess don’t really come into play as much as the other things. - Mark

The context in which a writer performs the practice of graffiti writing, in an illegal or legal context, will dictate the skill set required, and thus involves a series of different challenges that the writer must overcome. Writers who participate in the Melbourne graffiti culture learn how to respond to different situations via their participation in the culture of graffiti writing.

In the act of observing, one is taking in the nuances of the practice being observed.

This is a central concept in learning by observation and doing, and, as Jack attests, it is sometimes the best way to teach a novice writer how to paint with a spray-can:

154 So the technical side of it I think is important and I think like just watching people paint gives you an idea, so probably the observing like, you know, if I just say … rather than try and give them the step by step explanation I can just say just watch my body when I do this and try and mimic what I’m doing. - Jack

In the act of observing Jack paint, young writers are actively being instructed in the nuances of the practice that privileges bodily motion and in which verbal instruction takes a back seat to embodied learning by observation. This encompasses: judgments made in assessing whether the conceptualised piece can be translated onto the available surface space, the correct choice of materials on the part of the writer observed, and the physical act of spraying paint onto the surface in a structured manner that includes how to work the spray-paint in order to produce the desired effect for the piece that is being produced. In watching this action being performed, young writers, cognisant of the steps being taken, can then break down what the writer is doing and how they are doing it. This becomes the basis of knowledge formation in the learning of graffiti with a basic process observed and internalised out of these observations of how to use the can to paint. Out of this base understanding a young writer begins to develop a skill set or a repertoire of observed practices that are instrumental to their learning and to the development of their own practice as a developing graffiti writer. Mark adds that it “helps if you can ask the person questions and say how did you do this and then they can explain it”. The significance, however, is in the observation, and then in the actual practice of carrying it out, in which the observed process is replicated in an act of doing. This is the process of informal learning that regularly occurs in the graffiti culture, a process that is underpinned by the act of learning by doing, as Mark attests: “I mean it’s really like anything, you know, you just learn by doing, learn by doing, learn by watching.” Formal learning is often comprised of verbally-delivered instructional content that seeks to convey

155 meaning by the articulation of a set of steps or processes; however, in an observational learning context, observation and participation are prioritised.

Practice Talk: Discussion and the Sharing of Knowledge

Learning graffiti is an ongoing process comprised of informal learning interactions involving observation and practice in a group or communal context. The learning interactions were observed to be supported by frequent practice talk in which writers discussed graffiti techniques. Language is an essential element in any culture, and the dialogue that occurs between graffiti writers at the wall is vital in learning the practice of graffiti writing, as well as in gaining an understanding of the culture and knowledge of its practices.

Developing the cultural knowledge to authentically participate in the world of graffiti is essential for novice writers. Cultural knowledge is gained via practice; that is, insider knowledge of the culture is learnt through the experience of active participation in graffiti writing and through involvement in one’s crew and in the wider graffiti community. The fieldwork suggests that the acquisition of cultural knowledge is facilitated by practice talk (Lave & Wenger, 1991) while at the wall painting and in other informal crew gatherings that act as sites of informal learning.

These sites can be legal painting sessions, council aerosol art programs, or simply wherever informal interaction with other writers occurs. These sites of informal learning lead to the development of cultural knowledge via an ongoing dialogue that enables the acquisition of cultural knowledge essential to the development of authenticity in the world of graffiti.

156 Situated learning occurs within a context in which language plays an integral role as both a supporter of the informal learning process and a symbolic marker of cultural affiliation. The lifeblood of a graffiti crew is its members and the beliefs they hold in common that give rise to the shared stories of their culture. The narrative recounting of the exploits of writers engaged in the illegal act of graffiti writing with its tales of risk-taking, painting on tall buildings, narrow escapes from police, or simply talking about significant people in the culture, are akin to the ‘War-Stories’ described by Orr

(1990) in his field study of community memory amongst a group of photocopier repair technicians. Orr (1990, p. 169) defines community memory as ‘those things known in common by all or most competent members of the community, the working set of current knowledge shared among the community’. In the ‘War-Stories’ told by graffiti writers, more knowledgeable writers spoke about their experiences of painting; in so doing they shared cultural knowledge of their community with younger or less experienced writers who in turn learned about the practice and gained cultural knowledge. Castleman (1982, p. 69) suggests that:

There are a number of traits that most writers have in common. Primary among these is an interest in the lore, language and techniques of graffiti writing. Writers enjoy talking about writing, both among themselves and to outsiders, and take delight in using the jargon that they have created.

Shared discussions while walking the train line or at the wall painting can yield surprising insights as writers engage in practice talk. Writers talk about a variety of things while painting, but most often the talk revolves around the practice of graffiti while experienced and novice writers are experimenting and sharing tips and knowledge about techniques. These painting sessions also afford opportunities to discuss graffiti lore and other cultural aspects of graffiti writing, thus serving as informal lessons for young writers. The following discussion extract occurred

157 between three writers painting at a wall. I observed this exchange at a council-run youth facility during an aerosol art program in the Western Suburbs of Melbourne.

The discussion was between Jack, an older more experienced writer and mentor, Joe, a young, up-and-coming writer, and Diego, a recent graduate of the program who now mentors younger writers like Joe. The discussion included a range of themes that illustrated the importance of practice talk and practitioner knowledge, demonstrating a vital component of how graffiti writers learn via communal group participation and discussion in practice.

Background traffic noise and the click/clack of spray-cans being shaken and the phsssst, phsssst, phsssst of spray-paint as the writers paint at the wall. Jack: I like Lush, I like what he stands for in the scene Joe: Thanks man [pretending to be Lush, Laughter] Diego: I guess he [Lush] keeps them grounded. Jack: Yeah, that’s it. He challenges them. Diego: I thought you were going to say brilliance. Jack: Challenges them, boob [idiot]. The idiots that are going to ruin the Scene. Joe: But like, Melbourne, yeah? Diego: [Speaking over] But, he’s a boob himself [referring to Lush]. Jack: Yeah, but that’s the funny part, that’s the joke. Joe: So, like Melbourne Old Schooler wouldn’t like him much? [Melbourne Old Schooler is a website focused on a traditional purist understanding of graffiti] Jack: Yeah, he doesn’t dress like a writer; he just dresses like some normal dude. Joe: He dresses like some model, that models for Myer or something Jack: Does he? Joe: Yeah, have you seen any vids [videos] of him? He wears like Doc Martins and stuff. Jack: I don’t think models from Myer rock Doc Martins. [Laughter] Phsssst, Phssssst, Phsssst [Spray painting sounds] Jack: I saw this… Diego: [Interrupting] Hey, check this out… it is like I made a new nib… [Showing the writers the nib on his can and spraying paint out of it and the paint comes out in a wide conical shape from the side] Jack: Oh, did you pull the hole out? Joe: Nice. Jack: A stencil cap. That’s a good cap now, far out. Joe: Where is it painting from? Diego: Look at that… That’s perfect now. It’s because the side is broken. Joe: Awright. Jack: You guys have done the old half pressure on an Export [Australian spray-paint brand], yeah? Exports are so good for that kind of stuff, they’re so good.

158 Diego: Yeah, I know. Perfect. Joe: Like, when you let out a lot of the pressure and then use it? Jack: Naw, just, you just when you are pressing on the nib you just apply a little bit of pressure and that just pumps out a little bit of paint. Diego: It probably has the best pressure. Jack: Yeah, yeah. I think it is because the valve is longer or something, the give on the valve is longer, so you can get just kind of get little bits out. It is really good for sketching line work [outlining the basic structure of your piece]. Joe: I like the chisel nib on the Aussie Exports. Jack: Yeah they are awesome, great for tags.

During the above observation I witnessed a clear example of practice talk that demonstrated talking about practice and relating stories of community lore. This is exemplified by the discussion of controversial Melbourne writer, Lush, who challenges a number of graffiti stereotypes with his provocative works. In this extract of talk, Jack expresses his views about Lush’s work and why he thinks it is important to Melbourne graffiti culture. In this way Jack is providing informal instruction to both Joe and Diego regarding a significant figure in the culture, and providing it in a way that serves to reinforce the sense of community while also deepening their cultural knowledge and understanding. The conversation then abruptly turns to the topic of the tools of practice as Diego shows Jack and Joe an innovation he made with an aerosol nib while painting. They discuss what Diego did and how he did it, with

Jack identifying it as being a good cap for stencilling. This leads to remarks regarding the benefits of Aussie Export spray-paint cans that have a number of beneficial features, remarks that Jack and Diego make for the benefit of Joe who engages in the discussion by asking meaningful questions. In this context I directly observed evidence of informal learning by participation that was undergirded by practice talk.

This is an example of talking within practice, that is, the sharing of information important to the advancement of activities in the moment, the act of painting a piece at the wall for example. The stories told during practice talk are vital for community

159 development and learning as younger writers develop new knowledge in practice while also learning the art of practice talk. In this way they move from the periphery of the crew to becoming legitimate participants in the community of practice.

Learning Masculinity: The Graffiti Crew and Male Identity Formation

There is often a narrow perception of who is considered a legitimate participant in the culture of graffiti writing. The world of graffiti writing fits Lave and Wenger’s (1991) framework of communities of practice, the focus being on shared experience and understanding; however, what is glossed over or minimised in Lave and Wenger’s

(1991) and Wenger’s (1998) concept are notions of gender, becoming and legitimacy, particularly the identity work that pertains to the learning of a specific ‘graffiti-ed’ masculinity (Lombard, 2013). The participants in this study are learning how to be men, or a type of man, shaped by their participation in graffiti writing and in their ascribing to the unwritten codes of the practice. It is a practice that privileges high risk, danger, and strength (for climbing, running and fighting), plus the assertiveness, confidence and attitude to carry off the act of protecting one’s graffiti via intimidation or with one’s physicality (Hannerz, 2017), as Tyrone admits:

It’s a male dominated thing, that’s another way to think about it, I mean yeah, it’s too much of a testosterone, ego, it’s an egotistical vanity game, like how many trains have you painted, how many pieces have you done … I’ve done this many, I’ve painted for this guy. – Tyrone

In this way the world of graffiti writing is identified as a highly masculine space which aligns with the findings of Lombard (2013), Macdonald (2001) and Monto et al

(2013). While there are female graffiti writers who are part of this community, they must negotiate the structural dynamics of the community of practice and the biases and expectations of male writers as well as learning its technical skills and cultural knowledge - all the while working much harder to prove themselves, as JD attests:

160 But the way I look at it is it’s like if anything it’s almost like chicks [young women] would’ve gotten tested even harder, you know what I mean, like she’s just one of those chicks that’s one of those… [Presumably in it for attention or sexual encounters] you know what I mean, we were teenagers man, it’s that sort of thing man. It’s almost like girls have got to stick to their guns even harder and just go like you know what, fuck you man, you know what I mean. – JD

This comment has many underlying nuances and innuendo. The reference to women as ‘chicks’ is instructive as it is a very patronising term. I can only presume to infer from JD’s comment that “she’s just one of those chicks that’s one of those…” refers to promiscuity or attention-seeking behavior on the part of a young woman who is presumably seeking to enter the culture only for sexual gratification (Macdonald,

2016; Pabón, 2013). JD goes on to say that ‘we were teenagers’ man, it’s that sort of thing man.’ Again, the presumption is that adolescence is a time of identity formation and promiscuity. I surmise from this dialogue that JD’s perception of young female writers was that their authenticity and commitment was in question. The focus therefore was on more base motivations for young women’s presence in the crew.

This type of attitude permeated the culture of graffiti writing, causing young women to have to work much harder to prove themselves worthy of learning the skills of graffiti (Fransberg, 2018; Hannerz, 2017; Pabón, 2013). In this way it is suggested that young male writers were engaged in a process of both learning and reinforcing the biased masculine code of graffiti writing. While young women were not actively excluded from participation, their dedication and motivations were routinely questioned, forcing them to work much harder for recognition, fame and respect.

According to JD, young women in the crew had to address many more challenges and stereotypes than a young man entering the practice of graffiti writing. Not only did they have to prove that they had skills and were ‘down’ for the crew, but they had to

161 fend off advances from male writers, and disabuse male writers of the notion that they were in it for sexual attention alone, circumstances that male writers never had to confront which aligns with Hannerz’s (2017) findings in study of Swedish graffiti writers. According to JD, female writers were respected within his crew, but he admitted that young females of his age were not taken very seriously as writers:

So for me as a kid looking up to the older chicks I still had that level of respect. But then when there was younger chicks around and as I guess I sort of came up through and I went through that more of an egotistical kind of a phase, it’s kind of like, you know, oh fucken chicks painting, whatever. But, you know, the funny thing is if you can paint you can paint, at the end of it man if you get burnt and, you know, you in yourself will know man, unless you’re totally ignorant, if you go out and you get burnt by a chick other people are gonna see it too man, you can talk as much shit as you want, if yours doesn’t look as good as that one she did it’s enough said man, you know what I mean. – JD

JD’s quote here appears to be an attempt to acknowledge women writers who can be as good as, if not better than, male writers, but it is still patronising in the sense that he is downplaying a female writer’s skills by describing a male writer who has been outdone by a woman as being ‘chicked’ [outdone by a female], the implication being that this in some way embarrassing or emasculating for the male writer who was burnt

[outdone].

The perpetration of violence is a learned masculine behaviour that is a significant part of the culture of graffiti writers (Austin, 2001; Castleman, 1982 and Lachmann, 1988).

In Diego’s case, being a graffiti writer implies adoption of an attitude that can be switched on and off as required. Diego identifies his graffiti persona in the following comment: “If for example I am painting in an abandoned building and someone tries to ‘roll me’ [rob me] I will switch on the graffiti writer persona and be an animal”.

The violent demeanor that Diego describes below as the ‘ego of a graffiti writer’ is a

162 necessary element of what it means to be a graffiti writer, one deemed essential in order to protect oneself while out painting, as Diego points out:

The way I see it, there’s a switch and I can put that writer on, and because I know that I can do that I know that it’s an ego thing, I have the ego of a graffiti writer, I carry myself when I need to as a graffiti writer. – Diego

By ‘carrying himself as a graffiti writer’ Diego implies that he has learned how to use violence when required as this is an accepted feature of the practice of graffiti writing that is often performed illegally, late at night, in risky and dangerous environments such as train yards, along train lines, or in isolated parts of the city.

The notion of violence is also implied in the language of graffiti that often employs very militaristic terms for the act of writing graffiti, evoking images of the soldier hero or boys’ own stories of adventure, as the following excerpt from JD illustrates:

So, basically if you’re out tagging it’s kind of like your foot patrol, you know, you’re just out there doing this sort of thing. Throw ups is kind of like the same thing, maybe a bit more like heavy artillery or mortar fire… and stuff like that. And then when you go to battle like pieces and stuff, that’s like when you’re bringing out like the, you know, the really, really heavy artillery man, you know what I mean, so if you’re talking about as a tactical kind of method, yeah that’s how we always looked at it. – JD

In this sense graffiti practice is akin to a tactical method of operation, to use a military metaphor which aligns with Monto et al’s (2013) understanding of the use of violent and aggressive language to describe graffiti acts such as ‘bombing’. The act of writing graffiti for the crew is like going into combat, with artworks as weapons. This observation conveys a great deal about the nature of graffiti writing culture and its very masculine nature revealed by the participants in this study that corroborates

Macdonald’s (2001) findings. Graffiti is therefore a very gendered space that privileges masculinity and the warrior-like disposition of the practitioners who are

163 engaged in a soldier-hero fantasy of combat ‘missions’ against rival enemy crews, or

‘bombing’ the cityscape when the crew are out tagging. According to Diego:

You do graffiti because of the freedom it gives you, liberty provides, you know. And in that process you meet a lot of people so it’s like an industry. – Diego

Diego further elaborates on what he means by graffiti being an ‘industry’ when he discusses the networking opportunities that are available to writers who tend to be gregarious, extroverted characters. Diego argues that this networking capacity could be harnessed and applied to normative occupational activities, but in a very masculine way. He feels that graffiti writers have an advantage because of their ‘spirit’ or ‘ego’ that comes from involvement in the graffiti subculture:

You know, like you would go to school and have all these opportunities to get involved but you don’t, you draw back because you’re shy or, you know, I know a lot of people like that. And in graffiti there’s an ego involved but it’s different, you always say something whether it’s something bad or something good, you always meet someone whether it’s to ‘diss’ them, to bash them or to just hang out and be friends, you know, and I think that’s the major difference. And it’s so positive that I think that graffiti writers have an upper hand if they nurture that potential because no one’s forcing them to do anything, if they took that same … like that same spirit into their everyday life, into jobs, imagine what half of these guys can do. – Diego

In this way graffiti is as much about ego and bravado as it is about skills. Diego explores these aspects of the egotistical nature of the graffiti writer, equating them to attributes of success and suggesting that if this attitude or ‘spirit’ was transferred into a writer’s everyday life they would be very successful. While there are some positive aspects to this reflection, it also reflects a very masculine conception of what it means, or what it takes, to be successful in life. Effectively it implies that one must be aggressive and very assertive or ‘spirited’ in order to be successful.

164 The aggressive and assertive aspects of graffiti are further exemplified in JD’s reflections on being ‘tested’ when he was first getting involved in graffiti writing culture:

They tested me and they knew I had enough gumption to go and write and protect myself.

Ron: So what did testing involve?

Well a test basically is they put it on you man, you know what I mean, like how much shit can you actually take. If you go to hang out in town and it’s out and you’re just like, you know, who the fuck is this dude, Bawp! [Someone hits you], come back, what have you got, you know [do you have graffiti skills or physical ability]? But more so like I said for me, you know, there was that sort of, that testing stuff that sort of happened. And eventually I guess you have to prove yourself, you have to prove yourself I guess a) that you’ve got skills and then b) that you’re prepared to go out and paint or draw, you know, to do those sort of things.

Young writers were tested to ascertain if they had nerve, with the testing carried out by more experienced writers in a crew to see whether a novice could handle themselves if the crew got into a fight. Testing also involved skills, such as whether the novice writer had the ability or potential ability to paint with a spray-can. Testing also worked to determine whether a young writer had the resolve and toughness to go out and paint illegally, and whether they had the boldness to evade police, or fight if required. These tests, an element of graffiti learning, are part of becoming a graffiti writer who participates in a crew. They therefore can serve to exclude particular individuals, males who are perceived as weak for instance, or, more pointedly, female writers. This is particularly significant given that the position of young women within the culture of graffiti writing is often characterised by male domination and sexualisation by male writers (Hannerz, 2017; Macdonald, 2016). This is not say that every male graffiti writer thinks or behaves with such intent, or that every participant in this study believes this to be an accurate portrayal of women writers, but there is a

165 general sense that the culture of graffiti writers positions women as being less able, and this can result in women being excluded from graffiti crews. The often demeaning image of women in the culture is best exemplified by the character

(cartoon graffiti image) depicted in Figure 5.3 below, which portrays a female graffiti writer in a stereotypically masculine fantasy version of a female writer as a sexualised object with overly-large breasts, painting in her lingerie with her overalls pulled down and tied around her hips.

Figure 5.3: Highly sexualised female graffiti writer character. Lygon St, East Brunswick. Photo Credit: Ron C. Baird

166 Can Control: the Embodied Aspect of Situated Learning

In learning by observing and by putting into practice the skills of a graffiti writer, the body of the practitioner which comes to the fore is just as vital to the execution of a solid graffiti piece as is the cognitive or theoretical knowledge of how to paint with a spray-can. These cognitive and theoretical components of learning are also linked to the embodied learning that is both essential and foundational to the practice of graffiti writing, a practice that relies heavily upon a keen sense of awareness of the body while performing learned actions (Evans, Davies, & Rich, 2009; Fors, Bäckström, &

Pink, 2013; Michelson, 1998; Stolz, 2015; Wilson, 2002). Graffiti in this sense is an embodied practice that also encompasses aspects of embodied learning. An excellent example of the embodied learning of graffiti that is supported by participation and observation in a community of practice is that associated with learning the practice of

‘can control’. If anyone has ever picked up a can of spray-paint and attempted to write a letter, or even to paint a single straight line, they know how difficult it is to do it, let alone master the skill. One requires ‘can control’ to write graffiti with skill and finesse. I will therefore explore can control as a core graffiti skill central to the effective embodied practice of graffiti writing. Can control in its most basic articulation is defined by Tyrone:

It’s just how good you are at controlling the can. That’s all it is, can you control the spray coming out of the end of the can. And then it’s about how steadily you can move the can around and how much control you have in your finger ‘cause the more you press down, or the less you press down the finer or wider the spray is. - Tyrone

Can control is a term used amongst graffiti writers to describe the perfect unity of artist and implement. The practitioner gains mastery of the use of the can when they are able to hold the spray the correct way at the correct distance from the surface, and when they acquire the ability to apply a graduated amount of pressure on the nozzle to

167 release the appropriate amount of paint onto the surface for the task. This task may be producing a straight line, an outline or complicated fades, fills or 3D effects. In performing the tasks associated with graffiti writing, the spray-can and the body have to work together in a unified and fluid manner to produce the clean lines of a stylised graffiti piece. Can control represents a central, grounding component of this skillful execution, as Jack explains:

So I think can control is just a kind of intimate relationship between the spray- can and the rest of your body I think, like hand-eye coordination and things like that. And then also a kind of confidence. But I think, yeah, can control essentially is an understanding of the relationship between your body and the spray can. - Jack

Can control, therefore, involves a lot of different bodily and spatial elements that must come together at the moment one applies pressure to the nozzle in order to create a line on a surface. In this regard, learning how to write graffiti is as much about the body as it is about the conceptual or stylistic aspects of painting with spray-paint.

Learning is frequently associated with the cognitive functions of the brain (Bartlett &

Bartlett, 1995; Ebbinghaus, 2003; Mayer, 2011; Piaget, 2005) and is therefore often seen as separate from the body; however, the findings of this study suggest that in the learning of graffiti skills the body is a privileged component. In focusing the discussion on the learning of graffiti skills and techniques utilising can control as a specific example of that learning, I will frame my analysis by drawing upon the concept of embodied learning. The concept of tacit knowledge (Schön, 1987, p. 25) is helpful in understanding can control as it involves recognition and appreciation of the act of spray-painting using the can as a tool, and of the can as an extension of the graffiti writer’s body, as JD notes:

You can give paint to a kid that is green-as and just say look just pull it back a little bit further and hold it just like this and it’s almost like they won’t fuck up.

168 I’m not gonna say they’re all like really, really good painters but it’s quite easy to paint now. - JD

During this conversation JD mimics holding a spray can and pulling it back just a little to imitate doing a line. There are a lot of visual depictions of embodied practice as in Figure 5.4 below, for example. Graffiti writing, being very embodied, involves a high degree of physicality; one does not just spray a line holding the can in a static position, as Tyrone describes below; rather you need to put your whole body into it:

I mean to do a straight line I’ll lock in my arm and I’ll use my whole body, I’ll move from the shoulder and move from the hips and move from my knees, I won’t move my wrist. I’ll do a long line with my whole body. You might line up your other hand to balance. Like if you took the can away you’d look like you were doing tai chi in the park. - Tyrone

Figure 5.4: Graffiti writer in action A writer in Union Lane performing a similar action of painting a line as described by Tyrone. Photo credit: Ron C. Baird

A writer’s hand and wrist are about can control, but to get a nice line they have to move with the line and put their shoulders, hips and legs into the movement such that

169 the writer’s body is equally a core component of effective can control. Tyrone also identified a similar bodily connection when describing painting at a wall:

Yeah it’s like dancing, like if you’re painting and listening to music you pretty much are dancing. ‘Cause I’ll get into the music and start painting to it and stuff. It’s like ballet with a wall. It’s definitely physical. - Tyrone

In making this point, Tyrone stood up and mimicked painting with a spray can in each hand, humming a Hip-Hop tune and dancing to it as he sprayed imaginary lines on a wall with finesse and fluid movements, deftly positioning his hands as they flowed in wide arcs over the invisible surface. This performance captured the highly physical and embodied aspects of graffiti writing. It is not merely the cognitive acquisition of knowledge and the concepts and ideas of how to spray paint that count; the act of learning to write graffiti employs in a very corporeal sense the body as a site of learning and practice.

In order to perfect can control, one’s attitude and one’s mental state are important, as

Joe describes: “…you have to relax yourself, can control, you push very slightly you get a very thin line.” This relaxed demeanour can be difficult to achieve while painting illegally however, particularly in a train yard, as one is often painting in a hurry in a heightened state of awareness, listening out for any potential dangers or threats. One must spray expertly and quickly, stop and listen, paint again, then duck down to look under the train carriage, paint, stop, listen, and paint. This is all done very quickly with some pieces executed in ten minutes, but the quality and appearance of these pieces suggest that the writer has spent much more time on them:

Yeah, like working out ways to use paint in a more efficient manner. Doing the outline first and then filling it after. Doing a panel in 10 minutes that looks like two hours. - Tyrone

170 … I’ve heard, you know, several writers have described it as a spiritual experience to be kind of like dwarfed by these big steel things and you’re kind of in amongst them in this kind of cocooned environment, you know, and you know that you’re completely hidden, and it’s a very peaceful experience I think, yeah. - Jack

The ability to paint well under duress is a source of respect within the graffiti community, as a writer who is able to expertly execute a highly-stylised piece while being alert to danger will arguably be able to create truly stunning works when they have the time to plan and paint a legal piece at leisure. Learning the practice of graffiti writing can be difficult therefore, given that it is often carried out illegally. While one can learn to write in this context in order to develop superior skills, it is a bonus to be able to paint in a relaxed environment, such as in a council-run aerosol art program where one can aim for a clean, sharp piece and hone one’s aesthetic skills, as Jack remarks:

Yeah, wherever it may have been, you know, just kind of doing it and learning slowly yeah. But the finesse quality of it I learned from going to workshops just ‘cause it was more relaxed environment, I could draw something first and somebody could maybe show me how to do a line and stuff like that so yeah. – Jack

The council programs allowed a space for knowledge sharing and the freedom to practise one’s craft, learning through trial and error. The programs allowed for a range of learning to take place.

The concept of tacit knowledge (Schön, 1987) is helpful in understanding can control as it involves recognition and appreciation of the act of spray-painting using the can as a tool and as an extension of the graffiti writer’s body. Jack adds that even the act of “painting is more than just holding a can up to a wall and pressing the nozzle; you have to put your body into to get the perfect line.” Jack elaborates on this when he is explaining ‘can control’ to me:

171 So I think can control is … or even just using spray-paint. When I’m doing workshops and I try to describe it in basic terms I tend to say that it’s about the relationship between your arm and your body and that, you know, they’re not mutually exclusive things, that your body will dictate the movement of your arm and vice versa. I think it’s like an entire body thing spray-painting. People assume that it’s just a hand thing or a wrist thing but it’s your entire form. - Jack

The idea of the spray can acting as an extension of one’s body is based upon normative judgments drawn from the use of the tool (the spray can) to apply paint to a surface that is perceived via the act of surface contact, rendered via tacit impressions gained by the writer through the tool in his hand. Schön (1987, p. 23) explains that

‘[t]o become skillful in the use of a tool is to learn to appreciate, directly and without intermediate reasoning, the qualities of the materials that we apprehend through the tacit sensations of the tool in the hand”. Can control is learnt by feeling, developing a feeling that a writer is holding the can correctly in their hand, applying the appropriate amount of pressure to the nozzle, and holding the can at the correct distance from the surface. In using the can to write, a graffiti writer soon learns to develop can control.

They can do this by discerning deviations in their own or others’ work that indicates poor can control, and then by correcting the deviation in practice. This fine art of discernment becomes almost innate as writers develop a feel for painting correctly with a spray can, and it is this ‘feeling’ that is ultimately what is described as ‘can control’ or the ability to write stylised fonts using a can of high-pressure paint. That

‘feeling’, acquired through practice, underpins the new skill of writing with a can of spray paint learned by young graffiti writers. How we as individuals learn new skills is important here, as it relies on practice. While skills or know-how are explicit in the actions of graffiti writers, practitioners are often unable to give an accurate account of the procedure they follow in performing their actions, as Schön (1987, p. 24) explains: ‘…we learn to execute such complex performances such as crawling,

172 walking, juggling, or riding a bicycle [or writing graffiti with a spray can] without being able to give a verbal description even roughly adequate to our actual performance’. Diego describes learning can control from one of the top writers in

Australia, echoing a sentiment expressed by Schön (1987):

I don’t know, like um, I was very privileged, I learnt from pretty much one of the best graffiti writers in Australia, [Names the writer]… And yeah, he is the master of can control and he taught me some tricks and I can’t explain just like verbally, I would have to show you.

Diego can execute beautiful graffiti pieces with style and flair, making it look easy, as if he is putting in no effort at all. I watched Diego pick up a can of spray-paint and begin to craft a graffiti character in brilliant colours while talking to me about graffiti culture, his eyes dancing back and forth between my face and the surface of the wall he was working on. He truly made it look like a simple task, with the spray can in his hand almost like an extension of his body performing at his direction, transferring his creative imagination from his cerebral cortex into his arm, out of the can, and onto the surface of the wall. This is exemplified in the dialogue between Diego and myself during the observation:

But, you know, you put your finger at the tip of the nozzle and put the pressure down, tricks like that, or like [holding the can] upside down and like on the side, the different nozzles and all that stuff and he just just taught me. – Diego

Ron: So when you’re doing a line?

Yeah when you’re doing a line it’s like you just … from when the line starts to where you want it to end that’s also can control, so that’s how long you’ve pushed it down and then stopped it, like you know, you’re constantly just putting your finger up and down to release pressure and all that stuff. I hope that makes sense. – Diego

Diego did not always know how to do this. He learned how to write using a spray can, and learned the act of can control as he describes above, yet he “cannot explain just like verbally, I would have to show you”. Diego’s description of learning can control

173 is akin to Schön’s (1987, p. 25) conception of Knowing in Action or the sorts of know-how that individuals reveal in carrying out an intelligent action, revealed in practice or in the act of ‘our spontaneous, skillful execution of the performance’ in the case of graffiti writing. Mark summed it up when I asked him how he learned can control: “Just practice, it all comes down to practice.”

For a new graffiti writer it is vital to have good can control, but it is equally important to have style and technique in order to maximise the benefits of having good can control, as JD points out:

You could have the sickest [most amazing] can control ever. I say to kids man yeah awesome, you’ve got a fine line, you do, oh that’s such a great fine line. What are you gonna do with that fine line man, where are you gonna finesse it, where are you gonna play it, where are you gonna lay it, so in the play of your piece or whatever you’re painting I don’t care if you can do the fine line … what’s a fine line, you know? So yes I think style and technique are both as important as each other, you know. - JD

Can control may be an integral part of graffiti writing, but of equal importance are style and technique. The art of can control is essentially the ability to use the can of spray-paint to create clean, straight, fine lines, but if, as JD says, “you cannot finesse it or play it”, it is meaningless as the overall effect is lacking. Here JD is referring to the writer’s ability to develop a unique style that is reflective of the technique and skill associated with how the writer delivers the paint to the surface on which they are writing in a nuanced way, one that incorporates artistic flair as well as technical skill.

In many respects this relies on subjective aesthetic judgment, but it is an important point because finessing the paint to give your piece a distinctive look is what sets the masters apart from the ‘toys’. In this respect then can control is an integral part of the skill involved in the practice of graffiti writing, but a writer has to expand upon their

174 skill set and develop their technique to effectively produce highly-stylised graffiti pieces.

Can control is such a central factor in producing good graffiti. While it is important that young writers quickly master this skill, it is a very individual component of the skill set of graffiti writers. In speaking to my participants about can control and how it is learnt, I received a number of responses that articulated a very similar understanding of the shared practice. While it was personal understanding being expressed, it was also very clearly understood as a shared, culturally intelligible practice, one that is probably universally agreed as being learnt by constant iterative practice in the situated context of a community of practice, as JD attests:

Well I think it’s [can control] like anything, it’s just training and repetition and learning and finding out a lot of stuff for yourself. - JD

Can Control is therefore learnt by doing, by repetition and practice. Practice in this sense is repetition, the simple act of repeating an action or activity over and over again until the individual perfects the skill.

Participative Artefacts: Technologies of Everyday Practice

Participation in a graffiti crew using the tools integral to the situated learning context is important as these artefacts reflect much of the practice’s traditions. Artefacts are therefore as important for cultural transmission as they are for learning the practice.

Participants in a graffiti crew can connect more fully with the history of the practice, and also participate more fully in its cultural life by using and understanding the related artefacts of the crew. I will continue to use the example of can control in order

175 to illustrate my argument in relation to the significance of technologies of everyday practice within a graffiti crew.

Over the past twenty years there has been a range of equipment innovations in the culture of graffiti writing. As spray paint is the preferred medium for graffiti writers, I will briefly outline a discussion I had with a local Melbourne street artist, Heesco, about the importance of spray-paint for graffiti writers in order to better illustrate the point regarding innovation in the tools of everyday practice. Heesco pointed out that there is currently a large range of graffiti-specific paint brands available. These spray- paints are primarily from Europe, but there is also a significant local brand called

Ironlak which celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2014. Heesco explained the various aspects of graffiti paint, discussing a particularly popular brand called Montana.

Heesco explained that there is a Spanish Montana paint, which is the original

Montana spray paint brand produced in Spain; however, because Spanish Montana did not have its name registered, a German company copied the product, taking the name - so there is now German Montana and Spanish Montana paints. We also talked about Molotow (pronounced Molotov), Belton and Ironlak. Heesco prefers the

German engineering of Molotow because of its texture and range of colours. He also talked about the variety of spray-paint caps or nozzles that are now available, adding that in the early days of graffiti writing ‘can control’ was what set you apart as a good graffiti artist. This was because, in the early days, the paint nozzles were poor quality and the paint under high pressure, so it was very hard to control. If you could control the paint coming out of the can and produce a good piece then you were respected within the graffiti writing community. Heesco explained that the technology of the paint cans had improved greatly such that now it was much easier to control the paint,

176 with different pressured cans (high, low and mid pressure) and a wide range of nozzles making the process of controlling the paint much easier. Can control is now much easier to achieve than back in the early days of graffiti writing because of these advances in paint technology.

The perfecting of can control allowed graffiti writers to perform a wide range of practice-specific tasks, including painting specific line thicknesses, and achieving various forms of fades and shading that required the can to be manipulated in particular ways for the desired effect to be produced, as Diego points out:

But, you know, the more you gain strength in your finger and with the can itself, like sometimes you can hold the can upside down and let all the gas out so then it’s less pressure or less gas in the can so then you can control the pressure and stuff to get thinner or thicker lines, you know. - Diego

Writers also used to cut their own nozzles in order to create a range of effects that a writer is unable to achieve with standard hardware store paint nozzles. When graffiti writing first emerged in Australia during the 1980s, graffiti-specific spray-paint was unavailable. Young writers had to rely on what was commercially available in local hardware and variety stores where the quality of the paint and nozzles was limited, these paints being largely intended for automotive or home maintenance purposes.

Writers had to adapt and innovate; using what was commercially available at the time, as JD outlines:

And this is also when we were just using stock cans so no fancy nozzles, no gimmicks, this is just paint from the hardware [store]. - JD

Over the past twenty years a range of equipment innovations has crept into the culture of graffiti writing. Back in JD’s days as a teenager there were no “fancy nozzles” nor specialty paint designed and produced by graffiti writers for graffiti writers; they

177 simply did not exist. Young graffiti writers had to make do with what was available or modify the nozzles themselves, whereas now, JD adds, “there are nozzles that are just designed specifically for certain things”, such as specific techniques, fading paint for example. Mark further elaborates on this point:

I mean there’s techniques that we used many years ago that these days don’t really get used that much. There’s a new nozzle coming out soon which is like an air brush style nozzle which gives you five different thicknesses of spray just by doing different pressure. Like it used to be you would just do that with a normal nozzle or cut your own nozzle. - Mark

Mark here describes how technological innovations, in this case with nozzles, can improve traditional learning and skill development, making it easier for novice writers to learn the practice of graffiti writing. Graffiti writers can now draw upon tools that make ‘can control’ much easier to master. All of this demonstrates that graffiti is an evolving practice, with the graffiti crew sharing in and benefitting from innovations in their tools of everyday practice. Young writers can now avail themselves of the airbrush-style nozzle that Mark described above, enabling them to much more quickly acquire the skill of ‘can control’ that is necessary to the effective writing of graffiti pieces with spray-paint. Improvements in paint nozzle technology can therefore be viewed as a technological innovation that advances the practice in new and meaningful ways, making it easier to produce high quality aesthetic effects in graffiti pieces.

These new innovations and technologies, such as new nozzles, can now be bought off the shelf at the local graffiti supply store, something that was unheard of when JD started writing back in the early 1980s. These early days of the practice stand in stark contrast to the current situation in contemporary Melbourne where there are several graffiti specific paint stores: Giant in North Melbourne; and Villain with stores in

178 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy and Sydney Road, Brunswick in Melbourne’s inner

Northern suburbs, to name just two of the more well-known outlets. There are also other suppliers such as Sigma-80 (depicted in Figure 5.5 below) and Loop, with products available in Australia from legendary old-school writer DUKE who has transitioned from graffiti writer to graffiti entrepreneur, importing and distributing graffiti-specific spray-paint manufactured in Greece. His success highlights the diversity of skills and experience gained by graffiti writers that have, at least for

DUKE, facilitated a transition to a career as a successful art supply importer and distributor. This illustrates the point that knowledge and objects within graffiti culture can be manipulated and moulded into a symbolic understanding of the use and importance of an artefact to the practice. In this case, the spray-paint and the nozzle, as tools imbued with historic, cultural and innovative understandings, can serve to move the learning of the practice forward in significant and meaningful ways.

Figure 5.5: Changing nozzles at the council aerosol art program. Note that the spray-paint is the Sigma-80 brand supplied by DUKE. Photo credit: Ron C. Baird.

179 This symbolic understanding aligns with the changed view of graffiti pieces in

Melbourne’s urban space (Dovey, Wallan and Woodcock, 2012; Stewart, 2008;

Young, 2013). The fact that there are graffiti-specific paints and nozzles available for legal sale legitimises the practice of graffiti writing. Today, graffiti writers are responding to this shift by not only producing art, but by also producing the tools that facilitate such artistic production. From this perspective, graffiti writers may see themselves as legitimate artists in their own right. This represents quite a different perspective from graffiti writers being seen as part of a deviant subculture, serving to shift the focus to graffiti writing being viewed instead as a legitimate cultural practice.

However, this line of argument raises a critical concern, as it could be suggested that graffiti has become co-opted by mainstream culture via its commodification thus diluting its authenticity; a phenomenon that Hebdige (1979) suggests eventually confronts all subcultures. However, the underground nature and illegal elements of graffiti writing remain a strong focus of the practice particularly for young people involved in graffiti crews as explored in this study. In this way the notion of commodification and consumption becomes an age-dependent issue as graffiti writers like DUKE age and seek to leverage a more legitimate artistic career from their subcultural practice as illustrated in Lachmann’s (1988) investigation. Career aspirations developed out of subcultural participation has been well documented by

Snyder (2009) and can result in art practice based careers such as graphic design, tattooing, clothing design, sign writing and art supply distribution.

In many respects writers like JD and Mark see that it is easier for young writers now as they have so much knowledge and so many resources readily available to them that are just a mouse click away on the internet, or available for purchase at the local

180 graffiti paint shop. The innovations and transformations of the culture make learning graffiti in the current era a much more accessible and fluid process. According to JD and Mark, therefore, learning how to be a graffiti writer is a great deal easier in the current environment. JD remarks that:

…the game remains the same. Pick up a spray can, go out, you write on shit, you go out you paint a sick ass board [quality piece on a wall], no one messes with you. It’s still the same thing but it’s just different tools, you know, now it’s sort of to sell paint. - JD

That said, on the flipside of the technical innovations, the study participants also discussed how innovation, particularly related to style and aesthetic appearances, can sometimes be stifled by an adherence to traditional beliefs about graffiti practice, such as maintaining authenticity by being true to the form and style of graffiti as developed in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s.

Somebody who’d written about graffiti and said that in some ways it stifles true creativity because everybody’s so obsessed with the kind of kings of the movement that essentially everybody’s … I think the words he used were ‘everybody is trying to make provincial copies’ of this one kind of revered style. - Jack

So yeah, there are definite kind of standards for what looks good and what doesn’t and I don’t know who particularly came up with that but they’re kind of constantly reinforced by everybody just repainting the same styles all the time, so there is definitely, um … I think that’s why some people don’t like graffiti is because they don’t see any real evolution in it, you know, it’s just like the same stuff over and over and over again. - Jack

Jack’s comment is significant; he connects the stifling of innovation with the often strict adherence to a set of unspoken rules within the culture of graffiti writing, rules that see writers repeatedly producing the same aesthetic style over and over again.

This comment highlights an awareness that perhaps the public do not appreciate the art that is produced rather than it being a case of the people disliking the practice or seeing it as deviant behaviour.

181

Regardless of the range of graffiti-specific paint products and innovative nozzles now available, graffiti writers continue to learn graffiti by the act of doing, that is, repeatedly performing the practice of graffiti, or learning in action in a communal fashion through trial and error and intent observation. As discussed above, young writers figured things out for themselves or drew upon the knowledge of more experienced writers and crew members who shared their knowledge and experience with them. Can control, one of the central skills in the practice of graffiti writing, is an excellent example of developing a skill through practice. Can control is a learnt practice, but not one that can be easily learnt from a textbook or by watching You

Tube videos; it is something that one must gain a feel for through social interaction, practice, observation, intent participation, and repetition. These are key elements in learning to be a graffiti writer that are gained from participation in a graffiti crew who share the goal of perfecting graffiti writing skills to produce high quality artworks, all within the situated context of their graffiti crew.

Conclusion

In this chapter I argued that a graffiti writer learns the skills of graffiti production through engagement and participation in the practice of graffiti writing within the context of the graffiti crew. Graffiti writers experience the crew as a community that is in many ways organised for informal learning, a community that must be entered by novices for the purpose of practice and perfecting the production of graffiti pieces. Of most significance, graffiti is framed by a range of common understandings of what a graffiti crew is that speak to notions of belonging, acceptance, dedication, commitment, innovation, and a shared repertoire that unite the graffiti crew. This

182 vision of a graffiti crew is entangled and filtered through a masculine understanding of these shared notions, one that can serve to exclude women from participation and limit their contribution: a female’s ability and motivations for participation are often questioned as a result of the often hyper-masculine nature of graffiti culture. This is demonstrated in the way writers experience the learning of graffiti writing in a number of interwoven contextual ways involving situatedness, social interaction, responsibility, observation, language, physicality and the tools of practice. Graffiti writers enter the crew as ‘toys’ (novice writers), then, guided by more experienced writers, they work toward mastery of the practice of graffiti writing. In this way, the learning of graffiti skills, techniques and culture aligns with the concept of legitimate peripheral participation in the situated learning context of the crew. Equally it questions what a legitimate participant is within the culture of graffiti writing, meaning that a graffiti crew can be as much a community of exclusion as it is a community of inclusion. What is produced and how it is produced therefore fits a particular cultural norm that I argue is heavily masculinised.

In the next chapter I discuss the findings of this study which indicate that the Internet and online social media platforms offer a range of affordances, such as greater reach and accessibility for the learning and curation of graffiti pieces, while at the same time presenting a set of challenges for the cultural practice of graffiti writing.

183 Chapter 6 Online Practice: New Sites of Community

In the previous chapter I argued that the way graffiti writers learn the skills, techniques and cultural knowledge of graffiti writing is through intent observation and active participation in the social world of the graffiti crew. Graffiti writers experience the crew as a community that functions for learning via social engagement in a shared practice; however, the learning that is experienced by graffiti writers occurs within a highly masculinised community which can serve to exclude women from the practice.

In this chapter I discuss how Internet-mediated learning and online spaces for the learning and presentation of graffiti pieces offer a range of affordances, while simultaneously presenting a set of challenges for the cultural practice of graffiti writing. Overall, my analysis suggests that with the uptake of Internet technology and social media, the practice and culture of graffiti writing is now more widely accessible to a broad range of young people. This can serve to expand what is typically understood as a community of practice, with online spaces offering greater accessibility for those who may otherwise be excluded from the real time practice of graffiti writing. I am here referring primarily to young women, but also to other writers who may be considered weak or incapable of performing graffiti in a real time urban context due to a disability or being very young, for example. There is another concern among some graffiti writers: that digital technologies and online learning are supplanting the traditional conception of ‘learning by doing’ within the graffiti crew.

If one looks more closely, however, one can see that the perception of the digital space as a threat to graffiti culture serves to reinforce the strong sense of community within the social world of graffiti writing. It suggests that the concept of communal

184 learning and social interaction within the physical crew environment are highly valued features of the culture. I argue, therefore, that what we see occurring in the digitally-mediated spaces of social networking platforms can be interpreted as flourishing new forms of community.

As this chapter is concerned with the impact of the Internet and social media upon the graffiti community, I will first discuss the ways in which the Internet and social media are impacting upon the practice of graffiti writing, pointing out how social media can challenge the sense of connectedness amongst writers, and arguing that, perhaps paradoxically, this challenge actually reinforces the idea of community amongst graffiti writers. I then explore how the social media platform Instagram is changing the practice of graffiti and the way writers ‘get up’. I demonstrate how some writers associate this shift in practice with a commercial brand awareness and the desire to legitimise their art practice, seeing Instagram as a useful tool for graffiti writers seeking to reach a wider audience for their work. This is followed by a discussion of the ways in which the Internet and social media create opportunities for greater accessibility to the culture of graffiti writing. I conclude this chapter by showing how the Internet and social media afford greater opportunities for participation, learning and the expansion of the practice, actually creating new forms of online community.

Changing Conceptions of Graffiti: Online Communities of Practice

Youth cultures are not immune to change, and the social world of graffiti writers is no exception. Online mediated participative interaction has permeated a wide range of youth cultures, subcultures and post-subcultures, including the world of graffiti writers (Bowen, 2010; MacDowall, 2008; MacDowall, 2018; MacDowall & de Souza,

185 2018; Quintero, 2007; Robards, 2010; Robards & Bennett, 2011; Wilson & Atkinson,

2005). No longer is it a requirement of youth cultural affiliation to seek physical contact with other like-minded graffiti writers to produce pieces in a public space.

The social media platform Instagram is a case in point. It illuminates the complex and sometimes contradictory relationship between the physical and digital worlds of graffiti practice; it can both facilitate opportunities for engagement with graffiti writing culture and challenge traditional understandings of community. It also affords the opportunity for the evolution of new notions of what a community is or can be in the realms of accessibility, learning and presentation of writers’ work.

The digital space is thus transforming the practice of graffiti writing while challenging the embodied aspects of the practice of graffiti writing in physical spaces.

The digital space is perceived by some writers as challenging the authenticity of graffiti which privileges the embodied real-time practice of the art form in the urban environment, but the internet and social media also open up opportunities for wider participation and new forms of community that afford graffiti writers the ability to easily share their work with an online global audience. In many respects the digitally- mediated spaces of the Internet simply provide another arena in which like-minded individuals can gather to discuss their shared passion and interest in graffiti writing.

While the individuals who interact in these virtual spaces may never actually meet or interact in the physical world, the sense of camaraderie and learning are still present as members of online graffiti forums provide encouragement to each other, offer feedback on each other’s work, and share tips on techniques to improve their graffiti skills (Avramidis & Drakopoulou, 2015; Light, Griffiths, & Lincoln, 2012;

MacDowall & de Souza, 2018). Membership in these online communities is

186 comparable to physical communities. Both communities exist for the purpose of sharing knowledge and furthering the goals of members within the group, that is, they all seek to perfect their graffiti writing skills and techniques and to produce quality tags, throwies and pieces. In this way young people in the online space are also

‘becoming’ graffiti writers, and in this sense they are also creating a particular identity.

The increased use of the Internet and social media by graffiti writers has, according to some writers, reduced physical community cohesion. In Jack’s understanding, the beginning of Melbourne’s distinctive graffiti scene was marked by greater levels of real world community interaction. Jack explains:

So there’s a little bit less of that kind of intense passion about it or… from what I can tell there was much more a kind of communal love thing going on when graffiti started in Melbourne - Jack

This notion of community, that Jack describes as a ‘kind of communal love thing’, appears to challenge the view of social media as impersonal and disembodied, as a medium that sees individuals flipping through images on their smart phones and not necessarily interacting on the scale of the communal gathering of writers at Richmond train station in Melbourne’s inner-East. Richmond train station was once a traditional meeting point for writers who would congregate on the platform to discuss graffiti and to share tips, techniques and stories while watching the trains pass through the station, showcasing their intricate and colourful graffiti pieces.

People used to go and meet at Richmond station at the writers’ bench and it was like, you know, there’d be a hundred people hanging out on the platform talking about graffiti and swapping tags and talking about who got in a fight with who, there was just a little bit more of an integrated… like a person to person thing going on. Now it’s all over the internet, like Facebook and Instagram and all that stuff, which makes it a bit impersonal. – Jack

187 Jack’s comments serve to reinforce the importance of physical community interaction among graffiti writers; he sees graffiti as a practice underpinned by a strong sense of social interaction, camaraderie and mentoring, in this way serving as a site for learning. Nevertheless, Jack makes a point of conceding that this may be nothing more than nostalgia for a past that never actually existed:

I might be wrong, you know, I’m not old enough to know so, if you talk to an old school guy and they might say no, it was just as standoffish then as it is now. - Jack

This is an interesting point, as Jack alludes to the rise of Internet-mediated graffiti as potentially reducing the physical contact and camaraderie of the crew, which I have argued is a community at the heart of graffiti culture. Jack, and other writers in this study, articulate a complex concern about the potential loss of community associated with Internet-mediated social networks that are interpreted as impersonal and lacking the benefits of physical social interaction. If, however, one looks more carefully at how the participants in this study draw upon and use the social media at their disposal, it becomes clear that social media such as Instagram, YouTube and Facebook are being used in ways that actually support the concept of community. This argument is reinforced by the work of Light et al. (2012) who studied an online graffiti community that used YouTube to connect and create. They suggested that the internet, specifically YouTube, is not dissimilar to the fabled writers’ bench at 149th Street

Station in the South Bronx, New York City or, in the local case, the “Richmond

Station writers’ bench” discussed above. Both the Internet and the train station provide points of continuity and interaction by sharing creative outputs in ways that encourage engagement, interaction and belonging. The nature of the relationship between viewing graffiti online via scrolling through a smart phone and seeing it on the sides of passing trains from a station platform is a very interesting consideration.

188 MacDowall and de Souza (2018, p. 10) comment on it, arguing that by ‘[t]urning a phone on its side and flicking through the feed of images is reminiscent of watching graffiti pass from a train window, a reminder that graffiti, like alphabets and trains, has its roots in forms designed to be horizontally mobile and to have instantaneous visual impact.’

Social Media: Instagram and New Forms of ‘Getting Up’ Online

The rapid uptake of online mediated environments like Instagram has greatly affected the world of graffiti writers. With the ability of writers to immediately capture a digital image of their piece, then to post it online to Instagram or other social media platforms via a smart phone at the moment of production, makes it instantly accessible to the world. The ability to instantly post your work to a global audience has transformed the culture in many ways. For some graffiti writers this makes sense and is something they encourage because, ultimately, given graffiti is about garnering fame and being ‘up’ far and wide, the Internet affords instant global reach (Quintero,

2007). Graffiti in the online virtual space is still about ‘getting up’, therefore, but it has changed the nature of where and how a writer ‘gets up’, as James explains by citing the prolific Melbourne graffiti writer, Lush:

You know LUSH yeah? Well he has a good quote where he’s like, now instead of getting up ‘all city’ you want to like try and get up on the internet, ‘cause half the time you’re travelling through a city and you’re not looking at the walls, you look at your phone. So, it’s not about how much you get up in the physical world, it’s how much you post online and that sort of rings true. – James

It is now about ‘getting up’ by posting on the Internet via social media channels such as Instagram; thus I argue that the fundamental aspect of the practice has not changed in that a writer still produces work in the physical world while the medium through

189 which the work is displayed has shifted, transitioning the work from the physical and localised to the digital and globalised, thereby changing the modes of circulation and viewing. Lush is a writer who has enthusiastically embraced social media such that he puts up his Instagram account name, @lushsux, whenever he produces new work, but not all writers tag their Instagram account name when they produce a piece. See

Figure 6.1 for an example of LUSH putting up his Instagram account name on his completed pieces. There is though a growing number of writers who now do so as a way of promoting their art practice.

Figure 6.1: LUSH piece showing @LUSHSUX. Photo Credit Ron C Baird.

While the majority of the participants in this study have Instagram accounts, they articulate a complex range of reasons for having them, reasons that sometimes seem

190 to be at odds with the traditional culture of graffiti writing. The idea of being prolific and ‘getting up’ regularly is now in many ways about branding or broadening one’s profile as a legitimate artist. In this way Instagram serves as the perfect vehicle for market saturation of one’s tag or street brand. MacDowall (2018, p. 250) refers to the rise of a brand focus in graffiti as ‘the new digital economy of the Instagram Era.’

This is an interesting point, as graffiti writers traditionally performed their practice in the public domain, though not necessarily for the consumption of the general public.

The pieces produced by graffiti writers are meant to broadcast their skill and technique to other members of the graffiti writing community in a closed network that, while visible to the public, is largely not produced for their benefit and is largely unintelligible to them. As James explains, the use of Internet technology and social media, such as Instagram in particular, has become a useful tool for reaching a wider audience. In this way, writers leverage social media technologies to further their artistic careers:

There’s a lot of people since like, the Banksy film [Exit Through the Gift Shop] was probably one of those pinpoints where a lot of people jumped onto the street art and graffiti bandwagon and it seems like a lot of the people starting out from that point are seeing it more as a business model, and it seems like they really hone into social media to sell it and it can be a bit cringeworthy sometimes. – James

James cites the release of the Banksy film, ‘Exit through the Giftshop’, as a watershed moment for graffiti and street art. He points out that it precipitated a surge in interest in the various forms of street-based urban art that had little connection with the street codes of graffiti writing. This shift away from traditional codes is reflected in individuals seeking to further their artistic careers by use of social media platforms, which for James is a somewhat disquieting endeavour, cringe-inducing in fact. This is interesting given that James is part of a new breed of writers who experiment with a

191 range of mediums apart from spray-paint and markers, using stencils, stickers and brushes in their work, as he explains:

I haven’t seen that sort of crossover for a little while, like doing graffiti letters and also doing stencils as well. So I wanted to be like the one, who I know in my generation who’s doing that, I’m gonna try and like push that and try and come up with something new. Also doing some oil painting and still doing stuff with spray cans and drawing. – James

The view of branding as articulated by James is tinged with negative connotations as if it is somehow problematic to broadcast one’s work in a commercial manner, though this is ironic given that a graffiti writer’s tag or street moniker is in many ways akin to a personal brand, intended to broadcast to an audience in order to build a street reputation. While the traditional, intended audience of writers is other writers, a new breed of urban artists now focus on the creation of a commercial ‘brand’ identity via their tag/logo, embracing digital communication channels such as Instagram and other social media platforms to broaden external interest in their art practice and allowing them to communicate their work to the broadest possible audience (Moody, 2014).

The significant rise in the use of Instagram by writers suggests that, as writers mature in their ability, they seek to leverage their skill into a more ‘legitimate’ or mainstream art practice; in other words, they may seek to make the transition from graffiti writer to ‘artist’. Jack reflects on his own use of Instagram in the excerpt below which highlights this somewhat contradictory position. It also illuminates aspects of James’ comments above in relation to the motivations for using social media such as

Instagram, as Jack explains:

I reckon the impact of the Internet on graffiti has been pretty big. I mean like Instagram and stuff like that, I got an Instagram account in like November 2013 after never having one ‘cause I kind of didn’t want … I didn’t like the idea that you get well-known from the photos you upload as opposed to getting well-known from going out and actually doing graffiti. But because I kind of

192 want to move slightly more toward a professional art practice I thought it would be handy for a few more people to be aware of my work so I kind of bit the bullet and got one. – Jack

Jack’s comments align with James’ point above concerning the commodification of graffiti that happens when individuals use the Internet as a medium to sell their art or further their art practice. It appears that Jack is very conscious of the impact that social media is having on the practice of graffiti writing and of how this in some ways challenges the unwritten rules of the practice. Jack is careful to excuse his uptake and use of Instagram by claiming that he was initially resistant to the idea as he was keen to stay true to the informal code of getting known by ‘getting up’, that is, putting in hard work every night to ensure your name is out there and known ‘all city’, rather than gaining recognition from garnering ‘likes’ online. Use of Instagram is a practice that is viewed as less significant or, as I would suggest is the case in the hyper- masculine culture of graffiti writing, viewed as somehow emasculating because it is perceived as a ‘soft option’, particularly if the pieces are only produced in safe and/or legal spots such as the writer’s backyard. The implication that I draw from Jack’s reflections is that you are not dedicated to putting in long hours of risky and dangerous work to develop what Lachmann (1988) terms a ‘deviant art career’ if you only post work online. Jack further corroborates the somewhat contradictory nature of social media use by graffiti writers as he articulates his desire to move to a ‘slightly more professional art practice’. Jack decided to acquire an Instagram account in order to get his work out there and noticed by a wider critical audience, though an audience that was not exclusively other graffiti writers. This wider audience was presumably those with an aesthetic or economic interest in art, such as art critics, art galleries and art consumers. One senses however that what underlies Jack’s reflection is a feeling

193 that he is somehow ‘selling out’ for having this view and for taking these steps toward greater recognition as an artist by using Instagram.

The large-scale adoption by graffiti writers of social networking sites such as

Instagram over the past 5 to 10 years is a growing trend; the vast majority of young people utilise social media in their daily lives these days (MacDowall & de Souza,

2018). The widespread use of Instagram and other social media platforms and websites highlights an important aspect of graffiti culture. The World Wide Web enables wider proliferation of a writers’ work, inevitably affecting the practice of graffiti writing by allowing greater accessibility to the culture and more opportunities to learn via online ‘how to’ videos and graffiti forums. With the rise of social media, the ‘audience’ of graffiti has grown exponentially such that it is now a globally accessible culture, one that has adapted to new mediums for interacting and sharing of graffiti art, as James explains:

Yeah I have Instagram now. For a while I didn’t like it because I was just like I didn’t want it to be like a broad thing, I want it to be just like a closed circle, like for me and my friends to enjoy it, anyone else who sees my work [graffiti] doesn’t really matter. But then slowly I’ve gotten a bit more used to like putting stuff in the open for people to look at it. – James

James’ view lends support to my argument that graffiti writers continue to learn from each other, and with one another, by sharing their work and their opinions about it via

Instagram, even though the medium has shifted. Rather than focusing solely on pieces generating an audience in a localised geographic location, a writer can now share their work with a geographically-dispersed global audience. I argue that this works to expand the community of practice into digitally mediated spaces, allowing for the uptake and learning of the practice by a greater number of interested young people.

194 Entry to Online Practice: Accessibility and Access to Digital Communities of Practice

In recent years the Internet and social media have played a significant role in inducting young people into the culture of graffiti writing. The Internet, with its vast scope reaching far beyond the confines of geographically co-located friendship and community groupings, now provides an avenue to introduce graffiti to would-be practitioners the world over. In this way, social media platforms such as Instagram serve to exponentially extend the reach of the culture’s graffiti pieces. Doyle explains this in response to a question about the importance of the Internet and social media platforms to graffiti practice:

The Internet certainly changed the game; we didn’t have the Internet when we just started in ’99. The whole of Blender studios, the first part didn’t have a website, no one had it, and now everything’s completely different. Like one of our artists will be doing something and then, you know, he won’t have even finished it and he’ll post it online and someone in Denmark will have liked it and then shared it. I mean it really changes the game. – Doyle

Doyle’s comment highlights how the Internet and social media platforms have

‘changed the game’ in relation to graffiti, especially in terms of broadcast reach. A writer's piece can now be truly global, reaching an audience that would otherwise be inaccessible, a phenomenon that also has implications for those on the receiving end, the global audience. If you are a young person in Denmark interested in graffiti, you instantly have access to a wide range of styles and aesthetics that can fuel your interest while increasing your knowledge of the culture and practice. The Internet thus provides inspiration and models for your developing work as a novice writer.

This represents a significant shift away from direct personal interaction between active participants in the culture and those on the fringes who are interested, but not always active, in graffiti writing.

195 The transformation of the culture from primarily a face-to-face interaction in the physical world to one generating online, mediated social bonds expands the horizons of, and scope for involvement in graffiti writing culture. There are some old-school writers though who feel that Internet-mediated technologies challenge the authenticity of graffiti writing, as Doyle illustrates with the following statement:

The Internet is just another part of it, yeah. Look the graffiti purists are gonna try and think that everything takes away from the authenticity of graffiti because they’re stuck in a time warp where they think everything should be a certain way like it was [back in the old days] when we had old blue train rattlers and Hitachi’s [commuter trains]. And, you know, it’s good and well to keep to that sort of structure of the idea within that scene but, you know, it makes that scene extraordinarily conservative which is outrageous considering it’s graffiti, they’ve got so many rules and structures that they have to live by that if you break the rules you can get into a lot of trouble, you know, and these are kind of set up and they’re old and stupid. – Doyle

As Doyle explains above, this type of ‘old-school’ conservatism regarding what is authentic within graffiti culture can serve to stifle innovation. In his view, embracing the digitally-mediated online space can act as a locus for expanding opportunities for the learning of, and participation in graffiti culture, as well as for the production and presentation of graffiti pieces. His view supports my line of argument.

Traditionally graffiti was a very localised phenomenon, localised in specific suburbs and neighbourhoods and constrained by the writer’s mobility and the ease of city navigation (Austin, 2001; Castleman, 2002; Lachmann, 1988; van Loon, 2014). As such, the visual culture of graffiti was accessible only to those who were willing to go out exploring and walking the train lines, laneways and hidden liminal spaces of the city to seek it. Walking the train line, a distinct learning and social activity for graffiti crews, generated camaraderie and opportunities for learning as they walked, ‘bombed’ and critiqued other writers’ and crew’s pieces and throwies, sharing knowledge and

196 stories as they did so. While this demonstrates the importance of mobility for writers who engaged with their physical environment, social media presents different dimensions of mobility. The rise of digital communication technology and social media has amplified the reach of graffiti such that it can now be easily extended from the warehouse wall along the train line in suburban Melbourne to the digital screens of interested young people the world over.

But Instagram’s huge for graffiti now, like ninety percent of writers in Melbourne probably have it and post on it very regularly. So it’s changed graffiti because you don’t need to travel on the train anymore to go and see a piece and stuff like that. – Jack

The Internet has made graffiti much more widely available and accessible to people, including writers. As Jack observes, young writers and others interested in graffiti no longer have to do ‘loops’ (riding the train to view graffiti pieces, travelling to the end of the line, then staying on the train to do the return journey) of the various train lines to keep on top of what writer or pieces are new and fresh; they just check their

Instagram accounts and follow various writers that way. Again, this supports the notion of informal learning and of graffiti as a practice in that it has merely changed the way that a novice writer can learn the techniques and cultural knowledge of graffiti writing, not changed the nature of the learning. A traditional avenue of learning within the crew was walking the train line or ‘doing loops’ on the train to view what was new and fresh, the writers learning from witnessing, assessing and evaluating the variety of pieces on display. During these missions, crew members discussed the relative merits of particular pieces, shared tips, and offered their assessments of how various techniques were rendered. Now this can be more efficiently achieved by following writers on Instagram and being instantly alerted to a new piece by a specific writer, or being able to quickly scroll through a vast number

197 of images of pieces. In this way the same evaluation occurs, but it is significantly facilitated through the use of the Internet and digital technology that put the graffiti pieces of the world at one’s fingertips. Rather than just walking the train lines and laneways of Melbourne, therefore, one can walk theses urban spaces virtually, in San

Francisco, Barcelona, Moscow or any other location on the globe via a digital device.

This newfound mobility is discussed by Jack who views Instagram as a means of enabling greater accessibility to the art practice that he loves. For him this is a positive outcome as social media affords Jack the opportunity to connect with a wider audience for his work - both his critics and his fans. This is an important point as it supports the view that graffiti writing is a significant learned practice that is able to adapt to changes in the ways that graffiti is broadcast, from wall/train to digital screen.

We can thus conceive of graffiti writers as innovators seeking to broaden their audience and their learning potential.

The importance of the online space for introducing young people to the culture of graffiti writing is further exemplified by Diego’s experience of becoming involved in the practice. Diego, a graffiti writer and clothing designer who also works part-time as an graffiti artist mentor at a city council aerosol arts program for at-risk young people, related an interesting story about his entry to graffiti practice that specifically highlights the importance of the Internet and social media in facilitating access to graffiti culture. After initially developing an interest in graffiti through friends at school, Diego became further involved in the culture of graffiti writing when he began to explore the culture online and made a number of contacts via the social media platform Myspace. On Myspace Diego met other graffiti writers and, most significantly, met someone who would become his mentor. This writer was a bit older

198 than Diego, and a far more experienced writer. He taught Diego a great deal about graffiti writing techniques and graffiti culture, and also introduced Diego to other graffiti writers online. Myspace really helped Diego to access the graffiti community and to meet other like-minded individuals who shared Diego’s passion for graffiti.

The mentor relationship that developed was vital for Diego as a graffiti writer as it opened up further opportunities for him to meet a wider circle of like-minded individuals as well as facilitating opportunities to learn more about the practice.

With the increasing use of social media such as Instagram and YouTube, a novice graffiti writer does not necessarily have to engage in hours of illegal writing all over the city in order to garner recognition and respect. Digital communication technologies have transformed the practice such that all a novice writer needs is a few walls in a backyard and an Instagram or YouTube account (Light et al., 2012), thus making it instantly accessible to the world. This supports the notion of graffiti as a learnt practice that is evident in the greater access to knowledge of graffiti writing and how to do it that is afforded by wide use and application of technology and social media, as Mark describes:

Writers can now get instant fame. They just, do fifteen pieces, then post the fifteen pieces on Instagram and hashtag them away and next thing you know they’ve got ten thousand likes. Social media has completely changed graffiti. It used to be, who’s got the most pieces on the train line and who does the most work. These days it’s just people flipping through their smart phone, like that’s it, even graffiti magazines are becoming more rare because people just like constant Instagram graffiti. - Mark

The interview data indicates that social media opens up new spaces of community for the graffiti writer. This resonates with related research literature on the opportunities social media affords for much wider participation and for the creation of new forms of

199 online community (Light et al., 2012). New forms of community are emerging online that privilege communal/social interaction and learning by sharing and observing practices using digital communication technology and social networking platforms.

Via the use of digital media platforms, such as YouTube, novice writers can discuss their actions and interactions, albeit in a geographically-dispersed online environment that nevertheless possesses some of the hallmarks of a physical community. In chapter four, I discussed how a graffiti crew comprises a number of like-minded individuals who possess a shared passion and interest in graffiti and who come together to learn and perfect the production of graffiti pieces. I argue that these features are all present in an online space.

Internet Mediated Learning and Online Communities of Practice

The fact that young graffiti writers can now learn the practice of graffiti writing by following online videos and participating in graffiti forums makes graffiti much more accessible to young people, particularly to those living in rural or isolated environments. The online space changes the dynamic of the learning that occurs because there is no physical interaction, making the visual embodied aspects of teaching graffiti techniques more difficult, even when a video is depicting the action.

That said, it does appear that the Internet challenges the traditional way of learning, that is, through the physical community of a graffiti crew. While crews have been the traditional space in which graffiti skills are learnt and passed on, this learning in many ways continues in the online space through the shift to online mediated learning.

The impact of the Internet and digitally-mediated environments on how the practice of graffiti writing is learnt is complex and dualistic. The regular use of spray-paint on

200 blank backyard garden walls or cardboard is needed (Light et al., 2012) in order to perfect one’s skills, such as can control, skills that cannot be learned solely from watching a video. One must get a feel for it via actual practice, as Joe points out:

Graffiti is hard to do, but you have to be relaxed, you have to relax yourself, can control, you push very slightly you get a very thin line. There’s a lot more to graffiti than what your normal figure of society thinks about it, and you can’t learn that from YouTube. - Joe

In this way, the Internet threatens forms of social/communal learning experienced by graffiti writers in the situated context of the graffiti crew; however, there is a range of new modes of learning emerging that simply see the idea of community experienced in a physical crew environment transferred to online spaces of virtual communities of practice. These are important points and I will therefore spend some time discussing how this has amplified some of the elements of the culture outlined above. Digital communication amplifies some learning aspects of the culture; for example, in viewing YouTube videos depicting how to write graffiti with spray-paint. The action can be slowed down with the camera often following the artist’s hand. In this way one can learn the stages of writing graffiti because the videos often depict the process from beginning to end; one can therefore learn some basic techniques of rendering graffiti with a can of spray-paint (Avramidis & Drakopoulou, 2015).

The idea of learning graffiti writing techniques from YouTube or any other online medium challenges the authenticity of the culture, that is, an authenticity achieved through learning by doing and, night after night, putting in the ‘hard yards’ painting the streets in the real world. Utilising online learning videos such as YouTube also has its limits, as a writer cannot get a ‘feel’ for the technique involved which is

201 critical for learning how to write signature graffiti with a can of spray-paint, as JD highlights below:

I mean look, I think that, like I said I’m quite open to how dudes do things. I do see that when I’m meeting other writers there’s always the oh, you know, there’s this new trick and because dudes are doing this stuff on YouTube and saying ‘if you use this nozzle and you do it this way’ and it’s kind of like, yeah, why wouldn’t you, you know, especially if your new to it. But why do you need ‘that’ nozzle to do it. It’s like shit that we figure out anyway. – JD

JD here presents a contradictory interpretation of learning through YouTube. On the one hand he points out it can be a good thing, especially if one is new to graffiti. On the other hand he says that ‘It’s like shit that we figure out anyway’, implying that these are techniques that ‘we’ learn from participating with each other in the crew. JD is thus concerned with the potential loss of the mechanisms by which graffiti writers traditionally learn within the crew, that is, via participation and social interaction in a community of practice.

Websites dedicated to graffiti and other urban street-based art have also had a tremendous impact on knowledge development within the culture of graffiti writing.

Websites such as Invurt, Land of Sunshine, Melbourne Graffiti.Com, Melbourne Old

Schooler and 12oz prophet, not to mention the social media platforms such as

YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, have brought the culture of graffiti writing into the bedrooms of young people around the world (Light et al., 2012). These online sources include images and video of graffiti pieces, stories, lore, techniques, graffiti demonstrations and even ‘how to’ videos. Tyrone highlights some of the tensions and contradictions experienced as a result of the rise of digital communication technologies upon graffiti:

I mean, Dean's pretty cool. Dean Sunshine [owner and moderator of Melbourne graffiti website ‘Land of Sunshine’] is a nice guy and he - I think he just really enjoys art. Then, I don't know - for me, graffiti is not about

202 websites. But saying that, I've got an Instagram account. I mean, the most authentic thing is just doing graffiti. All those sites don’t really - they usually have legal stuff on there anyway, not your stuff, because people don't really walk the train lines and take photos and stuff, or climb walls, or appreciate stuff that's illegal. - Tyrone

Tyrone’s comments highlight an important aspect of the impact of Internet technology on the practice of graffiti writing; it enables wider circulation of writers’ work, subsequently enhancing the standing of individual writers whose work is viewed as good or worthy of posting on Instagram. In this respect, social media platforms such as Instagram and YouTube provide a positive means of novice writers gaining cultural knowledge, history and a basic understanding of the rules and guidelines governing the practice of graffiti writing in the real world, rules such as what not to write on (churches, monuments and cars), and guidelines about the hierarchy of pieces, throwies and tags and what can be overwritten, for example. It thus reinforces the idea of informal learning and learning from each other via participation and observation. The importance of the Internet and other media for learning the fundamental rules and cultural knowledge of graffiti writing is best exemplified in the following quote from Joe:

I learned by, um, I looked online, I got a book as well, a book which is based on all old school Melbourne graffiti [Kingsway (Duro, Cubrillo and Stamer, 2009)]. I kind of read up a bit on that, kind of history on writers back like around the ‘80s and ‘90s and, yeah, just like I made sure I knew a bit about it before getting into graff. So yeah I gathered up a lot of information and, yeah, after that I kind of knew a little bit about it. – Joe

Ron: And why was it important to read up about it, to know about it?

Kind of like the more you know about old school stuff like you don’t get seen as such a ‘toy’, like other writers would be like hey this dude knows a bit about old school stuff and all that. – Joe

203 Joe’s remarks illustrate the mechanisms of informal learning and learning from each other via observation and practice which are facilitated by the use of the Internet. The

Internet is a source of knowledge for learning the history and lineage of graffiti writing. Joe was the youngest participant in the study, being only fifteen years old when he was interviewed. Joe had been painting for only two years at that stage, but he was very adept and developing a solid style and street reputation. Joe highlights the importance of having good cultural knowledge and a solid understanding of the history of what has gone before in the world of graffiti writing. For Joe this was made easy through the Internet where he could conveniently access this important information. Joe’s experience demonstrates that digital technologies can provide a readily available and efficient means of accessing knowledge about the culture of graffiti writing. It demonstrates that social media can be used to facilitate one’s graffiti practice; to broaden it, and it can make the entry to practice easier for some novice writers such as Joe. Novices can easily enter the practice of graffiti writing via online forums; they can deliver increased knowledge and skills development, widen friendship groups, and facilitate greater access to more experienced writers within the context of the graffiti crew so that novices are less likely to be seen as un-schooled

‘toys’.

Young people interacting with one another on social media platforms such as

YouTube and Instagram, simply represents their engagement in a new type of community that is mediated in a virtual space. This is important as it shows that the idea of community remains central to graffiti writers. In some respects the advent of online graffiti sites, particularly YouTube that hosts a range of user-generated content and covers every aspect of graffiti culture, has broadened the scope of graffiti practice

204 and production. Some videos depicting illegal painting missions in a train yard show the entire process of the mission from breaking into the train yard to avoiding security personnel and surveillance, and then the act of painting the train. Other videos show legal painting sessions, interviews with writers, discussions of the culture and its terminology, and, importantly for this study, various painting techniques in a wide range of ‘how to’ videos (Avramidis & Drakopoulou, 2015).

The wide availability of ‘how to’ paint videos on YouTube has dramatically changed the landscape of graffiti culture, such that a young writer can now learn the practice of graffiti writing by watching YouTube videos of graffiti practice and technique. This is an important point as it further demonstrates the practice of learning by observation discussed in chapter five, with this learning by observation simply transposed to the digital space of the World Wide Web that acts a new repository of graffiti knowledge

(Quintero, 2007). This affords a much wider access to the culture for a variety of young people from a broad global audience, particularly for young people who live in rural or isolated environments, away from urban centres, who would otherwise not encounter the practice. This was significant for James who grew up in rural Victoria, approximately ninety minutes’ drive from Melbourne. James used the Internet to view graffiti practice, as no other means were readily available to him in country Victoria, as he explains:

I remember like at the start I couldn’t get a line sharp and I was really into the Ever-Fresh guys back then and I’d see online, like people like FIBS [prominent Melbourne writer] getting these really crisp lines, I was like ah I need to try and get that. - James

In this way the Internet and digital technologies open up opportunities for involvement that can help to advance the learning of graffiti writing skills, as James

205 suggests in the above quote, particularly for young writers who are geographically isolated. The Internet could also offer accessible spaces for the involvement in graffiti of young women, people with disabilities, or the very young.

Graffiti has traditionally relied upon various media, specifically print media, in the form of photographs and independently-produced graffiti magazines for the circulation of graffiti images (Austin, 2001; Snyder, 2006). Mediated images of graffiti have existed since the early beginnings of the culture of graffiti writing, as

Tyrone says in explaining how as a young writer he and his crew gained knowledge of the practice:

As kids we would be like, oh sick, we know who that is [when seeing tags and pieces in public] and we’ll look in the graff magazine or we’ve seen these photos in your flick-book collection [a photo album of graffiti pieces]. But other than that the reach that’s where it kind of stops unless the kids are full on like I want to know my stuff and they read Kingsway [a photo collection of early Melbourne graffiti published in 2009] and they look up on the net or trawl through heaps of photos of graff. - Tyrone

These mediated forms of graffiti were initially found in the do-it-yourself (DIY) form of writers’ piece-books (that is, writers’ sketch books where they developed ideas and practised techniques), evolving to photographs that writers would take of their completed pieces and keep in flick-books (photo albums of theirs and other writers’ pieces). Writers would routinely trade or share these photos amongst their crew or other friendly crews - hence Tyrone’s mention of ‘flick-book collections’. The trading of flick-book images was done as much to further the reputation of individual writers and their crews as to share knowledge and learning techniques. In this way, piece- books and flick-books worked as early mediated learning tools that would aid writers’ development of their skills and techniques as they studied the images and attempted to copy the style or technique employed (Snyder, 2006). This eventually extended into

206 the culture of graffiti magazine publishing into which many early writers ventured in an effort to document their culture and art works. This speaks to the learning that occurs within the graffiti crew that can develop transferable skill sets usable in later life for creative mainstream careers in publishing graphic design and other design- related alternative careers (Snyder, 2009).

Tyrone went on to relate an interesting story regarding his early use of Internet technology for viewing a variety of graffiti pieces:

Like when I was young I’d trawl through all the photos, as soon as we got the internet, I think it was like ’98 we got the internet at home and there was a graff site I remember going onto and just trawling through every single photo and memorising every single one. – Tyrone

While Tyrone is generally very dismissive of the internet and its relative value to graffiti, a number of his statements suggest otherwise, as if he is not entirely sure if advances in the Internet and digital technologies, such as Instagram, are beneficial to graffiti or not. While he speaks very disparagingly of anyone who would dare to learn graffiti from a YouTube video, he acknowledges that he has Instagram and wants people to like his artwork. In fact, a recent check of his Instagram account reveals that he currently has 10,500 followers and has posted 1,192 times to Instagram, suggesting that he is a prolific user of the social media platform and is leveraging it to good effect in furthering his art practice. The irony of his admission that he actually utilised the Internet as a learning tool in his early graffiti career is not surprising therefore. By studying these photos of graffiti Tyrone was no doubt picking up elements of style and aesthetic techniques, and, while the static images would not reveal the techniques for achieving the various effects depicted, they provided a foundation of knowledge upon which to build his practice as he experimented with techniques. He undoubtedly

207 tried to mimic these amazing images from the Internet that so transfixed him as a young novice graffiti writer. In this way we can see the benefits of the Internet and digitally-mediated images of graffiti in their significant role as sources of learning for novice writers seeking opportunities for online learning interactions.

Tyrone’s overall view of social media and the Internet is that it provides an avenue to start building knowledge about graffiti, just as he did as a young man. At the same time as Tyrone holds some negative views of learning graffiti by only watching

YouTube videos, he reveals a strong position regarding the importance of learning from each other by physical interaction within a graffiti crew. Tyrone explains what he and his crew used to do:

You’d walk the train lines and take photos and go down a line to do loops [travelling to the end of the line and staying on the train to do the return journey] and view all the pieces along the line and watch when Gyro [famous early Melbourne writer] and his crew have redone Murrumbeena [a famous ‘old school’ large scale piece at Murrumbeena train station] and you just sort of know what’s around. But I don’t know, now there seems to be less of a connection with all that and more of a connection with your phone telling you who’s painting. – Tyrone

Tyrone expresses nostalgia for the early days when he and his crew would go out and take photos of pieces along the train lines for sharing with each other and for use in learning about style and technique. Tyrone describes a process in which a young writer starts from observing and then ultimately translating his observations into practice alongside others in the graffiti crew. Utilising digital technologies such as a smartphone and Instagram for learning about the culture, however, or discovering who is ‘up’ painting through these means, makes the learning process much more accessible and efficient, as Mark points out in response to my asking him if he could learn can control from a YouTube video:

208 Well yes and no. If you have can control already I think you can. If you don’t then I don’t think you can ‘cause you don’t understand what the person’s doing. You need to know why the person is doing what they’re doing and the way they’re doing it to then be able to try and replicate the thing yourself - Mark

According to Mark, you need to have a basic knowledge of how to paint with a spray can in order to benefit from watching YouTube or other mediated learning videos to learn how to write graffiti. As I discussed in chapter five, can control is the ability to use a spray can as a tool to produce graffiti forms. It requires muscle control and drawing on muscle memory to apply the appropriate amount of pressure to the nozzle, to position the can at an appropriate distance from the surface, and to use body positioning and weight distribution to produce the desired outcome, a thin straight line, a fat line, or flourishes, for example. This knowledge is akin to what Schön (1987) describes as knowledge-in-action. These are behaviors that are certainly learned and acquired by practice, but they are – or they become - tacit knowledge in the graffiti writer. This is something that can be learned by observing the practice via an online video and then transferring that knowledge and technique to a physical surface, which corroborates points made in chapter five regarding observational learning within the crew. The difference is that in this context it is simply observed via an online medium rather than a physical environment, though the outcome is the same in that one learns graffiti by observation and practice, as James points out:

Learning, like there’s only so much you can do from watching a video and reading books. A lot of spray-painting is just finding out how it works for you like riding a bike [tacit knowledge – Learning by doing]. - James

The fact that young graffiti writers can now learn the practice of graffiti alone in an autodidactic manner by following online videos and checking out graffiti forums has ramifications for how young writers learn the practice while signifying a dramatic shift in the culture of graffiti. The Internet opens up new ways of entering into the

209 graffiti community and new ways of learning other than being facilitated by one’s participation in a graffiti crew. Crews have been the traditional space in which graffiti skills are learnt and passed on, but there are now new ways for learning to be created and transferred in online mediated formats where both learning and production continue to occur via observation, interaction and participation in communities.

Conclusion

With the uptake of Internet technology and social media, graffiti is now more widely accessible to a broad range of young people. This has expanded the community of writers and increased the number of those who enter into the practice of graffiti writing. There is nevertheless a concern among some graffiti writers that the Internet and online learning are supplanting the traditional practice of learning by doing within the graffiti crew. I have argued however that rather than replacing communal learning the rise of the Internet and social media platforms has actually supported and strengthened the tradition of learning by observation and participation. This is particularly relevant within the context of online communities that provide wider access to the foundational knowledge of the culture and practice required for the production of graffiti pieces in the physical urban environment.

210 Chapter 7 Conclusion

This study investigated graffiti writers in Melbourne, Australia, informed by the following research questions: ‘How do young men learn the practice of graffiti writing’ and ‘How do young men experience this learning?’ It shows that graffiti writing is a learnt practice that requires complex levels of skill, dedication and commitment to produce cultural artefacts. In order to achieve mastery of the practice, aspiring graffiti writers must participate, observe and be involved in social interaction that requires engagement and immersion in a face-to-face community of like-minded practitioners known as a ‘crew’. Increasingly, with the emergence of social media, such immersion occurs in online-forums. The study shows that young people become part of a graffiti crew as novice writers in order to learn the skills, techniques, history and knowledge of graffiti writing. This thesis also shows that writers experience the learning of graffiti within a highly masculine community that can serve to exclude women’s participation. The graffiti crew provides opportunities for sociality and camaraderie, as well as providing the space for learning opportunities to occur while young people are engaged in the practice of producing graffiti pieces. In doing so, the graffiti crew operates in ways that are similar to that of an apprenticeship system, as

Lachmann (1988) and Christen (2003) have also argued.

The use of a practice theory framework has enabled analysis of the role of non- institutional learning for young people who may be socially stigmatised and disengaged from formal education. In many respects, the field of education has largely dismissed young people’s informal practices as avenues for their troublesome behaviour, not worth mentioning let alone investigating (Mills & Kraftl, 2014).

Despite a positive shift in the reception of graffiti as an urban art form with aesthetic

211 merit, the social value of graffiti continues to be contested. This study has found, however, that graffiti writing offers many positive rewards for young people, such as skills development in a range of specific aspects of art practice, including planning, technique, drawing, material estimation, mentoring and leadership skills. The learning gained from participation in a community-based art practice affords the graffiti practitioner valuable lifelong skills. The skills development provides real world benefits for writers, their involvement in graffiti writing giving them the opportunity to learn useful and transferable skills. Thus, in this thesis, graffiti writing has been presented as a practice, that is, a practice that centres on the ‘doings’ of these young people when they participate in a graffiti crew performing the physical act of painting graffiti ‘pieces’.

The lived experience of graffiti writers as they enter the graffiti writing community, learn the practice, and acquire the cultural knowledge of a graffiti writer in real time and in online environments were the significant dimensions explored in this thesis that together present a picture of the graffiti writing community as much more than a deviant subculture. My study expands understanding of graffiti writing – as not

‘simply’ a cultural form, but also as an informal, but quite explicit ‘learning’ or

‘pedagogical’ space that builds capacity in young people to do productive work.

Graffiti writing involves complex social interactions and in-depth use of informal learning practices that encompass observation, experience, bodily practice and production in the conduct of their cultural affiliation. This view shifts attention to analysis of the sophisticated and highly-skilled practices of graffiti artists, and away from understandings of youth groups (in this case graffiti crews) as deviant, or graffiti

212 artworks as predominantly symbolic subcultural markers, as typically suggested in the subcultures’ literature.

The scholarly literature has often emphasised graffiti as a hyper-masculine, illegal or psycho-pathologised subculture. Graffiti has, therefore, been explored as a masculine subculture (Lombard, 2013; Macdonald, 2001; Monto et al., 2013). These studies identify graffiti as a site for the development and performance of a hyper-masculinity.

Graffiti has also been examined as an illegal subculture (Brewer & Miller, 1990;

Craw et al., 2006; Rowe & Hutton, 2012; Taylor, 2011; Taylor & Marais, 2009;

Taylor & Khan, 2013, 2014; Thompson et al., 2012; Vanderveen & van Eijk, 2016) and in this way emphasised the transgressive, criminal aspects of the practice. Graffiti has also been investigated from the perspective of social and developmental psychology that posits an understanding of graffiti as a psycho-pathologised subculture (Brown et al., 2014; Hedegaard, 2014; Othen-Price, 2006; Pani &

Sagliaschi, 2009; Watzlawik, 2014). What these studies share is a focus on graffiti as a deviant act that transgresses societal norms. In this context graffiti is viewed as a problem to be solved rather than a culture to be celebrated. This diverse literature informed this thesis to varying degrees, however my study generated new lines of inquiry by investigating graffiti as a site of learning, community and production.

Subcultural research has, often conceptualised youth from the perspective of deviance, as this has been a major strand of much subcultural theory. However, this had the net effect of highlighting only certain aspects of the lived experience of young people, such as graffiti writers, namely their anti-social behaviour. Subcultural theorisations articulated by the Chicago School and the BCCCS added greatly to our understanding

213 of young people, in particular highlighting the ongoing significance of class inequalities and social divisions and the agency that young subculturalists exhibit in negotiating the complex classed society in which they lived. The framing of subcultures within a ‘resistance’ lens was drawn out of the BCCCS emphasis upon spectacular working class youth subcultures that theorised subcultural style and related behaviour in political terms as acts of resistance to the dominant culture.

Building on this, post-subcultural theorists emphasised youth affiliation as being much more fragmented and comprised of hybrid identities in which young people are conceived as individuals floating within a post-modern world of fluid associations marked by active consumer choice and not locked into class-determined ways of being.

The aesthetic art-oriented aspects and productive facets of graffiti writing, including learning how to produce cultural artefacts, is not covered; hence my study contributes to understandings of youth culture as including educative and productive practices.

What is important for my study is the focus on the actual practice of a youth collectivity within a community of practice such as a graffiti crew, that is, what they actually do to produce graffiti writing. In terms of my project therefore I am looking beyond youth cultural practice that enables young people to create a community with its own cultural norms and values to a focus on how these norms and values underpin the production of graffiti pieces and the associated learning and perfecting of the skills of a graffiti writer that facilitate the ability to produce the products of their doing. Thus, I argue that contemporary youth culture, as evidenced by this empirical study of graffiti writers in Melbourne, Australia, is linked to communal association around shared practice and production. Therefore my study emphasises the active

214 aspect of belonging to a community, that privleges what graffiti writers do

(practice/production) rather than what they ‘represent’ (symbols/styles/genre).

Overview of the Study Findings

The analysis shows that the practice of graffiti is regularly performed, shared and discussed within the context of a graffiti crew which necessarily involves group participation, knowledge-sharing, observation, and the gradual development of novice writers to become fully-fledged crew members. Using the conceptual framework of communities of practice to focus on novice writers’ ‘entry to practice’, writers’ experiences of learning ‘in practice’, and the impact of the Internet and social media upon graffiti writing in ‘virtual practice’ has enabled this research to extend our understandings of these youth groups – from viewing them as instances of deviant subculture to valuing of the group as a site of production that rests on the pedagogical practice performed by a graffiti crew.

By drawing upon the theoretical framework of community of practice I have illuminated ways in which the graffiti crew provides writers with a shared group identity, sociality, emotional support, protection, belonging and meaning. My fieldwork suggested how a shared interest and passion for graffiti writing contributed to participants cohering in a graffiti crew for the purposes of learning how to produce graffiti pieces and how to advance their craft as skilled partitioners. As Wenger et al.

(2002) point out, a successful community of practice will flourish when the goals and requirements of the community overlap with the passions and aspirations of its members; therefore, I have showed how a shared interest and passion for graffiti led

215 to the formation of a particular type of group that I have examined as a community of practice.

Entry to Practice

Graffiti is a ubiquitous youth cultural practice. Despite its continued contestation in some arenas, graffiti’s reputation among the public has arguably shifted, particularly in Melbourne, where it is now regarded as a significant cultural artefact with artistic merit that enhances the City’s position as an artistic and intellectual hub. A specific aim of this study was to develop new knowledge about youth culture as a site of community and learning. Entry into the culture is the first phase in learning to become a graffiti writer, and as such ‘entering the culture’ is important as a signifying factor of their belonging to a community. The graffiti crew does not exist in isolation; it is a contained community of like-minded young people who come together to learn and perfect the practice of graffiti writing in a situated learning context. In this way, a graffiti writer is an active and participatory learner who enters the graffiti crew as one might enter into any learning community. Young writers cannot learn the practice alone; it is the interaction that takes place at the intersection of the individual and the social world of the graffiti crew that facilitates the accumulation of technical skills and cultural knowledge. The young graffiti writers enter the crew, defined by their new position in the practice, and must begin their apprenticeship from the periphery in the position of ‘toy’ or newcomer and slowly master the skills and techniques of the master graffiti writer. First they act as lookout, or carry paint on missions, or do the filling-in work on crew pieces, then slowly work towards full participation in the community.

216 Graffiti writing is a practice that is marked by ambition. Writers seek to prove themselves worthy of the respect of their peers and to gain fame in the street culture of graffiti writing. Elements of this analysis resonate with findings from other studies

(Lachmann, 1988; MacGillivray & Curwen, 2007; Valle & Weiss, 2010). In this thesis, however, I found that young people become productive when they are understood and work together with like-minded individuals. The social dynamic of the crew context can bring out the best in young people, so the power of the group is important. In this way a novice writer enters a community for practice.

The cohesion of the graffiti crew also emerges from how risk is navigated and this in an important factor in the development of trust and sense of community among members. I bring the concept of risk as a key additional and 15th defining characteristic to Wenger’s (1998) 14 point definition of a community of practice. As I have shown and argued, the concept of risk performs a particular and important function in a graffiti crew in a way that differentiates it from normative understandings of a community of practice; in that ‘shared participation in high-risk activities’ serves to bond graffiti writers in a specific way, such that they work together and produce highly-regarded cultural artefacts. The graffiti crew is therefore a locus of shared/mutual trust, a space that has been dismissed in other social contexts as criminal, but one that can help shape young writers while facilitating the development of the skills required to produce aesthetically-pleasing, high quality graffiti pieces that are increasingly socially accepted and valued.

Meaning-making and social learning are thus achieved via communal action as graffiti writers experience the social and cultural world of graffiti writing.

217 Understanding the informal learning that takes place within a graffiti crew extends our knowledge of how young graffiti writers learn and produce cultural artefacts in a communal context. The social practice of graffiti writing shows that novice writers must negotiate a range of social factors and relationships, including newcomer/old- timer relationships, while engaging in the accompanying activities that are core aspects of the practice: writing signature graffiti, establishing identities, creating artefacts and learning the use of the tools of production, for example. In the case of graffiti writing, the notion of legitimate peripheral participation provided a concept for interpreting the relationship and interactions between ‘newcomers’ or ‘toys’ and

‘old-timers’ or ‘masters’, as novices enter the graffiti crew and begin the process of observational learning. However, as I have noted, these social and work-focused interactions that bind the group together are often inflected with a masculine bias that can influence the learning that occurs within a graffiti crew. In this way, as Hannerz

(2017, p. 376) points out, ‘…identities are re-embodied through gendered understandings of who, what and how graffiti should be about’. Thus, as I have argued, the graffiti crew can also be understood as a community of exclusion.

Therefore, who is ultimately granted the status of legitimate peripheral participant is contested and closely guarded by the more experienced members of the crew who gate-keep the boundaries of the graffiti crew. This gatekeeping can serve to colour the experience of graffiti culture in negative hues for some participants, such as young women or less abled people.

Overall, the study participants perceive and understand the graffiti crew as a community that incorporates a range of meanings for them, including friendship, protection, family camaraderie, and identity, all underpinned by support for learning

218 and perfecting the practice of graffiti writing. By entering a community of like- minded practitioners, novice writers or ‘toys’ enter a domain of knowledge that is harnessed, developed and shared among the members of the crew.

In Practice

The findings indicate that for learning and production to emerge in a graffiti crew the individual members have to participate, observe and interact socially within the crew, and in this way to learn by observation and doing. Observation is imperative for learning the practice, and the graffiti crew provides the milieu in which it can occur.

Graffiti crews develop localised routines to support their practice; therefore they know who to approach for help when required. Most importantly, graffiti writers introduce and recruit new members who want to develop and improve their practice, which has both individual and collective benefits as it develops individual writer’s abilities while simultaneously increasing the standing of the crew within the graffiti writing culture. In this sense, graffiti writing involves a number of specific characteristics that align with Schön’s (1987) account of spontaneous knowing-in- action. Participants in my study described learning to write signature graffiti as acquiring a ‘feeling’ of what was right through practice, that is, the act of doing.

Young graffiti writers learn the skill of writing graffiti with spray-paint in the same way that we as individuals learn new skills in our day-to-day practices. This is an important point, as the learning resides in the act of practising or doing, a know-how that is implicit in the actions of graffiti writers. This is where Schön’s (1987) conception of ‘knowing in action’ and ‘learning in action’ were relevant to my analysis, particularly Schön’s (1987) conception of ‘tacit knowledge’ as it provided

219 an insightful perspective from which to analyse and interpret specific sections of the data collected for this study, discussed in chapter five.

The ‘graffiti crew’ provides a social space for ‘doing’ a collective activity marked by sustained mutual relationships, which suggests that learning is an inseparable aspect of social practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). The ‘graffiti crew’ is the context in which the practice of graffiti writing occurs, and a central component of a graffiti writer’s

‘doing’ is the action of learning the practice of graffiti writing. I have shown how the learning of graffiti writing occurs via intent participation in situated learning contexts, either face-to-face or in online virtual environments. These situated learning contexts are the communities of practice that develop in and around the graffiti crew, providing informal learning opportunities and affordances for observational learning and reflection upon learning.

This study also showed that young people experience the crew as a fundamentally masculine space that can at times serve to question the legitimacy of young women’s presence in the culture of graffiti writing. Therefore, the learning that occurs in the crew tends to be a particular type of learning that may reinforce ideas of normative masculinity and patriarchal gender relations. Thus, this study calls into question aspects of Lave and Wenger’s (1991) and Wenger’s (Wenger, 1998) concepts of communities of practice, specifically the concept of legitimate peripheral participation, as only certain individuals are granted this legitimate status. In this way, a graffiti crew can exclude women such that it can be conceived as a community of exclusion as much as a community of inclusive practice. Consequently, this study extended the concept of community of practice by accounting for the gendered nature of communal

220 practice and explaining how a masculine identity structure tends to inform the learning of graffiti writing skills, techniques, and cultural practices.

Online Practice

The rise and uptake of Internet-mediated social networking platforms such as

Instagram and YouTube have offered a range of affordances to the practice of graffiti writing, particularly in the area of accessibility. The Internet and social media seem to allow for quick, easy and anonymous access to a wider range of writers, such as young women, very young practitioners, or less able individuals. Such individuals may become involved in the learning, production and culture of graffiti writing because mobility is optional and access to isolated, risky and dangerous environments can be avoided. This line of argument builds on and extends Hannerz’ (2017) understanding of graffiti culture as an embodied space of mobility that privileges the ability to move freely while doing graffiti in order to access the city. This aspect of the culture is inherently limiting for some ‘bodies’ such as young women, the less able-bodied, and the very young. In this way, my study opens up the opportunities for understanding the online space as a more inclusive and equitable avenue of participation in graffiti for young people, a space where they can learn the art, produce graffiti pieces, and experience the wider culture of graffiti writing in a safe and accessible environment. Despite the open accessibility and safety of online graffiti communities, the majority of individuals who experience the culture of graffiti writing in online spaces, as shown in this study, will ultimately go on to develop their graffiti practice in the real world by joining a graffiti crew. This is because the real- time practice of graffiti in physical urban environments continues to be privileged as the legitimate and authentic space of practice in the culture of graffiti writing.

221

Social media also affords greater accessibility and learning opportunities for novice writers, as well as offering exponential opportunities for the wider distribution and curation of their graffiti pieces. The increasing use of technology and social media reaffirms the significance of learning and production in a social group, despite its occurring in geographically-dispersed online spaces. These findings are generally consistent with previous research, such as that by Light et al. (2012), Avramidis and

Drakopoulou (2015) and MacDowall and de Souza (2018). In their study of an online graffiti community, using YouTube to connect and create, Light et al. (2012) suggest that the Internet makes graffiti posted online instantly accessible to the world.

Avramidis and Drakopoulou (2015) argue that YouTube and other online video- sharing platforms make it possible for novice writers to learn the basic techniques of writing graffiti, while, MacDowall and de Souza (2018) argue that the uptake of social networking sites such as Instagram over the past 5 to 10 years by graffiti writers is an upward trend that has transformed the practice of graffiti and the sharing of graffiti images. My findings indicate however that the Internet and social media also challenge the significance of physical social interaction afforded by participation in real world graffiti crews. While there are undoubtedly real benefits to the uptake of social media and use of the Internet by both novice and master graffiti writers, ultimately it is the importance of the physical communal bonds experienced within the graffiti crew that are vital to the culture. This is a significant point that underscores the importance of the social practice of graffiti writing as a face-to-face and embodied practice that is conducted in real-time in the physical world.

222 In summary, this study has demonstrated that community is very important to graffiti writers. While the online space provides a range of affordances for graffiti writers, such as greater accessibility and a variety of learning opportunities, the socially- mediated spaces of the Internet will never overtake or replace physical communities of practice such as the graffiti crew. As I have argued, face-to-face human interaction and collaboration are seen as indispensable to member’s wellbeing and communal interaction is at the heart of the human condition that needs and desires physical social exchange between like-minded individuals who share similar passions and interests.

Limitations of the Study

The thesis aimed to explore how young people learn the practice of writing signature graffiti with spray-paint, and how young people experience this learning. Its intent was to generate rich and in-depth data in order to construct a thick description of the culture of graffiti writing and to develop a detailed response to the research questions.

Consequently, it is restricted in scale, focussing on a cohort of eleven male graffiti writers from two sites in one Australian city. The graffiti writers who participated in the study were all active graffiti writers who were aware that the study was focused on informal social learning; therefore the research participants may have overweighted what they said to emphasise this learning. As the international graffiti writing network is a close-knit culture, the participants may have been aware of each other’s participation in the study this was considered when I was analysing the fieldwork. As a small scale qualitative study, located in time and place, and as with much qualitative research, caution is to be exercised when seeking to make

223 generalisations from the findings; my aim was to illuminate and better understand a particular contemporary culture practice.

The study is also limited by a gender imbalance as it only presents the experiences and perspectives of male graffiti writers. It would be instructive to understand what the informal learning practices of female graffiti writers within a communal context would be and in what way the insights would be differentiated from or consistent with those of this male-focused study. Alongside the learning of graffiti skills and techniques, the participants in this study were also learning specific gendered understandings of the culture of graffiti writing. The research participants in my study spoke about the exclusion of female writers that often operated at an implicit level as members of the culture underplayed the contribution of women graffiti writers. The participants nevertheless admitted that there were times when the wholesale omission of females occurred as a result of male writers delegitimising women’s presence in the graffiti crew through actively excluding them or by portraying young women as only being interested in graffiti to gain the sexual attention of male graffiti writers.

This speaks to the notion of the graffiti crew as a community of exclusion, as discussed in this thesis. What I have suggested is that there are exclusions apparent in the entry to practice and in the physical participation in practice. While the potential for exclusion is, however, somewhat mitigated in virtual online spaces of practice that open up opportunities for entry to those who would otherwise be excluded, my participants’ responses suggest that the online environment challenges the authenticity of the practice, and that it is viewed as a ‘soft option’ that runs counter to the masculine view of graffiti and its practice. Inevitably, exclusion extends to the learning described in this thesis. As the physical face-to-face space of the crew

224 appears to be of upmost importance in the culture of graffiti writing, it seems that the online space could be very limiting for certain people, namely young women who routinely miss out on opportunities to participate in the informal learning investigated in this study. It has shown that the physical real world environment of the graffiti crew is a highly-valued space where young people are able to experiment, learn and produce artwork.

Significance of the Study

The significance of my study lies in three main areas:

• It repositions graffiti writing as a social practice and not as a deviant or

subcultural activity. In doing so it engages a practice theory framework that

explores graffiti writing as a type of social learning among informal groups of

young people by extending our understanding of what a community of

practice is or can be. Further, this study shows the value of using the

conceptual framework of communities of practice, typically used to study

formal institutional and workplace learning, for investigating informal

learning in the social context of a youth group.

• It demonstrates how young people learn worthwhile transferable skills via

informal practice. It thus opens up ways of thinking about non-institutional

learning for young people who may be socially stigmatised or disengaged

from formal learning.

• It extends Lave and Wenger’s (1991) models to show how questions of gender

and masculinity inform social learning within the context of communal

practice. As such this study highlights some noteworthy limitations of the

225 communities of practice approach by exploring aspects of identity work,

affective practice, gender/masculinity and exclusion that are left

underexplored within Lave and Wenger’s (1991) and Wenger’s (1998)

articulation of communities of practice.

This study thus opens up avenues for exploring the ways in which we understand young people and how they learn best outside formal educational environments. I have shown how young people learn worthwhile lifelong skills through graffiti practice and have argued that these skills have real-world benefits for them, especially for at-risk and disengaged young people. Better understanding of the informal practices of young people, including the learning and production of graffiti pieces, has much to offer. They contribute new knowledge to youth studies, education, sociology and more generally to those academic disciplines interested in the wellbeing and active engagement of disaffected young people. These informal youth practices open up ways of thinking about non-institutional learning for young people who may be socially stigmatised, and this, in turn, has the potential to inform curriculum development in normative institutional settings.

The main contribution of this study lies in the fact that by knowing more about youth cultures, such as graffiti writing, we are in a position to be more informed about how young people learn best. In turn, this provides insights into educational learning practices, in particular how to provide opportunities for students to learn in informal social settings, insights that might provide perspectives for curriculum development and learning in mainstream educational settings.

226 Autobiographical Reflection

By conducting the research for this study, I learned a tremendous amount about the steps involved in designing and conducting qualitative research. I also learned a great deal about myself in the process. When I began this journey, which sounds like a cliché, my principal supervisor, Professor Johanna Wyn, told me to “expect things to go wrong and expect things to change from both a personal perspective as well as a research perspective”, and as I come to the end of this PhD I can only reflect on how right she was. I have encountered real joy in learning about raw human experience and have discovered how vital it can be for a young man’s wellbeing to be involved in a creative and productive community. That involvement says much about how young people engage with the world around them and how they make meaning from experiencing the highs and lows of learning to produce signature graffiti. Even though the practice of graffiti writing often attracts the ire of wider society, it gives meaning to many young men’s lives, providing a sense of belonging, worthiness, respect and achievement that is often absent in other aspects of their lives. I have learned that graffiti can contribute to a young man’s stability and mental wellbeing as it can provide a creative, productive, and meditative outlet for them that helps keep them grounded, safe and, in some respects, sane. I have also learned that, while there are some less savoury aspects of the culture of graffiti writing such as its masculine bias and sometimes-violent nature, by and large the young men who participated in this study and shared a large and very important part of their lives with me are not criminals, villains or monsters. They are for the most part intelligent, articulate, proactive, innovative and creative producers of cultural artefacts that serve to beautify the City of Melbourne and its environs. While I do not in any way excuse the casual sexism of the culture of graffiti, I do acknowledge that these young men are a product

227 of our culture, that is, the wider culture of Australia and the world and its societal values that sadly continue to sustain masculine bias in all fields of endeavour, including in the hallowed halls of academia. It is up to us as social researchers to hold up a mirror to the prevailing social order and call for social change on all fronts, including on issues of gender equality.

This study was equally a journey of self-discovery, not only in the processes of designing and conducting a robust qualitative research project, but also in discovering more about the person I am and the things that I am capable of in the face of adversity and challenge - and I encountered many challenges both personal and professional during the conduct of this study. From a professional perspective, one is often told as a social researcher to expect the unexpected. In the process of conceiving and carrying out this research study I regularly encountered the unexpected, including a tremendous blow that derailed my initial PhD research project entirely, forcing me to start again. Much like the graffiti writers I studied, I adapted and innovated in the face of adversity, recovering from the brink of failure and moving forward with the aid of my instincts, courage, drive, ambition to succeed, and, to borrow my participants’ vernacular, to ‘get-up’ in the academy. To that end I went forward to design and implement this study of how young people learn and experience the practice of graffiti writing.

In a more functional way I also learned communication and negotiation skills that I needed to sell my research proposal to the council youth services manager who acted as gatekeeper to the study cohort for this project. In being granted access to the study site, I had to negotiate the terms of my presence and the details of what I could and

228 could not do within the parameters of the study design, the city council’s rules, generally-accepted ethical guidelines, and the University’s Human Research Ethics guidelines. During this project I have also learned to be a very good listener and interviewer, as you do not learn much about others if you are the one doing all of the talking. By nature I am a gregarious and outgoing person who is very interested in people and their stories. I am also a keen observer of human interaction, so in that respect I entered the field of qualitative inquiry at an advantage as I used the research methods of interview and observation. That said, I also learned a great deal about good interviewing strategies, the importance of listening, and the use of follow-up and probing questions. My skills in data analysis have also been greatly enhanced from the capacity for basic description to the development of a more nuanced understanding of the meanings associated with the words of my study participants.

This meant that I was able to bring to the fore an evidenced-based articulation of their experience of learning graffiti writing and of the meanings they make from these experiences. In the final analysis, I have grown as a person and have developed tremendously as a social researcher from my experiences of conducting the research reported in this thesis.

Final Words

I conclude by highlighting some of the positive aspects of involvement in the culture of graffiti writing that have been touched upon throughout this thesis. I do so by referencing a final quotation that encapsulates the significance of the art practice of graffiti writing and the importance of what we have learned about the young men involved during the course of this thesis. In explaining what graffiti means to him

229 personally, and its wider significance for graffiti writers more generally, Mark explains that

[Graffiti] trains somebody into dealing with life, ‘cause life is just a whole bunch of failures generally strung together and if you keep giving up every time you fail you get nowhere. Like graffiti is very helpful to people’s personalities I think, you know, because it sort of instils this like never give up kind of attitude that gets a lot of people and a lot of people I know personally, through situations that a lot of other people probably couldn’t handle. So it’s very, you know, all things aside I think that the upside of graffiti definitely outweighs the downside. – Mark

Graffiti writing as we have seen is a learnt practice that involves considerable skill and development on the part of the young person involved. In answering the research questions posed in this study, I engaged with the usual taken-for-granted attitude toward graffiti as an anti-social activity but sought to invert the usual negative understandings and use an educationally-informed framework to achieve this. It has been said that practising graffiti is to practise an art form that gives nothing back to the practitioner; however, what has been discussed in this thesis would belie such an interpretation. Graffiti writing gives a tremendous amount back to young writers in ways of which they are often unaware. It prepares them for life and its uncertainties, requiring that they think on the go and problem-solve on the run. It can teach spatiality, material estimation, and resource management. What has been learnt about graffiti is that it is a complex and highly-skilled art practice that requires years of dedication and hard work if writers wish to master the finer points of the practice.

This is not dissimilar to mainstream art forms. This study demonstrates that young people are adaptive and innovative in their creative practices, drawing on a range of skills in overcoming very difficult situations in challenging physical environments in pursuit of their art practice. This says a great deal about the significance of social learning in the informal settings of youth cultural practice. Further, graffiti practice

230 can enrich young writers by providing opportunities that may not otherwise have arisen, opportunities such as national and international travel and meeting like-minded creative people, all of which open up opportunities for the development of creative collaborations and employment. Just as important though, graffiti has inspired the participants in this study to do more with their lives, to be better people, and perhaps to strive for artistic goals that may have proven difficult to pursue if not for their participation in the world of graffiti writing.

The End

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241 APPENDICES Appendix 1: Human Research Ethics Approval

242 Appendix 2: Human Research Ethics - Plain Language Statement

243 Appendix 3: Human Research Ethics – Consent Form

244 Appendix 4: Human Research Ethics – Interview Schedule No: 1

Questions for semi-structured interviews with individual graffiti writers Interview No: 1

Personal background 1. Where were you born? 2. If you were born overseas when did you arrive in Australia and what was your migration experience like? 3. If born overseas how have you adapted to life in Australia? 4. When did you move into the local community? 5. How old are you? 6. What is your ethnic background? 7. Do you attend school or any form of post-compulsory education or training? 8. Can you tell me about your experience of school? 9. Do you work? 10. Tell me about your employment history 11. Have you used any social services or vocational training offered in the community?

Graffiti/Street Art related 12. Do you consider yourself a graffiti writer, tagger? 13. When did you first become aware graffiti? 14. When did you first get involved or actively participate in making graffiti? 15. What attracted you to graffiti? 16. Why did you get involved? 17. Was anyone instrumental in encouraging you a friend, sibling or other family member? 18. What are some of the reasons you got involved in graffiti? 19. How did you learn the rules and guidelines of the subculture? 20. How did you learn the technical skills of being a graffiti writer? 21. How important were mentors in learning to be a graffiti writer? 22. How important was/is the internet (You Tube, Instagram, etc…) in learning to be a graffiti writer? 23. Are other media (magazines, films) important in your leaning the skills and cultural knowledge of graffiti? 24. How did you learn the history of graffiti culture

Perceptions of graffiti 25. What are some positive things about being involved in graffiti? 26. What do you get out of your involvement in graffiti? 27. If you were not involved in graffiti what do you think you would be doing? 28. What are your future aspirations; does it involve your graffiti art? 29. What do your family and friends think of your involvement in graffiti? 30. How do you think the community views graffiti?

245 Graffiti Crew related 31. Are you a member of a graffiti crew or crews? 32. Are there particular social customs or rituals that are a part of the crew that you can share with me? 33. What does the crew mean to you? 34. If you are in a crew, apart from your ‘tag’ does your crew have any signifying markers, i.e. color, clothing style, music style or song? 35. Are you aware of other graffiti crews in the community? 36. What is your crew’s relationship to other crews in the community? 37. Are there negative aspects about being in a graffiti crew? 38. Does your graffiti crew have a leader? 39. Does your crew have a defined structure?

Aerosol Art Mentor Program related 40. How long have you been involved in the program? 41. What do you get out of involvement in the program? 42. How has the program helped you? 43. How has the program helped your art? 44. Has your skill as a graffiti writer improved as a result of your involvement in the program? 45. What sort of associations or relationships have you developed from your involvement in the program? 46. What are your future aspirations?

Mentor Specific Questions 47. Have these changed as a result of your participation in the program? 48. What do you view as the primary needs of young people in the community? 49. In what capacity have you worked with youth involved in the graffiti and street art scene in your community? 50. What types of interactions do you have with young graffiti writers?

The questions outlined above are indicative only and lead from background information about the participant to more focused questions about their experience of the graffiti scene and their involvement in a graffiti crew. It is envisaged that these questions will elicit wider discussion on the topic of graffiti and their subjective experiences of their involvement in the practice.

HREC: 1136639.2; Date: 09/04/14; Version: 2

Melbourne Graduate School of Education The University of Melbourne Victoria 3010 Australia T: +61 3 8344 8285 F: +61 3 8344 8529 W: www.edfac.unimelb.edu.au

246 Appendix 5: Human Research Ethics – Interview Schedule No: 2

Questions for semi-structured interviews with individual graffiti writers Interview No: 2

1. If you are a gifted artist why not do legals or be a normative artist, i.e. doing works and having gallery shows?

2. What is it about graffiti that keeps you involved?

3. What skills are involved in being a graffiti writer? (Please think widely about these).

4. How do you learn the art of graffiti writing?

5. How do you learn the subcultural practices (rules/history/style/language)?

6. When did you first identify (call yourself/refer to yourself) as a graffiti writer?

7. What did that mean to you?

8. Who is the judge of whether or not you are in fact a graffiti writer?

9. Tell me about toys, e.g. how do you define this term?

10. How did you know you were not a toy?

11. How do you know when you are a graffiti writer or not? Or a toy?

12. At what point does it become a new, different or layered identity – and who determines this?

13. Who gate keeps and allows you entry into graffiti culture, are their mentors, leaders?

14. How do you know what is good graffiti and what is not?

15. What is the process involved in learning how to be a graffiti writer?

16. Who or what is the judge of quality graffiti?

17. Who is the graffiti performed for?

18. What are some of the risks involved with graffiti writing?

19. How do you manage theses risks?

20. Can you talk me through your preparations for a painting mission, from conception in your piece-book to finished piece (can be a wall or train)?

247

Please include: • piece sketch • site selection/security • paint selection (colours/cans/house paint) • other materials (caps/nibs, stencils, rollers, tape, bolt cutters) • Caps for fade and fillsetc…

21. When did you first see graffiti and what did that feel like?

22. Can you describe your first piece?

23. Is it still up or do you have photos of it that I can see?

HREC: 1136639.2; Date: 09/04/14; Version: 2

Melbourne Graduate School of Education The University of Melbourne Victoria 3010 Australia T: +61 3 8344 8285 F: +61 3 8344 8529 W: www.edfac.unimelb.edu.au

248 Appendix 6: Human Research Ethics – Interview Schedule No: 3

Questions for semi-structured interviews with individual graffiti writers Interview No: 3

1. What is your conception of the word crew?

2. What does crew mean to you?

3. Do you learn in the crew?

4. Is it pretty important to put the crew name up next to a throwie or piece, that a member of a crew does?

5. Would it be looked on negatively if you did a substandard piece and put the crew name next to it? (Particularly if you were not ready or were perceived as not ready to go it alone).

6. Would you say that learning how to do graffiti is like an apprenticeship?

7. Are some aspects of a crew like an apprenticeship?

8. In a crew is there still the idea or concept of schooling in of young writers by older more experienced writers?

9. Are older writers still important as mentors?

10. Can you talk about why it is so important to respect your elders in the world of graffiti?

11. With regard to learning the skills of graffiti writing, do you think that graffiti is a bit more autodidactic (a self-taught process) these days, that people just learn it on their own?

12. Would you say that graffiti is learnt by observation and watching or by doing the actual practice?

13. From you experience as a council graffiti mentor are there times when there is a reticence on the part of young writers to ask for help?

14. Are writers concerned with how other writers in the graffiti community will view their work?

15. I have spoken to a couple of other writers who were adamant that they learned their skills and technique on their own; they learned these skills independently by practice. In your opinion is that view just a bit of machismo, by not admitting that they may have learned from someone else?

249 16. If anything, I have learnt that graffiti is very social, with writers and crews. Can you say a bit about painting together as a crew, perhaps describe a crew meeting before you go out to paint?

17. If you talk during a group painting session (illegal or legal) what might you talk about?

18. If you talk about graffiti, what aspect of it do you discuss?

19. Do you ever talk about skill sharing (e.g. tools, techniques or innovations) when you are painting with or meet other writers?

20. What are encounters with other writers like when you are out painting (illegally) on a train line or in the city?

21. Is it normal or accepted to ask what someone writes when you meet another writer?

22. Do you use any other tools apart from a spray can, such as stencils, rollers or markers in your work?

23. Would you say that the informal rules and guidelines in graffiti limit or do not promote innovation in graffiti writing?

24. Would you say innovation in graffiti, e.g. using unconventional tools or methods (brushes or stencils) detracts from its authenticity?

25. Is there more to learn with a spray can, or has everyone done as much as you can do with an aerosol paint can?

26. Is graffiti an evolving culture?

HREC: 1136639.2; Date: 09/04/14; Version: 2

Melbourne Graduate School of Education The University of Melbourne Victoria 3010 Australia T: +61 3 8344 8285 F: +61 3 8344 8529 W: www.edfac.unimelb.edu.au

250

Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne

Author/s: Baird, Ron Corey

Title: Reframing graffiti writing as a community practice: sites of youth learning and social engagement

Date: 2018

Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/221882

File Description: Reframing graffiti writing as a community practice: Sites of youth learning and social engagement

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