Find hidden street art murals across Greater Manchester using this new app

Here in Manchester we’re not exactly short of great street art.

From artists like Akse_P19 and Jay Sharples to the likes of Qubek, Hammo, Leimai Lemaow and Nomad Clan, there are loads of amazing Manchester-based artists spraying up the city.

We’re also attracting lots of international talent, with a little help from projects like Cities of Hope and Rochdale Uprising.

Dale Grimshaw’s Two Worlds (pictured below) was first painted in 2016 but remains one of the city’s most Instagrammed pieces to date.

Some pieces, however, are easier to find than others. So if you’re an avid fan, there’s a new app you might want to check out to tick some of the more obscure murals off your list.

Called Street Art Cities, it was first launched in 2017 by a group of international street art fanatics and documents public artwork from across the globe.

Manchester is the newest addition to the app, which also covers cities like New York, LA, Paris, Berlin and Melbourne. It’s the second UK city to be added, following on from Bristol.

Of course, there are plenty of resources available to find street art for those who know where to look.

But what’s great about this particular app is that they have street art hunters in every city who go around and check that pieces are still up – so there’s no risk of going all the way out to the middle of nowhere to find something has been painted over.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the app’s interactive map shows the most densely populated area for street art to be the Northern Quarter, with 65 pins in the district alone.

The rest are more spread out, with tags stretching across the Greater Manchester region.

Clicking on these pins not only shows you the exact location of a mural but also gives details on the artist that created it.

Some go further, with detailed background information and insights into the story behind the works.

You can also search by artist and accessed mapped out street art walking tours from within the app, which is pretty cool.

Having begun first with a website, Street Art Cities made the move onto mobile app three years ago to try and translate a street art walking tour experience into an easily accessible platform that can be accessed by fans worldwide.

It now boasts 26 different cities from Toulouse to Minsk, so is worth keeping on your phone for those trips abroad too.