Conferences Shaping Graffiti and Street Art Scholarship
Many academic organizations hold annual conferences where participants present papers to colleagues working in the same field.
But no learned society that specializes in the scholarly area of graffiti and street art studies, that could hold annual meetings, exists.
Although selected colleges and universities have held one-off conferences on this subject, over the past few decades a handful of independent meetings have occurred where scholars presented papers on graffiti and street art.
Unlike large annual meetings held in hotels or convention centers with multiple simultaneous sessions, these graffiti and street art conferences are typically smaller and last a couple of days.
Thus there are more opportunities for interaction among participants than with the larger conferences. Moreover, these meetings often include joint dinners and one or more graffiti and street art tours organized as part of the program.
Over the past two decades, scholars, including professors and graduate students, have presented papers at these gatherings. Occasionally, graffiti writers and street artists attend and present on their work too.
Four conferences have done so with some regularity. They are reviewed below.
NUART Plus
The NUART Plus scholarly conference grew out of the NUART street art festival in Stavanger, Norway. Founded in 2001 by Martyn Reed, NUART later expanded to Aberdeen, Scotland, where a related festival and NUART Plus program, with the assistance of Susan Hansen, were also developed. The symposium became one of the leading international forums for scholarly and critical discussion of street art, bringing together academics, artists, curators, journalists, and activists. NUART also publishes Nuart Journal, a peer-reviewed publication dedicated to street art research and criticism.
Although the Stavanger archive documents eight NUART Plus symposia between 2012 and 2019, earlier scholarly gatherings may have occurred. Following a pandemic-related interruption, NUART Plus returned to Aberdeen in 2022. As of June 2026, no publicly available information indicates that a future NUART Plus symposium has been scheduled.
TAG
The TAG Conference (“Name Writing in Public Space”) is one of the principal international scholarly gatherings devoted specifically to graffiti writing and tagging. Founded in 2018 by Javier Abarca and an evolving network of collaborators, the conference does not follow a fixed annual schedule. Meetings are organized periodically when a host institution and local organizing team are in place. Past conferences have been held in Amsterdam, Berlin, Cologne, Groningen, Hamburg, Linz, New York City, and Vienna, bringing together researchers, artists, writers, and practitioners to discuss the history, theory, and contemporary practice of name writing in public space. The conference has also generated scholarly publications, including edited volumes drawn from conference presentations.
Art and the City
Founded in 2018 by Tijen Tunali, Art and the City is an interdisciplinary conference series exploring the relationships among art, aesthetics, and urban politics. The conference aims to facilitate dialogue and collaboration among scholars working at the intersections of art, culture, and the urban environment, and has served as a platform for broader scholarly projects, including exhibitions, special journal issues, edited books, and grant-funded research. Since its founding, conferences have been held in Aarhus, Amman, Göttingen, Nice, Nicosia, and Tours. More recently, Vittorio Parisi and Konstantinos Avramidis, both graffiti and street art scholars, have co-organized the most recent two editions of Art and the City with Tunali, bringing a stronger graffiti dimension to the program.
Unlike the TAG Conference and NUART Plus, which focus primarily on graffiti, street art, and related forms of urban visual expression, Art and the City takes a broader approach, encompassing urban art, public space, architecture, visual culture, and urban studies.
Urban Creativity
Since 2014, the Urban Creativity conference series has brought together scholars, artists, and practitioners interested in graffiti, street art, urban visual culture, and related subjects. Organized primarily through the efforts of Pedro Soares Neves and affiliated with the University of Lisbon and related institutions, the conference is typically held in Lisbon in late June or early July. Participants come from a range of disciplines and countries, and European scholars have generally been well represented. Presentations are delivered in person and, in some years, online as well.
The conference is part of a broader Urban Creativity research and publishing network overseen by Neves. Participants are often invited to submit revised versions of their papers to associated journals, edited volumes, and other publications devoted to graffiti, street art, and urban culture. Like Art and the City, Urban Creativity takes a wider view than the TAG Conference, encompassing street art, public art, urban interventions, creative cities, and related forms of artistic engagement with urban space.
Scholars wishing to present a paper at these conferences are best advised to periodically check the websites for each of these conferences, as schedules and locations can change. Reaching out directly to the organizers is also worth doing if you want to stay current or explore participation.
Combined, these events, like the recently established Routledge book series Advances in Graffiti and Street Art Research, contribute to the maturation of graffiti and street art scholarship.
