Sam Grubb

Based in Leicester, but travelling around the world with his ‘drawing and exploring’ vlog, Sam is a creative who channels his playfulness into design, illustration, and spray-can art.

Whether he’s crafting bespoke characters, designing branding, or creating street murals, his work brings a vibrant, graphic vitality to every surface. Sam’s colourful characters invites everyone, from curious passersby to art enthusiasts, to stop, smile, and engage with the city’s creative heartbeat.

samgrubb.co.uk

Leicesters Street Art

Leicester’s walls and public spaces are alive with creativity, and Sam Grubb is one of the artists who brings that energy to life. A freelance graphic designer, illustrator, and spray-can artist based in the city, Sam is celebrated for his fun, bold characters that bounce off the page (and wall), making every piece impossible to ignore.

For Street Stories, Sam has introduced four new colourful characters – a playful ensemble that nods directly to Leicester’s famed street art scene and the renowned Bring the Paint festival. This annual urban art celebration transforms city streets into open-air galleries, bridging graffiti and illustration with a vibrant, accessible energy.

Watch the artwork come to life here.

35 Belvoir Street, LE1 6SJ

Tim Fowler

Tim Fowler is a Leicester based artist working out of StudionAme – an artist studio/collective in Leicester’s cultural Quarter. Tim creates bright exuberant portraiture paintings using acrylic, enamel oil, spray paint, ink, oil stick and marker pens to create partially recognisable images distorted with strong colour and abstract elements. His main interest is the colours and their balance and placement, rather than the subject.

www.timjfowler.co.uk

Alice Hawkins and the Suffragette movement

Alice Hawkins, Leicester’s most famous suffragette, was born in 1863; she was one of nine children and had been born in to extreme poverty. From the age of 13, she worked making boots and shoes, a career that took her to the factory of Equity Shoes as a shoe machinist. Being a mother to five and a wife to Alfred Hawkins, she joined the Independent Labour Party in 1894, and through this organisation, met Sylvia Pankhurst – one of the best-known suffragettes of her time – where they formed a friendship, especially after being imprisoned together.

Watch the artwork come to life here.

37 Belvoir Street, LE1 6LP

George Sfougaras

George works internationally, with a network of partners. He uses symbols and metaphors to create visual narratives. Using archival research, photography and first-hand observation, his art explores the subtle and overt ways that people’s lives and identities are affected by national context and history, myths, and points in time.

His work exists at the intersection of art, politics, geography and culture with the outcomes expressed in 2D, 3D, printed media and film.

georgesfougaras.com

Sir Alec Jeffreys and DNA fingerprinting

It seems Sir Alec Jeffreys’ curiosity with all things science was written in his DNA. Jeffreys’ love of science flourished while he was at school, starting at Luton Grammar and graduating from the University of Oxford.

He moved to the University of Leicester’s Department of Genetics in 1977 and this is where, in 1984, he had his eureka moment, a moment that has forever revolutionised Forensic Science.

He had stumbled upon a method of showing variations between individuals’ DNA – inventing and developing the concept of DNA fingerprinting.

Watch the artwork come to life here.

36 Market St, LE1 6DP

Sarah Kirby

Sarah moved to Leicester in 1993. Her linocuts are created between her home studio and the Leicester Print Workshop in the Cultural Quarter.

Her inspiration comes from the world around her – the allotments, the garden and of course the ever changing city where her home is. Over the last 15 years she has created a series of linocuts of significant, interesting and beautiful Leicester buildings which is ongoing and ever growing and informed by a culture of pedestrianism – observing, experiencing and interacting with the city environment while walking about daily life.

sarahkirby.co.uk

Postcards from Leicester - the architecture of our city

Leicester is one of the oldest cities in England, with a history going back at least two millennia, including being occupied by the Romans for more than 400 years.

As such the city has a wide variety of architectural styles. The range of artworks you see featured here show a cross-section of some of the most iconic city centre buildings.

From The Corn Exchange to the Co-Op’s Wheatsheaf Works, and the former Fenwick’s Shopping Centre to Leicester Cathedral, the historical architecture of Leicester is as diverse as its people.

Watch the artwork come to life here.

16 Market St,LE1 6DP

Matt Turner

Based in North West Leicestershire, Matt Turner creates intuitive, expressive works that explore nature, energy, and space exploration.

Working primarily in acrylics and mixed media, and inspired by science and technology and the exploration of the cosmos, Turner’s work has been exhibited across the UK and featured in a variety of publications and was the winner of the NASA innovation advanced concept design competition.

Turner is an elected artist member of the International Association of
Astronomical Artists. Turner’s featured paintings include works based around themes such as Post Soviet futurism, Litton Industries Experimental space suit, Vostok and The Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) on the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) at Leicester Space Park.

Seen together, they form a constellation of colour and curiosity – inviting you to imagine what lies beyond.

matthewturnerartist.co.uk

Space City

Leicester has long had its eyes on the stars. From the pioneering research at Space Park Leicester and the University of Leicester’s Space Lab, to the inspiring exhibitions at the National Space Centre, the city plays a vital role in the UK’s exploration of the universe.

This cosmic connection is celebrated in the work of artist Matt Turner, whose paintings explore the relationship between science and art, and draw from his time in Moscow and NASA.

Watch the artwork come to life here.

5 Market Place Street, Leicester, LE1 5HB

Clare Fazackerley

A graduate of Fine Art, Clare Fazackerley creates paintings that blend traditional still life composition with unexpected narrative twists. By infusing the everyday with wit and humour, she transforms familiar objects
and scenes into moments of surprise and delight.

Alongside her personal practice, Clare works as a senior art consultant, collaborating with architects and designers to design, source, commission, and install artworks in both land-based and marine environments.

Her guiding principle is simple: “My art should make you and your eyes happy.”

Leicester Comedy Foxtival

Each year, the Leicester Comedy Festival draws audiences from far and wide to venues across the city, filling pubs, theatres, and bars with sharp wit, big belly laughs, and unforgettable performances.

The Comedy Festival takes a playful new form in the work of local artist Clare Fazackerley, whose diptych for Street Stories imagines the festival through the eyes of Leicester’s most elusive residents – its foxes.
In the first painting, a confident fox takes to the stage at The Real Ale Classroom on Rutland Street: the much-loved bar co-owned by Clare’s partner Ian, delivering its set with perfect comedic timing.

The second painting flips the view, revealing three foxes in the audience, each responding in their own way. Seen together, Clare’s paintings invite passers-by to pause, smile, and perhaps imagine the punchline for themselves.

Watch the artwork come to life here.

40 Silver Street, LE1 5ET

Christina Wigmore

Christina Wigmore is a mixed-media artist/printmaker/designer from Leicester.
Her art and design process involves building layers of imagery, manipulated to create mixed-media prints, collages and textile pieces which respond to stories and narratives.

With a DIY/Punk attitude to creating from what you have to hand,
re-using and reconstructing materials and use of experimental mixed-media
processes, inspiration comes from what’s happening in society and the unexpected and absurd in life.

Her work also explores emotional attachment to textiles, objects
and place, the positive aspects of nostalgia and the sense of wellbeing experienced from reconnecting with treasured objects and experiences from the past.

The fashion industry in Leicester - ‘Leicester clothes the world’

Leicester has a rich textile, footwear design, and manufacturing heritage.
Due to the magnitude of this industry, in the 1930s it was named the second
richest city in Europe, and the slogan ‘Leicester clothes the world’ was seen
nationally and internationally.

As part of the Street Stories project, De Montfort University Fashion and
Textiles students were set a ‘past and future’ design brief around Leicester’s textile heritage. The project incorporates research on factories, machinery, production materials and key technological breakthroughs. One of the artworks is featured in the windows here.

Watch the artwork come to life here.

27 High St, LE1 4FP

Lucy Stevens

Lucy creates multimedia artworks from her studio in Leicester. Lucy has also worked with The British Trust for Ornithology and Leicestershire & Rutland Wildlife Trust to explore the effects of climate change on migratory birds.

She takes inspiration from the colour palette and sounds of the natural world to celebrate the value and beauty of nature. Her work uses field recording and colour-coded mark-making techniques using paint, pastel, spray paint, photography and digital illustration onto paper to produce striking portraits of birds and their songs.

lucystevens.co.uk

Sir David Attenborough and Endangered birds on The Red List

Growing up on the grounds of the University of Leicester, Sir David Attenborough, Britain’s favourite naturalist, remembers his childhood in Leicestershire fondly. He explored the vast fields and streams surrounding Leicester, only a short bike ride from his home, and collected many stones, natural specimens, and fossils to create his own museum, which he still has today.

Watch the artwork come to life here.

13 Cank Street, LE1 5FA