Graffiti Identification Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Graffiti Identification - Essay Example Graffiti have been an issue of concern to the members of different communities because of their impacts. There are positive impacts but the negative impacts have been found to override the positive impacts. Graffiti can be traced back to Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. Today, most of those who do graffiti do it on the subways and walls of big cities and vehicles among other areas. Most of the sharp instruments like pencils, marker pens and even knives serve as mediums of creating graffiti. Many people have had the mentality that areas with graffiti are unsafe. According to Morgan and Louis (2009), the term graffiti refers to informal marks, scratching, carvings, drawings or even paintings made on people’s property without their authorization. Graffiti is of different kinds and each kind has its particular characteristics. For example, Hip hop graffiti has a characteristic of mural paintings and ‘tagging’. Graffiti has often been criticized as causing negating impacts to the community, and it is very difficult to convince some of the people otherwise. However, what should be understood is that there are positively motivated graffiti. The following are some of the positive impacts of graffiti: 1. Promotes young talent: Most of the time, graffiti have been seen as causing a lot of damage to the community. However, it is one way of promoting the talents of young people. Graffiti has been seen as inspiring to young artists since they get the opportunity to show case their creative sides. For example, South Ayrshire’s community safety partnership has helped young people from the town of Wallacetoun on a graffiti project (South Ayrshire Council, 2013). 2. Conveying a message: Some kinds of graffiti have been used to convey messages, especially to the authorities when people are not happy with their administration. Graffiti is used as a peaceful way of demonstrating. It has been seen to provide people with a platform to participate in pu blic conversation or debate (Morgan & Louis, 2009). They can also be used to communicate messages of road safety and show the commitment of people involved in the art. 3. Improvement of abandoned buildings in the community: Unused buildings and underpasses tend to improve when graffiti are drawn on them. This is achieved when good quality and non-offensive graffiti is used to brighten areas that have not undergone renovation for a long time, thus improving the environment around them (Campbell, 2008). Negative Impacts The following are the negative impacts that have resulted from graffiti: 1. It is expensive: It has proven very difficult to estimate the cost of graffiti in general; however, there are different ways that show that graffiti is expensive to the community. The cost that comes in with cleaning graffiti from the walls is very high (Morgan & Louis, 2009). Thus the community might spend a lot of money that would have been channeled to better projects, in