Banksy London Artwork Visit January 2025
Townley Grammar School have been doing an exchange with St Andrew's Scots in Buenos Aires since 2022. We visited the school in Argentina in 2023 and we are going back in March/April this year. During the exchange, students stay with families from the host school for the first part of the trip, and they attend school with them and live with them. The Townley students also get to explore Buenos Aires, its museums, cultural sites and Street Art and they get to learn about Argentinian history. Students of Spanish also practise their language skills.
During the second part of the trip, we explore Argentina further. During the first two trips, we went to Patagonia to see the Perito Moreno Glacier, which is a spectacular sight. This year, we are going to see the Iguazu Falls - one of the seven naturals wonders of the world - and we are then crossing the border to Brazil and proceed to visit Sao Paulo. We will also be working on a social project, building temporary accommodation for communities in need in Buenos Aires.
We aim to organise this exchange annually and to reciprocate St Andrew's Scots hospitality by hosting their students in January, during their summer holidays. Unfortunately, this had to be cancelled last minute this year due to unforeseen circumstances, but we are already working on making it happen in January 2026. As part of their visit here, we had organised a Street Art Day, to go around London looking at Banksy's work and then do a graffiti workshop together.
This is what one of our students wrote about the day:
This January, a group of students and I had an amazing opportunity to visit and enjoy some of Banksy’s artwork in London and take part in a street art workshop with Zincstyles. Initially, we were looking forward to the Argentinian exchange students joining us, so we could show them some of the diverse creativity in London, however, since they could no longer come, as their plans changed, the trip became an opportunity for us to take pictures and document a video. We also created a mural with a message inviting them to come next year. The message 'Together we can do great things' refers to humanity and teamwork, but also expresses our excitement to work together this March in Argentina, with St Andrew's Scots School.During our trip, we started off by visiting one artwork from Banksy; Banksy’s pelican artwork above Bonners Fish Bar, in Walthamstow and following this, we visited Banksy’s tree mural in Finsbury Park. Both artworks were absolutely incredible and plenty of photos were taken.One of the most fun and exciting highlights of the trip was when we all created a mural with graffiti after visiting Banksy’s art. We each had our own letter to design and spray paint whatever we wanted, and our imagination was fueled by the many inspiring and creative artworks around us in the art tunnel where we created our mural. For our mural, we worked with a workshop led by the artist Zincstyles. Danny (Zincstyles), the leader of the workshop, was very inspiring and taught us how to use spray paint. It was definitely an experience I would do again, and I really recommend it to anyone who has a passion for art, or even anyone looking for a fun activity to do with friends.Despite how much fun we all had spray painting, I believe that the best part of the trip was the opportunity to get to know and connect with people you wouldn't usually talk to and make many new friends.Elizabeth V 10 Athene
