Two walls on Princes Road now carry a patchwork of Middlesbrough memories. The new Gresham murals were not designed as decoration dropped into the neighbourhood from outside; they grew from conversations with people who live there.
Stories of Home and Skies of Home bring those ideas together in large public artworks. Residents took part in workshops about what home means to them, giving the artists words, images and experiences to translate into something visible from the street.
Art made from local conversations
Artist Hazel Oakes, who works as Nocciola, created one of the pieces, while Hannah Campion produced the other. Their different visual approaches sit alongside each other, united by the project’s focus on belonging and the character of Gresham.
Community-led art can be difficult to get right. A mural still needs a clear artistic voice, but it also has to feel recognisable to people whose neighbourhood becomes its permanent gallery. Workshops offered a way to gather more than a quick opinion, allowing memories and everyday details to influence the finished designs.
The result gives residents something that can prompt conversation without needing a ticket, opening time or specialist knowledge. People will see the work on the school run, walking to a shop or passing through Princes Road. That ordinary visibility is one of public art’s strengths.
The murals were developed with Creative Factory, ICPL and Middlesbrough Council, with Teesside University also involved. They form part of wider Pride in Place activity, which seeks to support improvements shaped by local priorities.
A landmark built around belonging
Gresham has experienced physical change, including housing renewal and new development. In that , work about “home” carries more weight than a generic splash of colour. It can recognise that a place is made not only from buildings but from the people, relationships and recollections attached to them.
No artwork can solve the practical pressures facing a neighbourhood, and a mural should not be asked to stand in for investment in homes, services or safe public spaces. Its contribution is different. It can make a street feel considered, give residents a point of pride and put local stories where everyone can encounter them.
The collaboration also creates a record of this moment in Gresham. Future passers-by may not know every workshop conversation behind the pictures, but they will see that local experience was treated as material worth putting on a wall at scale.
The next question is how the pieces settle into daily life. Paint exposed to Teesside weather will eventually need care, while the space around the walls will influence how easily people can stop and look. Treating maintenance as part of the project would protect both the artists’ work and the time residents invested in shaping it.
That care would keep the collaboration visible long after launch day.
Public art is at its best when it belongs unmistakably to its setting. On Princes Road, these two murals turn the broad idea of home into something rooted in one Middlesbrough community, created with the people who know it from the inside.