Featured Murals

Racing The Wind
Little Oaks Nursery, West Marsh, Grimsby

Mural Lead Artist

Andy Pea - View Profile

Mural Support Team

Fran Young, Illustrator and Artist - Find out more

Becky Darnell | The Culturehouse - Find out more

A massive thanks to all the Volunteers from Creative Start CIC's Initiative 'The Comeback' Alcohol Addiction Recovery Drop-In Studio in Grimsby who supported the mural painting.

Find out more

A big shout out to all the local west marsh community for their feedback and involvement in creating the mural.

Mural Sponsors

Much of the inspiration for the mural comes from meeting with the local community in the West Marsh and the stories and tales I have heard over the past few months. 

While visiting and chatting with people at the Fishing Heritage museum, the West Marsh Community Centre, attending heritage day events, visiting local schools and throughout a series of pop up events, threads of a theme emerged, the stories of fishing and its importance to the town and the local area came through.

However, when sat one day in the café of the Fishing Heritage Centre, I was talking with an ex-fisherman and by the time he finished his story, I had nearly painted the wall in my head.

He recalled a trip in his early days as a fisherman, they were late to haul in their nets as a storm approached, all the other ships fishing around them were leaving, but they held on to the nets and turned into the storm that was fast approaching (I believe this was called dodging), however by the time they had hauled the nets and stowed away, the skipper could do nothing else but head back home and try to keep ahead of the storm.

As a young deckhand, having only done a handful of trips, he reckoned this was the worst time of his life and was considering a job on the pontoon, if he got home safe and sound!

However, on return to the safety of the port, all was forgotten as they were the only trawler to land successfully and earned a record wage that trip!

These kinds of everyday dangers were passed off as the norm for many of the crews, their lives were put on the line regularly  to feed a nation.

This mural is to pay tribute and respect to the crews of Grimsby and fishermen across the world!

In addition, once the main mural was completed, we added a collaborative community section to the wall and invited the people of Grimsby and West Marsh to come down and make their own contribution, thus giving ownership of the mural to the local community.

I would like to take this opportunity to mention Tanya and her Family for donating the wall to the project, to BeckyDarnell for being my ever wingman (wingwoman :), Fran Young for her input and ideas and Chris at Crownpaints for the ready supply of paint and equipment and the staff and volunteers at Creative Start CIC's Initiative 'The Comeback' Alcohol Addiction Recovery Drop-In Studio in Grimsby (Naomi , Andrew , Emma and Lisa)

but most of all I want to thank everyone who stopped by to talk and share their stories of Grimsby and their connection to the fishing industry. 

Grimsby, Thank you for having me!
Andy Pea.

To support our project, we've also developed a 'Memory Lane' Podcast to accompany the mural and a plaque with a QR code will be installed at the site of the mural to include it in to our Digital trail (to be launched at the end of the project).

You can take a listen below to Andy chatting with the Podcast team about the wall and his inspiration. (You can also listen on Soundcloud or Spotify directly).

Gallery