Love St Pauls
Strikingly colourful bin art designed by the young people of St Pauls! Can you find all the binstallations?
Love St Pauls
We love bins and can’t stop talking about them. We believe they can have a surprisingly positive impact on your life if they are given a little bit of love and colour.
To spread this love within the St Pauls area of Bristol, we worked with residents on a colourful project to reduce litter, stop fly-tipping and involve young people in the community. The result is a collaborative campaign called ‘Love St Pauls’ – a street art exhibition made from, you guessed it, bins!
The Love St Paul’s bin art trail launched on 12 April 2022 and runs the length of City Road. We hope the bins make you smile and inspire a few rubbish conversations.
Where are the bins?
Follow this map to find all the bins in the Love St Pauls project.
Let's talk about waste
With plastic usage increasing, we wanted to inspire garbage gossip and waste wonderings among young people in St Pauls.
When we throw away our waste and recycling, what happens to it? Where is ‘away’, anyway? Not many people consider where the contents of their bin goes once they’ve sorted it and put it out for collection.
Waste and recycling is picked up by the city’s refuse collectors and disappears by morning. But waste cannot really just disappear, it needs to end up somewhere. In fact, your waste goes on quite the journey and it’s something we should all talk about more often.
Fly-tipping is illegal
Some items are more difficult to dispose of and are left by communal bins. You need to book a collection of bulky household waste items.
Bulky household items left next to communal bins is fly-tipping and can lead to prosecution. Rubbish left next to large communal bins is often known as side-waste and is an offence. We encourage everybody to report fly-tips so we can investigate them properly and clear them up.
Fly-tipping is illegal. Report it!
Rubbish workshops
Local youth groups were given craft boxes brimming with art supplies. Our community engagement team joined youth groups to talk about waste issues including fly-tipping and street litter. We asked the young artists to create pieces that could prevent rubbish problems on the streets of St Pauls.
The youth groups quickly got crafting! The workshops were filled with crayons, pens and paint, with splashes of ideas for new bin creations. Children pondered over ways to reduce our waste, how to remove litter from our streets and methods to increase our recycling. Many of the art pieces were used to design the bins for the Love St Pauls project.
Bin-creations
The young people created a wonderful collection of art for bins that are now on display in St Pauls. They had some bright ideas to tackle fly-tipping, and wrote messages about respecting the space we live in and being more thoughtful about what is thrown away.
We all hope that the new bin art will help reduce fly-tipping, strengthen the community and bring even more vibrancy to the St Pauls neighbourhood.
Where are the bins?
Follow this Google Map to seek out the bins in the Love St Pauls project.
Spot the bins!
The bins have been carefully placed in different areas of St Pauls. They run the length of City Road with a few bins on adjoining streets. You can seek out all the bins by following this map. Don’t forget to tell us which bin was your favourite; email us a picture or share on Twitter and Facebook. We hope you love the bins as much as we do!
Thinking of the Future
Love St Pauls is a trial to change people’s mindsets about waste and improve the appearance of the local area. We hope the bins encourage difficult conversations about rubbish in St Pauls and prevent fly-tipping. The project is to enhance the area for the residents and inspire young people to reduce waste. If we feel the project is a success and we get positive feedback, we will look into replicating it in different areas of Bristol.
Invaluable youth groups in St Pauls
Thank you to Imayla, who really knew and cared about the young people of St Pauls. We also visited Full Circle Project, Changing Mindsets and St Pauls Adventure Playground youth projects who created some lovely art pieces for this project.
St Pauls youth groups do an incredible job at engaging the young people in the area. They provide fun and safe areas for children to meet new friends, learn about the world and encourage curiosity. As a result, the children in youth groups can develop social skills and build their confidence.