Upfest is a Street Art Festival that started in 2008 and up until recently ran once a year in the Bedminster area of Bristol. Here’s what it’s all about taken from the Upfest About Page on their website:

The festival has grown year on year with artists travelling from around the world to paint the walls across Bedminster. With over 400 artists now painting each year in front of 50,000 visitors, the festival has moved to a two week painting event culminating in the festival weekend taking place at Greville Smyth Park and the original venue the Tobacco Factory.

We visited our first Upfest in 2015. At that time the festival was situated around the North Street area of Bedminster, Bristol with street artists painting on local shop and house walls with a larger display area, with hoardings for artwork, in a local park. Local pubs and churches were offering their gardens as additional artwork space. Some roads had street stalls selling mostly food which complimented North Streets already generous helping of exotic food outlets.

The festival had a brilliant vibe and we really enjoyed just wandering around watching the artists working and browsing the street stalls. For me as a photographer I was presented with opportunities everywhere. It wasn’t quite so good for stock photography as murals and wall art are a touchy subject with my stock agency Alamy.

Any photograph that just records the artwork could breach the artists copyright and therefore Alamy, quite rightly, won’t accept them. If the artist grants you copyright to use the image then that’s fine. If the artwork is part of an overall street scene, where the artwork isn’t the main focus of the image, mostly, that’s ok. As far as stock goes I follow the rules.

It’s nice to have a blog, these days, where I can use images that I couldn’t use as stock. I now have a good reason to take those images. I was losing sight of that, ignoring shots that I knew I couldn’t use as stock.

Stock photography aside I had a great day with the camera and just enjoyed wandering around the festival. I’m always blown away by how talented the artists are. The artwork was absolutely amazing.

We re-visited the festival with our grandchildren in 2017. It was still based in North Street and the surrounding area but it had expanded, with an artists workshop and display area in the Bristol City Football Stadium. The children enjoyed the day. The festival organisers had put on lots of child based activities; they even had a go at some artwork themselves. More practice needed though!

We returned in 2018 but following that the festival missed a few years due to the covid pandemic. Our last visit was in 2022. This time the main festival had been moved from the streets in to the large local nearby Greville Smyth Park. This was a safer, more organised setting for the artists and artwork but, for me, it had lost some of the vibe after moving away from being street based. I do understand why the organisers moved it though.

Upfest didn’t happen in 2023 and returned in 2024 in a different format, as a pop up event. There are plans for another pop up event, over two weeks, in 2025. Details here: Upfest Presents