Neil Kean

This interview with Neil Kean explores his lifelong involvement in graffiti, street culture and community art in Milton Keynes, tracing his journey from early inspiration to becoming an established artist and mentor. Born in Hitchin in 1978 and raised in Fishermead from the mid-1980s, he first discovered hip-hop culture around 1989 through a cassette compilation featuring artists like LL Cool J and Salt-N-Pepa. The visual impact of album artwork, especially graffiti imagery, sparked his interest in drawing and letterforms, leading him to copy styles and develop his own sketches before he had even seen much real graffiti in person.

Drawing came naturally to him from a young age, influenced by a family background in technical drawing and design. While he enjoyed school art and later pursued it academically, graffiti became a key creative outlet in his teenage years. In the early 1990s he began sketching graffiti-inspired lettering, exploring Milton Keynes by skateboard and gradually discovering tags and painted pieces around underpasses and bridges. Seeing large works by established local writers, particularly Urbanist, showed him that graffiti could be both expressive and artistic, pushing him to become more active and start painting himself.

By the late 1990s he was regularly tagging and building a reputation. Around 1999 he began doing signwriting and window art for local shops, which led to paid creative work and the foundations of his future business, Arkade Graphics. Through event promoters he was hired to paint live at festivals and community events, sometimes travelling to different towns to create murals. Over time he moved into independent commissions, workshops and public art, combining graffiti techniques with more accessible visual styles.

A major part of his work has involved community engagement. He has collaborated with schools, youth groups and organisations, often working with disadvantaged or neurodiverse young people to create murals and explore lettering and street art. He describes these projects as some of the most meaningful aspects of his career, especially seeing former students recognise him years later. A standout moment was painting a large photorealistic blue tit mural, which reached a broader audience and shifted perceptions of graffiti as art.

Kean also reflects on the wider culture surrounding graffiti in Milton Keynes, from skateboarding and illegal raves to the challenges of preserving work that is constantly painted over or eroded. He played a role in reconnecting early generations of local graffiti writers, helping organise a collaborative mural at Tinkers Bridge that brought pioneers back together. He sees hip-hop as a unifying force that connects people across backgrounds and generations, offering a sense of identity, belonging and creative purpose, even in a city where culture can feel geographically spread out and harder to access.