Growing Scenes for London Artists
Scott Reyburn, The New York Times
October 2020
‘People shooting up in the alleyway here. Lovely. Welcome to Luton’, the artist Dominic Allan said on a recent afternoon as he passed two drug users in the town’s rundown former hat-making district.
Luton, about 30 miles north of London, was once famed for its hat industry, but those factories closed long ago. Its current most prominent businesses, an auto plant and an airport, have both been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. And in 2004, it was voted the worst place to live in Britain, according to an unscientific but much-publicized survey. […]