How London’s dynamic culture nurtures one artist’s vision

London is renowned as the home of thousands of multi-talented artists, but how does the city fuel their imagination?

With the creative industry contributing around £52bn a year to its economy, London is an internationally-renowned hub for artistic expression.

The main impetus for the capital’s creative impulse comes from the diversity within its communities and how they help to shape London’s artistic culture through encouraging and nurturing fresh talent.

According to City Hall, more than 800,000 people work in the wider creative economy in London – that’s one in six jobs in the capital, with around a third of them from. other countries, adding to London’s cultural melting pot.

Lili Currington is a visual artist and UAL student studying drawing at Camberwell, specialising in a printmaking process called lithography.

“London is a great city for the creative scene with having such brilliant galleries available like the Tate Modern,” she says. “As a young person, its a very exciting city to live in and meet people especially as an artist as all the arts bounce off each other.”

With over 500,000 students living in London and UAL being one of the top art and design universities in the world, individuals in higher education are the next generation of emerging artistic talent in London.

Lily explains: ”Going to university here, especially at UAL, means having access to great resources and encourages me to try things that I wouldn’t have before, and the libraries that London has to offer helps me to create my collages.”

Another large factor in aiding artists in London is the community within the art scene as a whole. Being able to meet artistic individuals from differing subcultures and backgrounds allows people to become creatively stimulated and motivated in contrasting art styles other than their own.

“The scene is a very broad,” says Lily. “I think London’s music scene is fantastic and inspires me a lot through meeting new people, seeing a wide variety of people come together in one place inspires my work a lot with what they like and how they behave.”

As a whole, London is fuelling its upcoming creatives through community and culture, the environment that the city sources allows artists to excel in an expressive society that contains creators from all backgrounds.

Artwork courtesy of Lili Currington.