Street art in the perception of Russian urban youth: a manifestation of creativity or a kind of vandalism?

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the dominant attitudes of Russian urban youth to street art. The period of growing up of representatives of modern urban youth in Russia came at a time when street art began to gradually turn into a familiar element of cultural life and even a kind of brand of many cities. And the basic hypothesis of the work is that growing up in the conditions of the development of street art could form interest and loyalty to this creative genre among the current representatives of Russian urban youth. To test this hypothesis, the author refers to the data of his own sociological research conducted among the youth of a particular city – Yekaterinburg. The key subject of this research is the peculiarities of street art ideas characteristic of the city's youth. As a result of the analysis of the collected data, the author comes to the conclusion that the hypothesis about the formation of a loyal and interested attitude to street art among urban youth turns out to be fair. Street art is perceived by young people as a full-fledged creative genre that makes the city brighter and more attractive. There is practically no attitude to street art as vandalism and abuse of urban space among young people. And young people expect the authorities not to fight street art, but to create conditions for its development. The key result of this work is the conclusion: the youth of the city are accustomed to treat street art as something natural and organic for the social reality of the city. The novelty of the conducted research and the conclusions obtained lies in the use of sociological methodology to analyze the role of street art in the life of a modern city: referring to the survey techniques, the author shows what attitude to street art has been established among the youth of the city and analyzes the reasons that led to this.