My life was saved by graffiti and hip hop music, says Sheffield artist

Self-isolating with a suspected case of coronavirus, former Sheffield graffiti artist and collector Dee Warburton watched as people in the UK rallied to support the NHS.

He wanted to help – and set about forming ‘ART vs Covid’, an online art auction which he hopes will raise at least £100,000 for the NHS and a number of other frontline charities.

Warburton contacted a number of famous artist friends in lockdown around the world and asked them to part with valuable graffiti and street art pieces from their collections, or create new art using the coronavirus and lockdown as their theme.

Profits from the auction will mainly be going to NHS Charities Together, Shelter Homeless Charity plus other charities around the world chosen by the artists.

“I messaged contacts from New York to New Zealand and virtually all of them said it was a brilliant idea and wanted to get involved,” says Warburton, who is now manager of creative and digital industries at Waltham Forest College, London.

“Banksy was approached but was unable to commit. However, he has wished the project all the best.”

Warburton has been hugely instrumental in legitimising an art form previously attributed to vandals.

Spray can art now has a huge following and work produced by its most famous artists is worth large sums.

It also gave Warburton a future.

Life had dealt him a raw deal from the moment he was born.

His mother suffered a stroke as she gave birth to him and died when he was three.

The family fell apart and by nine, Warburton was in care.

After years of mental and physical abuse, at the age of 15 he fled to his sister, a young mother of three who lived in a council flat on one of Sheffield’s poorest estates.

At school, the only lessons he enjoyed were PE and art. But he left school at 15 without qualifications.

He had already found another way to express his artistic ability, though graffiti. Using spray paint, most often stolen, he tagged and bombed any train, building and bridge he could find.

Arrested many times, he saw his juvenile record for graffiti as a learning curve.

The writing should have been on the wall for Warburton. Like so many young men from disadvantaged backgrounds, broken homes and abusive experiences, he might well have spiralled deeper down. But graffiti gave him direction.

“Without hip hop and graffiti I would definitely have gone down another path like many of my friends did. I truly believe without graffiti and street art I could be dead.”

In Sheffield he helped form a local graffiti crew known as TDK (Too Damn Kreative) and eventually became focused on carefully planned and designed murals rather than tagging. They gained financial support from the Prince’s Trust to help urban youth become entrepreneurial and met Prince Charles.

Not long after he became a breakdancer, signed with Warp Records and performed all over the world with artists including LFO, Moby, Seal and Adamski.

After the death of his first born son Niké at five months old in November 1991, he decided to retire as a hip hop dancer and started studying a number of short-term business development courses to grasp the basics of establishing and running a small business.

In 1995 after returning from his father’s funeral in Kingston, Jamaica, Warburton returned to full-time education, studying a BTEC National Diploma in Business and Finance at Stradbroke College, Sheffield, which he completed with a 2.1 Merit in 1997.

As the co-founder and CEO of The Nonstop Foundation he set up street art events and festivals, bringing big name graffiti artists such as Temper, Mode 2 and Daim to Sheffield.

He put himself through years of college and university courses, studying BTEC level 3 in Business and Finance, an HND in Multimedia, BA degree in Art and Design; and thereafter gaining a scholarship to complete an MA in 3D animation at Sheffield Hallam University.

After four years of teaching Digital Design and Animation at Barnsley College he was head-hunted to become the BTEC HND in Graphic Design course leader at The London College UCK.

In May 2016, Warburton was commissioned to incorporate graffiti art and street art into the BTEC Higher National qualification framework.

Getting graffiti art, spray can art and street art recognised in this way was his own idea.

He was commissioned to write the Advanced Art Practice Studies unit, which is now used by higher education institutions across the globe.

Today, at 50, Warburton is manager of creative and digital industries at Waltham Forest College, London.

The global artists who are taking part in the auction are based in New York, Tel Aviv, Aotearoa, Shanghai, Hamburg, Nuremberg, Copenhagen, Paris, London, Bristol, Manchester and Sheffield.

He is also creating a new canvas for the campaign titled ‘Missing SUM 1’, with profits from the sale of this piece going to the NSPCC.

Waltham Forest College is supporting the project with an exhibition featuring the ‘ART vs Covid’ pieces and Art and Design students are working on street and graffiti art over their summer break with pieces already submitted with bids starting from £80.

For more information or to make a bid visit www.charityauctionstoday.com/auctions/ART-vs-Covid-12786