Banksy unveils mural of stargazing children in London

Banksy Unveils Stargazing Children Murals Across London

The elusive street artist Banksy confirmed on Monday that he created a new mural in Bayswater, London, depicting two children in winter clothing lying down and pointing toward the sky. The black and white stenciled artwork, posted to Banksy’s Instagram account hours after it appeared above a row of garages on Queen’s Mews, has sparked widespread interpretation as a commentary on child homelessness during the Christmas season.scmp

An identical mural emerged on Friday outside the Centre Point tower near Tottenham Court Road in central London, though Banksy has not officially claimed responsibility for that version. The dual appearance of the stargazing children has intensified scrutiny of both the artwork’s meaning and its deliberate placement in locations tied to London’s housing crisis.artnet

Child Homelessness at Record Highs

The murals arrive as Britain confronts a deepening homelessness emergency. Government statistics released in October show 172,420 children living in temporary accommodation in England as of June 30, 2025—a 7.5 percent increase from the previous year and the highest figure on record. Nearly half of London’s estimated 210,000 homeless individuals are children.bigissue

Artist Daniel Lloyd-Morgan told the BBC he believes the Centre Point location was deliberately chosen to highlight child homelessness. “Everybody is having a good time but there are a lot of children who are not having a good time at Christmas,” he said. “They walk past homeless people and they don’t see them lying on the street.”artnet

A Location Steeped in Housing Politics

The Centre Point tower carries particular resonance in London’s housing battles. Constructed as an office building in 1963, the brutalist structure sat empty for over a decade, angering social justice activists. In 1969, Anglican priest Kenneth Leech opened a basement shelter at nearby St. Anne’s Church and named it Centrepoint after the vacant tower, which he described as “an affront to the homeless”. That shelter evolved into the UK’s leading youth homelessness charity.artnet

In 1974, nearly 100 Londoners occupied the empty tower to protest the city’s mounting homelessness crisis. The building has since been converted into luxury apartments.hyperallergic

Banksy specialist Jasper Tordoff suggested the artwork echoes the artist’s iconic “Girl with a Balloon,” noting “the outstretched arm, the childlike simplicity of the gesture, the suggestion that meaning lives just beyond reach”. Others have invoked Oscar Wilde’s line from “Lady Windermere’s Fan”: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”.dw

The murals continue Banksy’s tradition of Christmas-themed social commentary. In 2019, he painted reindeer pulling a park bench in Birmingham, with a homeless man named Ryan positioned as Santa Claus on his sleigh. The artist’s September mural outside London’s Royal Courts of Justice, depicting a judge beating a protester with a gavel, was swiftly removed after sparking controversy.nytimes