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Clever artist in Strabane gets creative with IRA graffiti

Published 16:52 16 Sept 2013 BST

Updated 16:44 14 Nov 2014 GMT

Conor Heneghan
Clever artist in Strabane gets creative with IRA graffiti

Homenews

It’s not the prettiest graffiti in the world but the person responsible deserves huge kudos for the way in which they manipulated the original message.

Libraries in general are far too reserved to resort to spraying graffiti on public buildings in an effort to attract new customers but people passing through Strabane could be forgiven for thinking that there is a guerrilla marketing underway for the local library in the Tyrone town. As the library will be no doubt keen to point out, however, the untidy scrawling of the message ‘Join the Library’ on a small building in the town has nothing to do with them and is instead how one clever artist managed to alter a message that previously read ‘Join the IRA’ into something far less provocative and far more educational. The picture was posted on Twitter by teacher and writer Brian McGilloway yesterday and has been retweeted over 2,000 times since. Since then, the same man was able to reveal that the genius behind the amended graffiti was one Chris McLaughlin, while the Strabane library also popped into the conversation to express their delight at the free advertising.   Good work all round.

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Clever artist in Strabane gets creative with IRA graffiti