For Ed Wellard, “there was a kind of inevitability” to hearing that the mural of Marcus Rashford had been defaced after England’s Euro 2020 final defeat.
Wellard is a co-founder of Withington Walls, a community street art project that commissions works of public art in the south Manchester suburb where the footballer spent his early years before the family moved to Wythenshawe.
At 7am on Monday, Wellard was at the site of the mural to cover up the graffiti, which police are investigating as racially aggravated damage. Since then, wellwishers have poured in to leave poems, posters and messages, including a father and his two children who had travelled from Birmingham.
On Monday, Rashford released a statement thanking the community for the messages proudly describing himself as a “23-year-old black man from Withington and Wythenshawe”.
The Manchester-based street artist Akse, who painted the mural, saw the graffiti, which he described as “unacceptable”, shortly after midnight on Monday.
“We always feel upset, but we knew we were going to fix it,” he said, but he was unable to repaint the mural on Monday because of the rain. In the meantime, he saw the outpouring of support. “I love the spirit,” he said. To see more messages throughout the day was “really overwhelming and really cool to see the community coming together”.
Nine-year-old Noor, when asked what she liked about Rashford, replied: “He always keeps going and never gives up.”. Noor attends Old Moat primary school, where Rashford also went for a time. Anne Hinds, a maths teacher, said he was a positive role model who encouraged the children to keep believing in themselves. “They need that,” she said.
“It’s evolved into something really special, hasn’t it?”, Wellard said. On Monday he had said he felt “pretty sad about our society that this was where we were”.
“It felt like we taken all these leaps forward with that team, they were promoting diversity and equality and inclusion, and they seemed like a pretty decent set of lads, but yet this nasty element is still there in British football and in British society,” he continued.
Wellard said he wanted to show empathy and compassion for the three footballers who had missed penalties and were facing abuse, and that was what “the people of Withington and Manchester stepped up and have done with these notes on the mural”.
Withington Walls launched a crowdfunder to raise money to repair the mural, vastly exceeding the original target within hours. Wellard said many of those donating could not make it to the mural in person but “want to show that solidarity” and stand up to racism.
Painted in November 2020 in tribute to Rashford’s work on child food poverty, the mural includes a quote from the footballer’s mother, who raised him and his four siblings on her own. “Take pride in knowing that your struggle will play the biggest role in your purpose,” it reads. By early afternoon that quote had been covered with messages from wellwishers.
Akse, who is French-Vietnamese, recalled his own experiences of racism as a child, which he said had made him stop speaking his first language of Vietnamese for years after being bullied.
The artist, who said he chose subjects that inspired him “and the community”, has had to repair another of his murals, depicting George Floyd, in Manchester city centre, four times after racist graffiti.
“Racism has no place in society. So when things like that happen, I’m just going to fix it,” he said.