"Time is ticking to city jam"

Artwork created in anticipation of Southend City Jam 2023.

Karl Sims (aka Ster UPC) grew up in Southend. Together with Steve Hart (aka Ekto.1) he is one of the organisers of the festival Southend City Jam. This annual street art festival takes place at the end of the Summer Holidays. Alongside local artists Sims and Hart, who have championed street art in Southend for decades, this three-day celebration of street art is organised by Southend-on-Sea, City Council and Southend Tourism Partnership,

The festival features about 200 talented local, national and international street artists, who transform a number of permanent and temporary walls around the city centre and seafront.

In the 1980s, the city of Southend had a rich collection of talented graffiti artists and it quickly became a sub cultural hub of graffiti, that in recent years has morphed into the street art scene it is today.

The artist likes to create different kinds of artworks.