Giant chefs brighten up Brighton's Preston Street

Preston Street’s reputation for cooking from around the world is to be writ large this week as giant posters of its international chefs are displayed in its empty shopfronts.

The Brighton road is well known for the variety of eateries, including Italian, Indian, Greek and Chinese – but with a dozen empty premises, it could do with a bit of smartening up.

Today, pictures of some of the streets chefs, taken by local photographer James Pike, will be displayed along the road, in a similar way to artworks already brightening up other empty premises elsewhere in the city.

Angelo Martinoli from Italian restaurant Casalingo said: “The pictures will give a much better impression of the street and help us as we come out of the recession.

“By doing this we hope it will encourage landlords to smarten up their shopfronts when they are empty because it makes such a difference.

“I would also like to thank the council for their work as without them this would not have been possible.”

The project is the result of businesses in Preston Street working with Brighton and Hove City Council’s environment improvement team.

Last year the council put five giant vintage photographs of central Hove over a a former shop front in Church Road and pictures of shoppers as part of the ‘Buy Local’ campaign on the former Woolworths building in Blatchington Road.

The team has also used huge copies of paintings from Brighton & Hove’s museums to brighten up rundown buildings, including two on a prominent corner site in Rottingdean High Street where there is a vacant premises.

Environment improvement manager Matt Easteal said: “Preston Street has unfortunately seen a number of premises close during the recession, so we wanted to do something to lift the street and celebrate the businesses that are there and are doing well.”