A stretch of wall on Chantry Street has become a new kind of shared story for Andover. The finished mural brings together birds, a fox, a child with brightly colored wings and a teddy bear. Love Andover’s Oct. 3 report describes those details within a design shaped by local young people and artist Kezia Hoffman. The project turns a town-centre walkway into a public artwork whose ideas came from the people who helped make it.
Test Valley Borough Council commissioned the mural and says Hoffman, a Winchester-based artist, worked with young people from Andover Young Carers, Breakout Youth and Yellow Brick Road. Their ideas and drawings helped shape the finished design. The council says the project explored community, kindness, identity and belonging through creative workshops. On Sept. 26, participants from the three groups came together to help paint the mural on the wall. The council’s account and the independent local report both identify that date and the same participating groups.
The artwork is part of a longer story at the site. In the early hours of July 4, 2023, a street artwork believed to be by the anonymous artist Hendog appeared showing a police officer interacting with a teddy bear. Love Andover reports that the unexpected artwork quickly drew local attention. The council later placed clear acrylic over it while considering how to preserve it. Damp in the wall damaged the original piece, and the council said its condition deteriorated faster than expected. The new mural carries forward the teddy bear image without trying to recreate the earlier work.
In the new design, the bear appears alongside other figures rather than standing alone. Love Andover describes birds, a fox and a child with colorful wings, and notes that another, larger section brings several characters together around a table. The council says the workshops explored community, kindness, identity and belonging, while young people’s ideas and drawings helped shape the design. The resulting artwork reflects those themes in a public space.
Hoffman told the council that listening to young people came first, and that their ideas about acceptance, community and finding a place in the world became the foundation of the artwork. The council’s ward member, Iris Andersen, said the young people’s ideas sat at the centre of the mural. Those comments describe the project’s intention; the reports do not measure what effect the artwork will have on the town or on its visitors. What they do establish is a process in which young people helped develop the design and then joined in painting it.
The local reporting also connects the new mural to the way the wall has changed over time. Love Andover quotes an unnamed local resident who returned to the wall and observed that other artists had added work over time. The resident described the wall as a place where one artwork could become the next chapter in a longer story. That perspective is one person’s reflection, not a survey of Andover residents, but it gives the mural a clear local context: the site has been shaped by more than one artist and one moment.
The council describes the Chantry Street mural as part of Andover’s growing public-art collection and its wider town-centre regeneration work. That is the council’s stated purpose, not evidence of a measured economic or social impact. The project’s more immediate result is visible on the wall: young people from three named groups worked with an artist, developed ideas around belonging and kindness, and helped bring those ideas into a public space. The council says the artwork builds on the attention drawn by Hendog’s earlier mural while giving local young people a role in shaping what comes next.
A mural cannot tell every story about a town, and the sources do not claim that this one can. But the Chantry Street wall now holds both a reference to its past and a new design made with young participants. Its teddy bear nods to the work that first made the site a local landmark; other characters and the mural’s themes reflect the newer collaboration. Together, the reports from the council and Love Andover show a simple, concrete act of community art: listen to young people, work through ideas together, and let them help paint the result where their neighbors can see it.
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