For years people have tried – and failed – to uncover details about Bristol’s most famous, yet anonymous, graffiti artist Banksy.

Photos of him and stories of people who have met him are incredibly rare. But now a man who got the secretive artist to work with children at a youth club in the late 1990s has given the BBC an exclusive insight into the man behind the murals, just as he was about to become famous.

Banksy is one of the world’s most famous graffiti artists. His work has sold for millions of pounds and his exhibitions seen by hundreds of thousands of people.
But behind layers of paint, lost in time at a Bristol youth club, there’s a Banksy very few people know about.
On the cusp of international fame, the artist was leaving his mark – not only on the streets of his city, but on young people in Lawrence Weston.
Here, Banksy helped groups of teens in art classes, just as he was about to paint his famous Mild, Mild West mural.
“If you look at the photos, you can see the way he was working with the young people,” said Peter de Boer, the man responsible for getting Banksy in the building.
“They were engaged, having fun and sharing ideas. It was a true collaboration.”

“It’s about what speaks to you”: Displaying paintings, prints, textiles and sculptures can all help create a fresh living space for the new year – here’s how, according to the experts.

January is a popular time of year to refresh priorities – and perhaps our surroundings too, creating a new mood for a new year. New artworks can transform a living space, and also inspire future interests, intentions, or the desire for fresh goals. Even repositioning our existing paintings, prints and photographs can revitalise a home and feel like a new start.
“It’s about what speaks to you”: Displaying paintings, prints, textiles and sculptures can all help create a fresh living space for the new year – here’s how, according to the experts.

January is a popular time of year to refresh priorities – and perhaps our surroundings too, creating a new mood for a new year. New artworks can transform a living space, and also inspire future interests, intentions, or the desire for fresh goals. Even repositioning our existing paintings, prints and photographs can revitalise a home and feel like a new start.

Some species of caterpillar come armed with powerful venoms. Harnessing them could help us design new drugs.

When you think of venomous animals, caterpillars probably aren’t the first thing that comes to mind. Snakes, of course. Scorpions and spiders, too. But caterpillars?
Yes, indeed. The world turns out to be home to hundreds – perhaps thousands – of species of venomous caterpillars, and at least a few of them pack a punch toxic enough to kill or permanently injure a person. That alone is reason for scientists to study them. But caterpillars also contain a potential windfall of medically useful compounds within their toxic secretions.
“Will we get to the stage where we’ll be taking things from their venoms that are useful? Definitely,” says Andrew Walker, an evolutionary biologist and biochemist at the University of Queensland, Australia. “But there’s a lot of foundational work to do first.”
Caterpillars are the larval stages of the insect order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. It’s just one of many animal groups with little-known venomous members. (Venoms are toxins that are deliberately injected into another animal, while poisons sit passively in an organism’s body, waiting to sicken a potential predator.) By biologists’ best estimate, venoms have evolved at least 100 times across the animal kingdom.
Many venoms are complex, some containing more than 100 different compounds. And they’re also strikingly diverse. “No two species have the same venom arsenal,” says Mandë Holford, a venom scientist at Hunter College and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. “That’s why it’s important to study as many species as we can find.”