If you've ever walked past certain telephone boxes in Liverpool you've probably wondered where the messages of peace plastered to them came from.
There are many in the city centre, with perhaps the most well-known being the one outside Primark, but the street art is all throughout the city and Merseyside. One telephone box on Lime Street carries the "peace movement" message, featuring a child holding a gun with "unless we teach our children peace someone else will teach them violence" below in all caps.
Another, outside Lush on Church Street, features a panda dual-wielding two guns, with "Be like a panda, he's Black, he's white, he's Asian. Destroy racism. Scouse has no colour," as a caption.
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The street art varies, with messages of peace, war, love and personal growth all making a regular appearance, and in recent years anti-gun and knife crime messages can now be spotted around the city centre. One constant in each of the pieces is the street artist's alias Sine Missione always plastered beside them like a logo.
Speaking to the ECHO in 2018, the "Scouse Banksy" said he'd been looking at the green electricity boxes dotted around Anfield "for years" before he got started on his street, and that he thought of them as "visual vandalism." His first piece was on such an electricity box, featuring a picture of Christ the Redeemer, and since then hundreds of pieces of similar street art have popped up throughout the city.
He said: "I like to be creative, I like to make people happy, I like to paint the city. I see myself as a truther as much as a street artist."
Despite his mural's positive meanings, the man behind the art has been a divisive figure. When the pandemic hit, Sine Missione made no secret about being a covid-sceptic and a passionate believer in what most would consider unfounded conspiracy theories about vaccines and the virus.
Speaking to the ECHO at the time, Sine Missione, who also runs a fashion label, confirmed that he believed the risks of covid were wildly exaggerated, that vaccines are dangerous and that many of the tens of thousands of deaths attributed to the virus were from other causes.
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