Artist John Byford is active again in Bad Gandersheim / "His" phone booth is now green.

Everyone knows him: the English artist John Byford from Bad Gandersheim's twin town of Skegness crouches concentrated in front of the specially imported telephone booth on the Stiftsfreiheit and waves his brush. Again and again, he reports, people come by and greet him with "Hi, John". Unfortunately, he doesn't know most of the people, but he's happy that he's become so well known in "his beloved Bad Gandersheim"

In 2015, Byford brought the discarded "Phonebox" with him, to be redesigned several times afterwards. "The boxes," Byford said, "are part of the cityscape of London and are internationally renowned and historically significant."

In 2018, the Englishman designed the telephone booth white to commemorate those who died in World War I. In the following year, 2019, the “box” received the artist’s next coat of paint. This time in blue to focus on the approaching "Brexit".

The basic idea for the respective transformations is linked by an element that works on several levels and promotes understanding: "The message of continued peace. (The Message of Perpetual Peace)".

The phone booth is a symbol of communication and this is necessary to maintain and strengthen this fragile peace. “We need to talk to each other,” Byford affirms.

In this sense, the new coat of paint, a lush green with a pink window frame, is intended to convey a message that the artist considers particularly important in the current situation: "Hope!"

With all the terrible things that are currently happening in the world, from the war in Ukraine to environmental catastrophes such as the floods in the west, hope is the motor to be able to defend ourselves against these circumstances. The proportion of pink adds a delicate femininity to the overall picture, which means "fresh ideas" for him. He sees this realised with the State Garden Show, which will also bring a lot of these fresh ideas and many visitors to the city.

He is extremely happy for his "second home" Bad Gandersheim.

'Two Voices' projects so far have included:

Take a Seat (2024) - info

Hope! (2021)

Brexit Box (2019) - info

We Will Remember them (2018) - info

Post it! (2015) - info