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The elusive street artist’s latest stencil may reference the tens of thousands of unhoused children living in London.
A man walks beneath a new Banksy artwork on December 22, 2025 in London, England. (photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
Banksy has struck again, revealing a new mural on a quiet cobblestoned street in the London neighborhood of Bayswater just days before Christmas. Depicting two bundled-up children lying down and stargazing, the stenciled street art that appeared over a row of garages could be a reference to the estimated 102,000 unhoused children residing in temporary accommodations in the capital city.
Though the anonymous artist claimed responsibility for the street art along Queen’s Mews in Bayswater in an Instagram post, the same motif also appeared on a concrete divider outside the Centre Point tower in Central London. Banksy has not indicated that he is responsible for the identical work by the tower; however, its location is especially significant.
People walk by the Centrepoint building stencil on December 22, 2025 in London, England. (photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
Nicknamed the “North Star” locally, the Centre Point tower is a Brutalist behemoth that was constructed between 1963 and 1966 as an office building but stood empty for practically a decade after its completion. In 1969, Reverend Ken Leech, an Anglican socialist minister who worked specifically with youths struggling with homelessness and addiction, opened the basement of the nearby St. Anne’s Church as a temporary shelter. He named it Centrepoint after the tower, which he regarded as an “affront to the homeless.”
The shelter has since grown into one of the nation’s leading support organizations for unhoused youths.
Come 1974, while the United Kingdom weathered through a severe recession and chronic housing crisis, nearly 100 Londoners stormed and occupied the empty tower in protest of the mounting homelessness across the city, while thousands of buildings were vacant.
Little has changed in the way of affordability, housing accessibility, and food insecurity across the UK. Newly released research indicates that nearly 300,000 families are facing acute homelessness in England alone as of 2025.
Banksy, whose guerrilla art practice has long championed anti-war messaging worldwide, frequently comments on current events and crises through his street art. Most recently, he painted a mural depicting a judge beating a protester with his gavel outside of London’s Royal Courts of Justice building in September after 900 people had been arrested for protesting the government’s designation of the activist organization Palestine Action as a terrorist group.
