IT STARTED as an illegal act performed in darkness using a cherry picker borrowed from an eccentric millionaire. Now a landmark Newtown mural is set to receive an official seal of approval.

The ‘I Have a Dream’ mural on King St was painted in 1991 by Juilee Pryor and Andrew Aiken – the latter subsequently convicted of murder in the UK – and Marrickville Council now want it heritage listed.

Related: Newtown and inner west home to some of the world’s best street art

A unanimous vote on a mayoral minute by Jo Haylen at last week’s Marrickville Council meeting means the mural, including the Aboriginal art added to the bottom at a later date, will be assessed by council heritage officers before possible recommendation for the State Heritage Register.

media_camera Andrew Aiken climbs a ladder to paint part of the ‘I Have a Dream’ mural.in 1991. media_camera Julie Pryor stands in front of the mural the day after completing it.

The pair, part of an artists’ collective called Unmitigated Audacity Productions, were twice denied permission to paint the space, with the council preferring to use it for advertising billboards. But Ms Pryor, 58 from Marrickville, said they were not to be denied.

“We thought putting billboards there was just pathetic,” she said.

“We decided we’d go ahead and do this art work even if it didn’t work or we got arrested. It was a statement and an expression of our philosophies.

“It was a crazy thing to do but it was tremendously exciting. There was a sense of rightness to it right from the get-go.

“We always said to ourselves ‘this is a gift to Newtown, we’re going to really amaze people ... it was accepted as a gift and Newtown has taken it on and loved it.”

Work began at 7.30pm on a Friday night and was finished the following evening. The pair borrowed a cherrypicker from a friend, “eccentric millionaire” Tony Spanos.

media_camera The borrowed cherrypicker stands beside the completed mural.

Passers-by rang the police but Ms Pryor, then 35, employed an unusual defence.

“I talked to the police sergeant … I was a mild-mannered middle-aged mother-of-three, and I said ‘look at me – do I look like a graffiti artist?’

“Because stereotypes are so strongly ingrained, he laughed at me and I knew at that moment that I’d won, I’d turned that stereotype in to a tacit approval.”

Aiken was to have his own brush with the law six years later when he went back to the UK to confess to a 1990 murder of a 40-year-old English busker.

Aiken bashed the man to death before burying him in the cellar of the squat where they both lived. He served a life sentence in a Devon prison.

Upon his release in 2005 Aiken, who had lived in the Newtown Mission on King St, joined a Christian community in Canada.

Ms Pryor visited him 18 months ago and said: “I think he is proud of it (the mural) and doesn’t walk away. He is a bit conflicted as a Christian man, but there’s no real ego either.”

media_camera Newtown has become a hub for street art.