Royal Borough of Greenwich: Work in Woolwich: Past, Present and Future
Mural for Heritage Action Zone in Southeast London, co-created with the local community
When Woolwich received High Street Heritage Action Zone funding from Historic England, the Woolwich Town Centre Strategy developed by Royal Borough of Greenwich included plans for artists to create murals through community engaged activities.
Nitty Gritty:
An external mural co-created with the community. Composed of 5 panels of digitally printed vinyl wrap mounted on aluminium boards with an anti-graffiti coating. Dimensions: approximately 8.8m x 1.6m.
The Brief:
· Create a permanent mural to go on the side of the building occupied by Job Centre Plus on Powis Street.
· Base the mural around a theme that is developed with the public.
· The artwork should reflect and enhance Woolwich’s historic high street while engaging with local cultures and histories.
· The design should take into consideration the activity around ‘work’ inside the building.
My Creative Solution:
The mural was themed around ‘Work in Woolwich: Past, Present and Future’. After research into past industry in the area, current areas of work representative of Woolwich today and local and London wide plans and strategies for the future I created paper cutouts depicting people at work. These were scanned and combined with hand lettering to create three panels showing past, present and future. In community engagement workshops open to the public and for organised community groups, I collected local people’s stories of work including unpaid care-work as well as paid work, aspirations for work and work done in the past. I also invited them to make their own artwork depicting tools and objects important to their work. Two mural panels were developed based on an array of objects telling these stories. The landowner and Royal Borough of Greenwich chose to have the mural vinyl printed, mounted onto aluminium boards with an anti-graffiti finish. The artwork was prepared for print by vectorizing all of the elements so that it could be enlarged while retaining clean edges.
The Result:
A vibrant celebration of local people and their important work.
Top: ‘Work in Woolwich: Past Present and Future’ mural co-created with local people. The mural is on Calderwood Street, Woolwich.
Bottom, left to right: Papercut of a street-food chef at Woolwich Market; Me standing in front of the mural with the illustrated map/Family Mural Trail I also created for Royal Greenwich; The Family Mural Trail and Stickers that I designed for Royal Greenwich; A papercut I created for the ‘Future panel’ of the mural.
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