Project
Markhouse Corner Public Art
Client
Waltham Forest Council
Location
Leyton, East London
Over the past year London Borough of Waltham Forest have been working with a design team to produce and deliver a Design Strategy for improvements to the public realm for some of the spaces around the junction of Markhouse Road, Church Road and Lea Bridge Road locally known by residents and businesses as Markhouse Corner. The design strategy set out opportunities for greening and public realm improvements to three different areas in Markhouse Corner as well as public art opportunities.
The team at Waltham Forest commissioned Beyond The Box to creatively gather feedback, ideas and insights from the local community to help shape the brief for an artist that could be used for public art at Markhouse Corner in the future. We were asked to focus and demonstrate how to positively engage communities in planning and built environment conversations using digital tools.
We collaborated with a number of our young cultural producers to help deliver this project, leading to a VR Experience Day as part of the People’s Pavilion. The young people were up-skilled to co-facilitate two storytelling engagement workshops at Lea Bridge Libaray for the local community, one of which specifically focused on young residents.
The storytelling workshops were designed and facilitated to capture and celebrate the local heritage and the rich cultural diversity of the area - taking digital 3D photos of objects and items workshop attendees brought to the sessions.
A third pop-up workshop was facilitated at Markhouse Corner, aimed at engaging with younger children and families with the project, where we had pen stylus and sketch books on the iPad for people to draw out their ideas digitally.
We also engaged with local businesses through a series of one-2-one conversations whereby we created digital illustration storyboards, which were later upload to the online portal and used as a driver for further engagement, with people being able to engage with their local history, stories and memories, whilst being invited to express their own ideas for how this could be translated into public art.
All of the insights lead to a Virtual Reality Experience Day as part of the People's Pavilion Festival at Lea Bridge Libaray, engaging people through tech and enabling them to see both the digital collections we had collated, and to begin to help shape and inform the artists brief.
Virtual Experience Day
We invited the community to come along to a Virtual Reality Experience Day where participants were able to share and view how local stories could be used to shape public art. Collaborating with a Leyton based VR company Continuum VR, we designed a 3D virtual model of Markhouse Corner. Using VR headsets members of the public were able to orientate themselves on location at Markhouse Corner whilst using the handsets people were able to paint and write down their ideas, as well as see what others had suggested. During the event we also exhibited the illustrations from the business engagement, and encourage people to complete the online surveys.
Pop-Up Workshops
We wanted to increase the numbers of those we engaged with, particularly more younger voices and families. We designed and facilitated a pop up event at Markhouse Corner, using stylist pens on iPads using sketch book, enabling people to use digital art to convey their ideas.