Walthamstow is …

As an easy exercise, that is not really to do with typography, I want to ask people of Walthamstow to complete the following sentence (in one word)…

“Walthamstow is …”

I think that as it is a neutral question, it would elicit some interesting responses

After the riots throughout London, an art project in Peckham , asked people to write love letters to their area.

“Dr Martin Farr, a contemporary historian at Newcastle university, says it is not the first time Post-it notes have been used in this way, pointing to their use after 9/11 and the 2004 tsunami.

“New media seemed to facilitate or characterise the rioting, what struck me is writing notes is very old media, it’s as if it’s a restatement of community identity.

“It’s also an old-fashioned, a human way of seeing handwriting – with smileys and exclamation marks – so is different to new media which is technically consistent. Post-it notes are also very photogenic, they are appealing – from a distance they are almost like an impressionist painting of a garden – so they are an engaging way of communicating,” he says.”

In a similar vein, I am asking the people of Walthamstow to reflect on the area. Slightly differently, I don’t want everything to be positive. Maybe people feel like the area is becoming too gentrified, or too unfriendly. By restricting it to one word (and knowing that some people might write more) it asks people to consider their word rather than writing a letter.

Be encouraging people to write them, they are engaging with a pen and paper, something we as a society we are doing less of, especially over the last year. The participants will be making shapes with their pens to imbue meaning in their lines.

The activity will become a tapestry on the wall of the exhibition to create a fluttering canvas and something from which I can reflect on what people have written and what it says about Walthamstow.

At the end of the exhibition, I will collect all the post it notes and scan them in (a labour of love) to create a new artwork. The words can be extracted and analysed, and the notes shown on the website.

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Stowe Framework: Launch

I’ve previously talked about the events I’d run in a launch and how I would set up the exhibition. Here’s a quick recap of the events, and the layout of the exhibition:

Events for the launch have a dedicated booking page

The Launch is intended to be a marketing event so that the project gets as many people involved in the activities as possible. More submissions give me the chance to tinker with activities and methodologies to achieve my aims of investigating what people think of typography in Walthamstow. Everything so far has been an experiment and test, and the launch is the start of announcing the project

As I said in my critical report, I had hoped to receive more submissions in the first testing part so that I could tinker with them further so that at this point I would have the weight of tried and tested methodologies.

Later

To keep people engaged with the project later in the summer, I would like to have another smaller event so that people could see what submissions there are, and to perpetuate submissions. Like the drain covers I was inspired by, I want to have people screen printing glyphs mashed together from the online tool.

Walthamstow Garden Party at the end of August seems like the best opportunity to do this. Hosted in Lloyd’s Park, the Garden Party is a community showcase of art, performance and music and encourages everyone in the area to gather together. This year, it is still pandemic pending, but, let’s plan for optimism.

Walthamstow Garden Party

I can’t get people to print typography on location as it will be too stretched out, and I don’t want to replicate what is already there, I want to shoe what the community have already created using the online tool. Portable Print Studio have a setup that allows them to screen print on location and lets people pull their own prints.

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Here, using photos with permission of the Portable Print Studio, I’ve created some mockups for what a screen printing session could look like. The screens are pre-exposed with letters that have been created using the online tool, either as a positive or as a negative. The screens can then be mono-printed with a selection of colours that participants can choose for themselves, either on a tote or a print.

I hope that people will want to get involved in a hands on way and that it will mean people will engage further with the project and screen printing. Its applicable for all ages!

Walthamstow Garden Party

To keep people engaged with the project later in the summer, I would like to have another smaller event so that people could see what submissions there are, and to perpetuate submissions. Like the drain covers I was inspired by, I want to have people screen printing glyphs mashed together from the online tool.

Walthamstow Garden Party at the end of August seems like the best opportunity to do this. Hosted in Lloyd’s Park, the Garden Party is a community showcase of art, performance and music and encourages everyone in the area to gather together. This year, it is still pandemic pending, but, let’s plan for optimism.

Walthamstow Garden Party

I can’t get people to print typography on location as it will be too stretched out, and I don’t want to replicate what is already there, I want to shoe what the community have already created using the online tool. Portable Print Studio have a setup that allows them to screen print on location and lets people pull their own prints.

• 

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Here, using photos with permission of the Portable Print Studio, I’ve created some mockups for what a screen printing session could look like. The screens are pre-exposed with letters that have been created using the online tool, either as a positive or as a negative. The screens can then be mono-printed with a selection of colours that participants can choose for themselves, either on a tote or a print.

I hope that people will want to get involved in a hands on way and that it will mean people will engage further with the project and screen printing. Its applicable for all ages!

Launch development Exhibition

If I want to get more people to contribute to the project, I think the best idea will be to run events during the E17 Art Trail at the start of July. I’d like to have an exhibition space where people can come and find out about the project.

In Walthamstow there are a few different options to host:

Vestry House

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We Are Here exhibition

Vestry House Museum has a rich history and great exhibits on social issues – for example the We Are Here exhibiton showcasing the stories of the Windrush generation in Waltham Forest. The space is a little small for having people in and out and not well-ventilated. The museum is also out of the way for a lot of people and I want to attract lots of through traffic, not necessarily tourists to the area.

Walthamstow Central Library

I’ve never seen an exhibition in the library, and it is very Central. I would have liked to have something set up in the entrance lobbies which are much more modern and open, but these spaces aren’t available for hire. Overall, good location, but not the right feel.

The Mills

I really like the Mills Community Space because it has such an artsy feel, and it has a few spaces available, like this room which has huge windows onto the street to get people in. There is also space on the walls to host people’s work. But, it is slightly small and I want to host an event here so to get coverage over the area, I’m thinking about another location.

Winn’s Gallery

Winn’s Gallery

In the lovely Lloyd’s Park, Winn’s Gallery is a white-walled exhibition space at cheap rates for local people. There are multiple windows and doors for a breezy, well-ventilated time, and it’s on the main avenue of the park and next to the cafe and children’s area. There will be plenty of local people around to take part. We have a winner!

Layout

I can’t find official layout plans of the gallery which is very annoying, and as a consequence of the pandemic layoffs, my requests to the council for more information about it have gone unanswered. Using my mapping and sleuthing skills, I think I’ve found rough dimensions of the gallery:

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Let’s call it 27 x 8 metres. From photos, I can estimate where the doors are I would want to use:

This way, I can get cafe visitors from the south entrance, and park visitors from the north. I can create a one way system too if needed, plus it will have great ventilation.

At the south entrance I want to have a large table where people can do the activities and will be enticing to the children if they want to do some colouring in. There will be crayons, colour pencils, arts materials for people to use and activity sheets people can do at the time or take away with them. The doors are large and glass so no matter the weather people will be able to see in.

At the north entrance I want people to see the Walthamstow is … activity. A wall full of bits of paper in the breeze will hopefully entice people in to see what is being written there! Also near the north entrance will be information about the project so far, and a place to have a go at the online tool.

I’ve just thought that I can have a scanner like at the Aquarium so that people can fill in their letters and glyph ideas and I can have a record of them while they take their creations home. Using a projector at the Eastern end, I can show people’s contributions live.

The pink circles are hand sanitisation stations that are everywhere so that people are always close! The art materials will have to be sanitised after every use, so maybe I should have another table so I clean things between people coming in.

Launch: Events Ideas

If I want to get more people to contribute to the project, I think the best idea will be to run events during the E17 Art Trail at the start of July. The people running it actually got in contact with me after talking with them previously:

Because of the pandemic, and the nature of the project, I think I need to devise events that can be around the neighbourhood rather than in my house. There are spaces that I can hire around the area that means that I will cover a large area and make it accessible for more people.

In previous versions of the project, I wanted to run glyph drawing courses at the Mill, and I think that I can still make this happen, as they have some nice spaces. In Week 11, I went to an online workshop run by Sarah Hyndman of TypeTasting. She set up her workshops to let people experience type in a sensory way, from taste of chocolate or alcohol, or touch. I think the best one for this project is ‘sound’ – where people can react to sounds that are played to the participants and they respond.

By commissioning Hyndmann to run the session, the participants get the full experience of her workshops and her passion, which is very catching!

The Mill

I’d really like to give people the opportunity to meet in person after this year, and The Mill has a suitable space that can have a few people in whilst retaining social distancing. There would be a limit of the number of people, though this can work really well with workshops like this. Because it is so central and accessible during the evening, it’s a good space.

Ideally, the workshop would be completely free, but I know from experience of myself and other people that when events are advertised as free people think they are of lower value and are happy to take a place and not turn up. A token amount, such as £5, means that people have to make a commitment. However, the area has a very mixed income population and a fee would be out of the reach of some people. I want as many people to feel like they can come, so with the advice of Cassie Yates of Knots Arts, there will be charge but people can ask for a bursary place if they want to. There isn’t a limit, and no questioning why, but it means that people who want to come, can come. The project isn’t about making money

The other people I have talked to are the Land Arts Agency, who run photography workshops based on environmental themes. Maybe it seems a bit out of the remit of a typography project, but I feel that Walthamstow has so much to offer, that it means that I can ask the photographer running the sessions to encourage people to see the context in which the typography is placed. Elizabeth suggested I created some short routes of what I have in mind:

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Walthamstow is changing as a result of the changing community. This is good. Ghosts of the past remain and help us understand where we come from. There are many ghost signs in Walthamstow that promote long-gone businesses and tell us about the area. To celebrate this, I want to host a history walk. I’ve heard great things locally about a guide called Joanna Moncrieff and would like to commission her for a walk around the borough. By asking her to focus on the history behind the typography, rather than the typographical features themselves, it provides great context.

I think here I have some good ideas that people will be interested in attending, and focus on typography without being intimidating. Photography and history walks are a format that people are familiar with, and so hopefully will be comfortable in participating in them.