Inspirational Projects – Brockley
A fantastic community project that took place in 2004 – Tom Young tells us how the Brockley Project came about:
“The Brockley project was initiated by the Brockley Cross Action Group as a local response to a run down area. Shardeloes Road runs horizontally across a hill, with no houses fronting onto the road for more than a hundred meters and a high wall on one side retaining the gardens of the houses further up the hill.
Before
After
The Action Group came up with the idea of using a poem to tackle the great linear expanse of wall on one side of the road and commissioned a local Poet Margaret Reynolds to write it. With funding in place from Lewisham council, several artists competed for the commission and my colleague, James Salisbury and I, were lucky enough to get the job.
The success of the project is that it stemmed from a local and personal level – an ‘action group’ set up within the community to tackle issues that were important to the immediate surroundings. Using a local poet was a great part of that, as the words of the poem were inspired by the aspirations and objectives of the group and were specific to the location.
We introduced colour and increased the size of the words to such an extent that it became impossible to read them all at once. You can relate to individual words along the length of the wall, but the poem can only be read as a part of your journey along the road – not a hugely complex metaphor, but effective in the contexts of both words and place.
Scale was the dominating factor in the lettering for the Brockley poem, although the letters themselves were designed specifically for the project. But lettering can also empahsise the rhythm and movement in the words instead of repeating them as if they were written on the page – adding to the energy that the poet has captured in their work. A trail of poems, fragments of poems, poems linked by content or mood, could further broaden the scope – relating them to their geographical location and connecting the author, the reader and the words in a physical space to create a range of intimate or shared experiences.
Connect this back into the community with local poets, poems written about the area, or poems chosen by groups within the community and there is an opportunity to bind everything together. A project to involve and inspire the community!”