PUBLIC ARTWORKS
They reflect and reveal our society, add meaning to our cities and uniqueness to our communities. Public art humanises the built environment and invigorates public spaces. They tell the stories of our communities and provide an intersection between past, present and future, between disciplines, and between ideas. Public art is freely accessible and invites communities into spaces.
Busk Mural - Hackney Bridge
This piece was designed as part of the 2020 London Mural Festival. We collaborated with Global Street Art to commission local, Hackney Wick based street artist BUSK, to create a large-scale mural that embodied the ethos of Hackney Bridge.
The piece is framed in a style similar to the adverts of the 1900s for Hackney Wick’s Clarnico Sweet Factory which stood on the site Hackney Bridge is located and was a key part of Hackney Wick’s industrial heritage. The design was inspired by the industrial history of the area, and celebrates the creativity of Hackney Wick today. It is a multidisciplinary piece bringing together both graffiti writing and muralism styles.
Carnival Artworks - Hackney Bridge
In 2021, for the second year running, due to the ongoing restrictions in the COVID-19 pandemic, Hackney Council were forced to cancel the Hackney Carnival, a celebration of Caribbean culture held in September of each year. We wanted to facilitate a way of still celebrating this important event in the calendar. We partnered with Hackney Council, local visual artists, schools and community groups across the Borough of Hackney to create installations inspired by the music, performances, stories and costumes of Hackney’s carnival collectives.
Once the pieces had been created they were displayed on the exterior walls around Hackney Bridge for everyone to come and see. When we were eventually able we launched the exhibition with a performance from legendary steel pan band Steel Pantonic and screenings of videos of the various community groups making the artworks.
Visual Artists:
Caroline Jones
Di Jones
Jamshid Maylanchi
Lucky Thomas
Ruth Collins
Valerio D’Oliveiro
Participating Hackney schools:
Betty Layward Primary School
Colvestone Primary School
Millfield Community School
Morningside Primary School
Randal Cremer Primary School
Springfield Primary School
St. Paul’s with St. Michael’s Primary School
S.M.I.L.E-ing Boys Project - Hackney Bridge, Brixton Village
S.M.I.L.E-ing Boys Project is an organisation we have partnered with across two schemes we have worked on: Brixton Village and Hackney Bridge. Their aim is to change the image of young black boys in the media and in society one a smile at a time.
S.M.I.L.E-ing Boys Project is a happiness research based creative arts project that aims to address the mental health needs of black boys and challenge the negative portrayal of this demographic in the media.
S.M.I.L.E-ing Boys Project is a creative arts project, using photography, poetry, film and podcasts to address the mental health needs of black boys and challenge the negative portrayal of this demographic in the media. The project is a research-led public health series of workshops based on eight pillars of happiness, designed as a response to rising levels of serious youth violence and the negative media portrayal of black boys as perpetrators and victims.
The project is led by celebrated Photographer, Poet, Filmmaker, Author, Mental Health researcher Kay Rufai.
The end result of this was installations of portraits of boys from local secondary schools smiling to reframe and combat negative stereotyping of black boys. The portraits were hung prominently throughout Brixton Village and Hackney Bridge for the communities and visitors to see.
