Whitecliffe Major Urban Park: Community Engagement Events

In July this year, as part of our community engagement policy, the design team behind the new urban park for Ebbsfleet Garden City - Henley Camland, Define, FrancisKnight, Pillory Barn and myself - the project principal artist - hosted two community events. The first as part of the wider Fusion Festival organised by Cohesion Plus, and held at the recently completed Platinum Jubilee Park, Castle Hill, and the second, a more focussed project engagement held at the Community Hall, Castle Hill. Both events were a great success and the team talked informally with many residents and visitors about our project research, aspirations and draft designs for the park. We set up a badge making station, which was very popular, and I took along sketchbooks, research drawings and artefacts with which to trigger conversations.
In the week leading up to the events I had taken over the Whitecliffe Public Art Facebook page to talk about local history and heritage as well as show draft ideas and proposals for the new park.