We first worked on the Aberfeldy estate with Canadian interventionist Roadsworth in 2014 and three years later were invited by Poplar HARCA to look at installing public artworks on the high street, firstly commissioning Australian pointillist Jimmy C for a portrait of Tommy Flowers on the gable end of the micro pub that was about to bear this local hero’s name.

As we built up our outreach along the high street, we commissioned work by sculptor Cityzen Kane and pavement miniaturist Ben Wilson, responding to conversations with residents that we met. The estate had been established by engineer Hugh McIntosh in the 1820s, after he purchased the land from from The East India Company and drained its marshes, naming the streets after parts of his native Scotland. So we painted a tartan pattern on the front of our new Making Space unit at No.48 and commissioned more urban art for the shutters of six other units that had been empty for some time. This has been key in attracting new businesses to open, in a scheme by Meanwhile Space and funded, like our works, by the Aberfeldy Estate LLP.

Project Title
High Street Works from the series Responses to Locations in Transition

Location
Aberfeldy Street and environs, London E14

Project Lead
Garry Hunter for Fitzrovia Noir

Artists
Ben Wilson
CizeOne
Jimmy C
Part2ism
Cityzen Kane
Graham Carrick
Manuel Sanmartin
Paul DON Smith

Dates
March 2018 ongoing

Tom Fleming Can Craft Save Our Cities? Crafts magazine, February 2021

Blossom Young, ACCENTS team leader, Poplar Harca housing association