What an amazing experience!
Hundreds of local residents, mountains of cake, 30 metres of wall and around 300 different stencils.
“Our Lincoln Road” is a mural celebrating pride in the Millfield area. Over a windy week in August, we transformed a whopping stretch of rough, rendered wall, using colourful shapes and messages celebrating local life.
The project began in January. We won a bid to create a mural for Lincoln Road that reflected its richness and diversity, so we asked local people to describe their culture. We held informal workshops to discuss the sayings they learned from their parents, the songs that moved them, the games they played as kids, in order to investigate what made them feel proud and at home.
Again and again, people made reference to cross-cultural songs, sayings and games. When participants discussed experiences that they had in common, we could see them become immediately more animated and excited. We decided to shift the focus of the project to celebrate the things that really make local residents connect with each other. Their shared interests.
As the project grew, we discovered local heroes who had made an impact in the area, people who had dedicated their working lives to making a difference for others. We asked them “What unites the people of Lincoln Road?”. We photographed the heroes and drew outlines of them. We crafted their words into typographic arrangements that filled the shape of their portraits as silhouettes.
We developed a colourful, geometric pattern to work with the silhouettes. An initial explosion of shapes represents people moving to the area, arriving with their own distinct, bold shape, overlapping one another. The shapes burst out and flow along the piece, interrupted by the silhouettes. They hang in coloured groups around the heroes, drifting away, blending with the next set of colours, and the next. This interplay reflects the way the local heroes bring different groups together, help them to establish and make connections with other groups. The mural ends with the question, “WHAT UNITES US? As a large statement piece of typography, inviting viewers to answer the question for themselves.
We have never had so many people say how much they liked the work. A massive thank-you to everyone who stopped and encouraged us.