The aim is to publicly share diverse ideas about the challenges, necessities and joys of contemporary communality. Artists will be invited to make new site-specific work for the billboard over the course of a two-year period, with each artist’s work staying in place for 4 months. Participating artists will be invited to address issues associated with heterogeneous social cohesion, interdependence, and solidarity that doesn’t demand a flattening-out of race, class or gender. The artists are free to respond to these broad subject areas in any way they see fit, whilst keeping in mind the that fact that the billboard is visible to a wide range of publics. We will work with renowned international artists as well as acclaimed artists that are based in Waltham Forest. In this we way we plan on the one hand to present artwork that is developed from a position of local knowledge and experience, alongside artwork that brings specialist non-local voices to the discussion topics and to our area.

What we'll deliver:

• We will commission artists to present work publicly.
• We'll install a large billboard that celebrates diverse voices in the community.

Why it's a great idea:

Public access to high-quality contemporary art that invites debate on vital topics within our diverse communities. Following numerous challenges to spaces for social integration and harmonious multiplicity, Interdependence is arguably one of the key terms of recent times, in part due to diminishing shared physical space due to Covid. Meanwhile the most common forms of Participation are frequently co-opted by commercial spaces that have lost touch with any desire for real social cohesion that’s fueled by interacting with difference or unfamiliar ideas. Making art has and will increasingly play a vital part both in examining and making space for joyful and antagonistic forms of interdependence, and this billboard gallery aims to play a significant part in this process. We will bring different inside and outside perspectives together in one site, a site of dissemination that will open important lines of communication between Walthamstow and other places in Europe.

Steps to get it done:

• confirm all participating artists and their exhibition dates (10th March 2021)
• liaise with artist to finalise first commission (28th April 2021)
• install billboard on side of building and install first commission (15th May 2021)
• announce soft-opening of first commissioned work on social media (16th May 2021)
• liaise with artist to finalise second commission (28th August 2021)
• install second commission (15th September 2021)
• liaise with artist to finalise third commission (28th August 2021)
• install third commission (15th January 2022)
• remove billboard (if further funding not secured) (16th May 2022)

We plan to work with artists who reflect the racial diversity of the area and whose work is particularly interested in the subjects that we’ve outlined as being key for this space. The position for billboard is on the 1st-floor, at the end of a row of terrace houses on Shrubland Road, E177QH. Since the house (which we own) is beside a rail track, the potential billboard site is not obstructed by trees or buildings and can be seen from close-up, from a distance, and from numerous angles including from passing trains. While there are a small number of 2D public art projects in the area, some of which unfortunately depict scenes of threat and violence, there are no public art projects that gather the work of local and international artists in order to share trans-national ideas about contemporary solidarity and communality.