Walthamstow
SCT’s project in the London Borough of Waltham Forest was inspired by a group of teachers from two local primary schools and a secondary school along with the Friends of Stoneydown Park and local residents who all wanted to see a Speakers’ Corner established in their park both as a way of enhancing its environment and in order to provide a platform for their community. Following the development of projects in a major industrial city and an historic market town, the promotion of a scheme on a much smaller, neighbourhood scale was a particularly attractive challenge for SCT.
Two meetings took place at Stoneydown Primary School in the Spring of 2009 at which local people gave the project their backing and in June Central St Martins College, with a grant from the University of the Arts London’s Widening Participation Fund, launched an extensive consultation, involving young people in particular, on the design of a Speakers’ Corner for Stoneydown Park.
With the support of Waltham Forest Council, SCT’s own consultation was conducted over the course of the summer.
A Brief Introduction to Waltham Forest
Hoe Street E17
Pretoria Avenue E17
As much as 20% of the east London borough, with Epping Forest to the east and the River Lee to the west, is taken up by open space, parks, reservoirs and, as its name suggests, woodland, with Chingford, Leyton, Leytonstone and, closest to Stoneydown Park, Walthamstow as its principal centres.
One of five London boroughs designated as hosts for London’s 2012 Olympic Games (with the velodrome to be built in Leyton), Waltham Forest has the 11th largest non-white minority ethnic population in England and Wales, including a community of over 30,000 Afro-Caribbeans/Africans and 17,000 people of Pakistani origin, and the fifth largest Muslim population in the country. It also ranks 19th among local authorities for over-crowded housing conditions, 29 th for unemployment and 17 th for the number of single-parent households.
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Waltham Forest’s Cultural Legacy The borough has a long and notable tradition as a centre for the arts. The Arts & Crafts movement, led William Morris, took root here in the mid nineteenth century and more
His continuing legacy can be seen in the furniture, fabrics and wallpaper which decorates countless homes and buildings the length and breadth of the country. But his convictions also still resonate in Britain’s cultural or political values and many reflect the aims of the Speakers’ Corner initiative: “It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make experience last.”
“I hope that we shall have leisure from war – war commercial, as well as war of the bullet and the bayonet; leisure “No man is good enough to be another’s master.” “I do no “History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created.” The William Morris Gallery in the former family home on Forest Road, Walthamstow celebrates the great man’s life and work. |
Design Process Under Way
In June, Central St Martins College organised two workshops at which local residents and pupils from the local primary schools enjoyed themselves working with plastescine and other materials on ideas which, over time, will contribute to the design of Stoneydown Park’s Speakers’ Corner. 
Stoneydown Primary School has already made its creative mark on the local environment. Children working with Linda Hughes, a professional artist and school parent, have designed and painted the Bridge Project, a series of panels which now decorate once vandalised railway bridges in the streets around the school. The bridges form part of the annual E17 art trail, put together by local artists.
Speakers’ Corner Prototype at Stoneydown School
Speakers’ Corner came to Stoneydown for the school’s open day on 11 July. It was first set up in the Park but then driven by the rain into the school playground. Despite the poor weather parents and children alike took to the stage and thoroughly enjoyed both decorating and performing on it.
Stoneydown Committee Takes Shape
On 19 November, a number of those whom SCT in the summer came together at the Queens Road Community Centre to set up a Stoneydown Speakers’ Corner Founding Committee with a welcome pledge of basic administrative support from Waltham Forest Council. There was a great deal of enthusiasm for creating a permanent Speakers’ Corner in the park if it can be funded and it is hoped that Central St Martins College will be able to work with Waltham Forest College, Willowfield Secondary School, the local primary schools and the Council on a design approach. The Committee plans to begin planning for a project launch when it meets again in the new year.
Committee Plans Design Competition as Council Funds Park Improvements
- Local schoolchildren have their say on the Speakers’ Corner design
Shortly after November’s meeting Waltham Forest Council announced that it would fund a competion to design a permanent Speakers’ Corner for Stoneydown Park which it would then install as part of a series of planned enhancements in the park. A very well attended meeting on 19 January 2010 agreed an outline brief through which the local community could be fully involved in the development of competing designs by teams of Central St Martin College students.
- Examining plans on site
The Committee plans to consult local people before deciding which design will adorn the park in time for the project’s launch, probably in the summer. An open day took place on 2 March during which local residents, users of the park, pupils of the local schools and their parents and others had a chance to have their say about how the four competing teams of Central St Martin students should develop their designs.
Now, armed with a wealth of local knowledge and ideas, the students will be working on their detailed designs in a competition which will be judged at the end of April.
