Newham has a lot of creative talent within its diverse community, but it’s talent that lacks proper support, development and access to the arts. To address this issue, The East End Art Trail EEAT was developed to share values embodied by Rosetta Arts to the broader public which include: providing quality art exhibitions, education and support to the local community.
Through consultations with people residing in the area from a range of age and community groups, we identified the need for a project such as this. West Ham and Canning Town were in need of public art to enhance the area both culturally and aesthetically. The areas are particularly deprived across a number of indicators as can be seen in the government statistics, Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD 2007), where these areas fall in within the most deprived 15% of locations within Greater London in indices that include Employment, Education Skills and Training, Health Deprivation and Disability and Living Environment.
The East End Art Trail project started in 2011 as a major community engagement project involving artists, members of the public, London Borough of Newham, Stratford Town Hall, Olympic Lottery Distribution and Elba. It provided training, opportunities, experience and creativity for local residents.
The initial project had five connected strands:
- 60 free visual art workshops for the local community.
- A Facilitation Training Course for local people to acquire new skills in facilitating art workshops
- 5 free community events called Artlympics themed on the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games
- A free public exhibition of artworks that were created through the 60 creative workshops as well as at the Artlympics events at Stratford Old Town Hall
- A temporary public art trail consisting of 7 locations in the West Ham and Canning Town area.
Some of the artwork are still on site today, including the two pieces in car park at Rosetta Arts in West Ham, a large scale print outside Star Lane DLR and another that covers the arches of the jazz and music venue in Canning Town – The Archway.
