South Harrow heritage public mural art design and installation
Harrow Council asked artists to create a piece of public realm artwork to be placed underneath the train bridge in South Harrow, North West London. The piece had to follow themes of inspiring happiness, building a sense of community, celebrating the history & heritage of South Harrow and creating something that both residents and tourists would want to stop to take a photo of.
The commissioning process is part of Harrow Council’s drive to revitalise the identity of the borough’s district centre through creative-placemaking.
The train bridge and wall are infrastructure owned by London Underground Ltd.
Heritage mural art design and installation
The process
WeTheSeeds were asked to create 2 mural digital designs that fitted the brief and were up against competing public arts organisations at this stage. Once the mural design options were created, they would be shared with local ward councillors and a selection of the community for voting on. The designs with the most votes would be chosen to move forward with to be installed within the public realm.
Growing the seeds
It was important for us to understand South Harrow’s history to begin to create an identity
for it’s present and future. Whilst creating both of our designs with our design team, we sourced information from local history books, online sources and testimonies from blog posts. We even got a chance to speak briefly with local traders.
We produced the below research document, as a justification to why we created our public mural artwork design in a way in which fitted the initial brief given to us by the council.
The feedback received was extremely positive, as ward councillors and the community voted WeTheSeeds Design 1: “We Are South Harrow, South Harrow We Are” as the winning design!
Phase 1 of the design was then installed by AJ Wells using enamel panels onto the site.
This was the large face of the design, which was situated underneath the bridge itself. Photos of the successful installation are below, and phase 2 of the project continues with the south and north facing sides of the bridge.
Local press also reported on the installation of the public artwork commission.
