The aim for the project was to produce a ‘Treasures of Chingford Mount’ public art trail, map and associated brand for Chingford Mount, located in North East London in the borough of Waltham Forest.

The purpose is to showcase Chingford Mount’s main points of interest and link numerous strands of local activity highlighting it’s unique qualities, heritage, historical architecture, green spaces, public realm, planned development, interesting local businesses and exciting new community engagement projects and other positive plans across the Town Centre and High Street.

The project aims to help connect local people to their town centre, build a coalition of interests to support the high street in future years, build interest in regeneration and link people to local business, spaces and activities. The focus is on the diverse range and quality of products, services, local shops and restaurants and provide an opportunity to attract new organisations with specialisms missing from the high street. 

The project should also build a shared narrative to support future regeneration plans and could help develop and collect ideas as part of a wider engagement process with other local events and activities. This should all act as a springboard to future activity and generate further interest, feedback and engagement with the town centre in a diverse and inclusive way.

It will also tie in with creating a culture of more active local travel, exercise and well-being and helping to build the residential concept of a 15 minute city.

To start with, WeTheSeeds hosted an focus group session attended by members of the “LoveSouthChingford” community group alongside general members of the local community.

The purpose of the focus group was to understand what local treasures were important to them and raise an opportunity to ask about existing imagery and visual inspiration as we would be creating a brand which would represent them.

The outcome of the focus group can be seen below:

From there we took community feedback and used it to create the first initial directions for a Chingford Mount brand, we then went back to members of the focus group for any final words.

We finalised 3 design directions which had variations in colour and structure and showcased them for voting.

The final branding outcome signed off by stakeholders can be viewed below and also can be seen on the new town centre website: chingfordmount.co.uk

WeTheSeeds partnered with TD360 to create the virtual map, capturing the “treasures” of the area with a 360° virtual camera. The treasures, which included Chingford Mount’s unique qualities including heritage, historical architecture and green spaces were added to the virtual map along with factual information.

Once the window art installation phase had been completed, virtual photographs of the high street shops were also produced and added to the map- ready for launch.

Upon launch day the WeTheSeeds team gave out marketing collateral which included printed maps, tote bags and reward cards to both businesses and members of the public. These all included the new Chingford Mount branding.

The team took groups of the community out on tours and educated them about the campaign, the local treasures and showed them first hand how to use the virtual map.

We produced social media content around the launch day to inspire those in the local area to attend the public art trail, and the content was boosted locally to further increase engagement.

After a successful campaign launch, the virtual map received 1,500 visits within the launch period, 1000 printed maps were given out to members of the public and local businesses and tote bags with the new Chingford Mount branding were all distributed.

WeTheSeeds are working closely with Waltham Forest council to add new engagement opportunities, notable landmarks and activities within the mapping service as the area develops.

You can view the virtual map of Chingford Mount over at: www.td360.co.uk/chingfordmount