Everyone who has lived, worked or simply passed through Dagenham’s Becontree Estate is invited to share their stories, photos and memories as part of a community-focused arts project.
This Used To Be Fields will explore the rich history of the estate, built in the 1920s and 30s to provide more homes for east London’s swelling population and to house soldiers returning from the First World War.
The project is run by the Barbican in collaboration with Create and Historypin and will see a public mural created by artist Chad McCail as well as a communal digital archive.
To add your own personal history to the archive, take your photos and stories along to sharing events at Valence House Museum, Becontree Avenue, on August 19 or September 16 from 5pm to 6pm.
You can also drop in between 2pm and 4pm every Tuesday and the Historypin team will digitise your photos and record your story, or alternatively visit historypin.com/thisusedtobefields to add your photos and memories online.
According to a project spokesman, the Becontree Estate is one of the most striking examples of the scale of social change in inter-war London.
Four square miles was converted into enough homes for some 10,000 people, making it the largest residential estate in the world at the time.
The arrival of the Ford and May & Baker (now Sanofi) plants helped to transform the housing estate into an industrial hub for east London.
Lanarkshire-based artist McCail will create the mural through “conversation and collaboration” with people in Barking and Dagenham, said a spokesman.
“Murals have long constituted articulations of political comment and public protest,” he added.
“They were created by artists who wished to work outside of commercial galleries to make art that was more directly relevant to local communities.”
Additional support for the project has come from action-research programme Creative Barking and Dagenham and Barking and Dagenham Council, as one of their four Landmark Commissions in 2014.
Click here to find out more.
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