making workshop
Making a surface material from West Norwood Cemetery assets
Type | 3-hour workshops, across 2 sessions
Client | West Norwood Cemetery, National Lottery Heritage Fund, Lambeth
Status | Completed June 2023
Pilot Project | Co-Designing a celebratory pavilion
Collaboration | London Festival of Architecture 2023
The West Norwood Cemetery has a policy of keeping all natural materials on site. In June 2023 we held a making workshop for the London Festival of Architecture (LFA) 2023. The workshop was open to the public and we made surfaces using materials from the cemetery, such as soil, felled branches from the trees, wood and and/or waste from the site. The surfaces will be used as a building material throughout the year in a process of co-design to explore craft techniques and develop community-led architectural surface materials .
This was part of an ongoing outreach programme as the cemetery undertakes refurbishment works that are funded by London Borough of Lambeth with National Lottery funding, awarded jointly by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and the Big Lottery Fund, and Friends of West Norwood Cemetery, and with the support of Norwood Forum and the wider community.
West Norwood Cemetery is part of London’s ‘magnificent seven’ Victorian cemeteries. We hope that this outreach and engagement programme for West Norwood Cemetery will influence positively the other six cemeteries, with an aim to further collaborations amongst the seven.
This event is part of a year-long-long 5 year long community engagement programme that West Norwood Cemetery is delivering celebrating the green assets of this landscape in the heart of West Norwood. The commentary cemetery is delivering an outreach programme to enable visitors and volunteers to learn about the cemetery's rich heritage and develop valuable skills. We are encouraging more people to visit, explore and appreciate all that the cemetery has to offer, whilst continuing to maintain a balance with the ongoing bereavement services, as well as the peace and tranquillity that the cemetery has to offer.
Here is a small summary of the different tiles everyone made. The West Norwood Cemetery will keep these tiles and use them to build a communal space or installation that is celebratory.
In June 2023 we held a workshop of making using natural materials from the cemetery to celebrate its green assets in collaboration with the local community. The surface materials we made used natural materials such as soil, felling branches from the trees, and/or waste from the site. The workshop had three parts to it:
Step 1: preparing
1. We went on a walk around West Norwood Cemetery and foraged flora and wild things. (No fauna though, promise). Each participant had a paper bag courtesy of a local business called Cub and Pudding and they filled the bag with local green assets.
step 2: making
2. We returned to the workshop table and each participant cast their forage into either plaster, clay or resin. We had committed, enthusiastic and experimental young makers which was great to see!
step 3: preserving
3. At the end of the session, we asked every participant three questions:
What is your name and age
What do you enjoy doing in a green space
Using your new material, what could be built to aid this?
As a result, we had some fabulous and surprising answers. These surfaces will be used as a building material throughout the year in a process of co-design to explore craft techniques and develop community-led architectural surface materials.
The surfaces made in this workshop will be used as a building material throughout the year in a process of co-design to explore craft techniques and develop community-led architectural surface materials.
You can also try this at home following our instructions below:
