Battersea Power Station - Redevelopment Project
Over the summer break last year I was approached by the communities’ team working on Battersea Power Station redevelopment. They were looking for an artist to work with who would be able to design a project for local primary school children to engage with the site. This was the first of these types of projects I had been asked to do since starting the MFA and I wanted to approach it in a very different way than I had previously and made sure that it was relevant to my practice and fulfilled my aims as an artist as well as satisfying the client’s needs. As it turned out this wasn’t an easy task.
Battersea Power Station were very keen on setting a competition for school children to create artwork responding to the site and my role was to introduce this to over 1000 children through 1 hour long sessions in over 15 local primary schools. This became all-consuming and I found myself getting so caught up in the logistics and simply gathering the strength to get through this mammoth amount of work that I had little creative energy for anything else.
I did however have a guided tour around the old power station and was lucky enough to be taken to the base of the chimney and shown how the development is taking shape. I was able to take photos and talk to the construction workers which was extremely interesting and like with the Canary Wharf residency, I have kept all my notes with the aim of archiving them for future use.
Professional Toolkit:
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Problem solving
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Client negotiation
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Presentation and teaching skills
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Collaboration and team work
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Lesson development and structure
