The Cody Dock Lea Way Celebration: 17th Sept, 11–7 pm

Lydia Thornley is a locally-based designer, creative director and sketcher who often passes through Cody Dock on her screen break sketch walks. Cody Dock and the Lea’s industrial landscape and wildlife are regulars in Lydia’s prolific Instagram feed @lydiathornley and they were the subject of her panoramic sketch Breather for 26 Inspirations at the 2022 Bloomsbury Festival. Lydia led the community mural drawing at Cody Dock Live; other local sketching sessions have included sketch and walk tours at Bromley-by-Bow Gasworks organised by St William for Newham Heritage Month, and Surge Co-op’s River Draw activity at the Long Wall Ecology Garden. 

Cecily Loveys-Jervoise is an artist and art educator who graduated from Kingston School of Art in 2020 and is now a student at Alternative Art MA School of the Damned. Her sculpture and learning projects involve working with unexpected aspects of the natural world and craft to bring people together, form friendships and tell stories through play. She often uses clay she digs in the ground and natural dyes to explore tactility, narratives and collaboration.

RubyK is a multi disciplinary artist, poet and musician generating unique visual and sonic collages in the infinite realm between the mystical and the digital. Taking inspiration from their Celtic roots and the East-London urban landscape they were forged in, their voice floats between mournful melodies and punchy hip-hop inspired lyricism. Laying down vocalist roots as a member of the quasi-conceptual music collective Karmiq Lareef, they soon blossomed as a solo lyricist and MC through the guidance of creative collaborators clockwork graveyard. Music for RubyK, as a self-titled Urban Faerie, is a means to spell-cast. Their poetry and lyrics dissects hyper-sensitivity and attachment to folly in this dimension, with a sense of introspection and connection to the collective consciousness.

The exhibition showcases the work of University of Westminster Architecture Students: Pranjal Bafna, Archie Brown, Galina Dimova, Adam Din, Sean Hamilton, William Lambert, Manu Mohan Mohandas, Aya Nasr, Chris Painter, Megan Rees, Blessing Sulaiman, Lucy Turner, Hamza Khan, Nicholas Kousoulou, Julia Wladysiak and the MArch, RIBA II, Design Studio 20 led by Maria Kramer and Corinna Dean

Having had the opportunity to co-design and co-built ‘The Growing Space’ Live Project, students were asked to develop visions for the local area, based on investigative research and live engagement with local stakeholders, which culminated into a group masterplan integrating students’ multi programmatic proposals.

Designs were referring to critical questions, such as:

• How do we create neighbourhoods which encourage social interactions and place making, whilst promoting ecological awareness and ‘civic-ness’?
• How do interventions have the potential to act as vessels of interaction with social and ecological opportunities, shaping architecture, whilst strengthening local identity and culture?
• How can we consider the participation of not just human communities and their livelihood practices that intersect with natural processes, but also of beyond-human entities and forces such as other creatures whose paths intersect with them?

University of Westminster
Funders: QHT (University of Westminster)
Sponsors: Rodeca
Collaborators: Webb Yates Engineers, OfCA, Nicolas Alexander
Initiator: Maria Kramer

Nature Nurtures is a cross-sector project led by London Wildlife Trust with partners Spread the Word, Black Girls Hike CIC and London Youth. The project provides a space and tools for young people (aged 16-25) to link natural heritage with creative arts to take action for nature whilst exploring their creative expression.

Nature Nurtures achieves this by hosting workshops for young people led by guest artists and project partners to build an inclusive collective of new friends, supporting each other’s well being, whilst reconnecting with their sense of play, curiosity and wonder in the natural world.