Tuesday 10th October 2017
Telling the Story of Caledonian Park, London
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In 2016 Hotrod Creations worked with Islington Borough Council to create a successful HLF funding bid to renovate the facilities and public interpretation at Caledonian Park. We are now developing the creative ideas into designs and production.
The client’s ambition is to make the Park’s history more accessible to diverse audiences, many of whom have no in-depth sense of London’s past. The visitors will also be encountering much of the interpretation in small rooms as they climb up the Park’s central clock tower. All elements outside the tower had to be ruggedized to withstand weather and casual or malicious damage.
Our response to these challenges involves a focus on visuals to tell the story of this patch of land over time. Layered text with the images allows visitors to grasp the main points with minimal reading, or explore the story in more depth as desired. Everything else is expressed through dramatic archive images, illustrations and projection.
For the outside interpretation the biggest ‘wow’ moment comes from a 22m frieze of bespoke illustrations showing scenes from the past rendered as ‘robust art’ on 10mm cut-steel panels. Characters appearing in the frieze are encountered online via a simple website, talking about their connection to the Park and how it served their various purposes as sports ground, livestock market, meeting place or, in its most famous incarnation, the extraordinary ‘Caledonian Market’ which was one of the must-see elements of inter-war London. The project will be delivered in total by late summer of 2018