Art in the Park: Interview with artist Lucy Harrison

Artist Lucy Harrison. Image © Nicola Tree

Lucy Harrison was one of the artists selected to create a series of works that reflected the creative communities that surround the Olympic Park. “As part of the new landscape in the Olympic Park, the Olympic Delivery Authority commissioned a series of permanent art works by local and international artists, to reflect the creative communities that surround the Park and to ensure that art and artists would remain a core character of east London after Games”, the artist explains in the project’s website.

In this clip, Lucy talks to us about her experience creating the ‘Mapping Your Manor’ project in 2011 whilst construction on the park was still ongoing. It consisted of a series of audio recordings made with people who lived or worked close to the edge of the Olympic Park at the time, many of them made while on walks devised with a local walking group The Newham Striders.

The recordings are intended to be listened to whilst walking around the park, with audio to be listened to at each of the ten trees planted as part of Ackroyd and Harvey’s commission ‘History Trees’.

They feature songs and poems by local artists, as well as more general audios about daily life in the community, such as a recording of local befriender group, ‘The Good Companions’, making Oxtail stew. The clips can be heard here.

Mapping your Manor. Image © James Robertshaw

As well as the audio recordings, Lucy created a project called ‘Light Up Your Street’ which aimed to raise awareness and understanding of one piece in the park: RUN by Monica Bonvicini.

Stratford Grapevine was commissioned by TfL for the Art on the Underground project. In total, three issues of a free newspaper were produced and distributed at Stratford station. It contained contributions from local people after the London 2012 Games was announced.