Talkaoke was at the grand opening of Beechwood Village’s brand new community centre ‘the Beech’ in Basildon, Essex. We were gathering ideas and thoughts for a new public art for the area.

One of our major projects is Beechwood Village/  Craylands Public Art Commission in Basildon, Essex.  We’ve been working at Craylands Estate over a period of 9 years during its redevelopment into
Beechwood  Village Estate, and finished our second public art  project there, commissioned by Swan Foundation. between 2016-17 we responded to a brief was for a public art piece in the  estate that reflected the collective imagination of the  community. We spent a lot of time talking to residents  and understanding their concerns and wanted to  produce an artwork that projected the values of the  local residents. We engaged more than 200 residents of  all ages at a conceptual level in the project. Using  Talkaoke and instant visualisation, we discovered that  the most popular theme from residents was something  that had an ancient and mystical feel to it, something  that was in contrast to Basildon’s new town modernist  aesthetic.