One in five Walthamstow Residents taking part in the E17 Art Trail 2017!

Over 7000 artists, residents and workplaces in Walthamstow invite you to enjoy every element of the E17 Art Trail 2017. Infused with a STEAM theme, painters, sculptors, poets, choirs, photographers, designers, ceramicists, and dancers welcome you to enjoy exhibitions, performances and workshops in the studios and streets, parks and pubs, cafes and shopping centres, faith spaces and community places. (STEAM is the acronym acknowledging the influence of creative disciplines in STEM subjects: Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths.)

The non-hierarchical nature of the E17 Art Trail and its democratic invitation to participate means that professional artists exhibit alongside 23 schools, colleges and under 5’s centres. A resident-led project, 1000 Swifts, is encouraging even more local people to take part in the festival by making and displaying a swift in their gardens or windows to celebrate the Walthamstow Wetlands, the largest urban wetland in Europe opening later this summer. 

This year artists have been collaborating with academics at Queen Mary University of London, University College London and Birkbeck University of London to bring new technologies and a talks programme to the festival. Explorations include painting with light, local connections to coding early computers and searching for the building blocks of life in space. 

As in previous years, the opportunity to discover artists’ workspaces in studios, workshops, sheds and open houses is a big draw for audiences, inspiring them to realise their own creative ideas. The E17 Art Trail offers a supportive platform to test ideas and the audience are an integral part of developing new work. Many projects will go on to be showcased at festivals and exhibited elsewhere over the summer months, including the Walthamstow Garden Party and the Barbican Centre. 

The Trail Guide is available from participating venues, Waltham Forest Libraries and online here.