BCM Storytelling Chair by Rachel Gornall
About the Creation
For the Haringey Feast, Rachel co-created one storytelling chair with members of the local community at Hartington Park, North Tottenham and another inspired by her own artistic practice. Hartington Park holds special significance for Rachel as she has built community, grown friendships and laid roots through her engagement with fellow park users and the wider Hartington community.
The Hartington chairs explore the importance of community, shared spaces and nature as a vital community resource and way of bringing people together. They continue to be used as story chairs to collect the memories of residents who remember the streets houses and businesses that preceded the park and the experiences of those that have grown up with the park and for whom that park has connected them as a community.
About the Artist
Rachel has over 20 years’ experience working in the creative arts and has exhibited her colourful and delicate textile artworks across the UK and internationally. Originally from The North she’s spent the last 10 years in Tottenham.
She is an artist working in response to an endless fascination with qualities of light and the infinite stimulation of the patterns of life. Rachel brings her enthusiasm for people, colour and visual energy to everything she does. Her meticulously crafted, often delicate, artworks celebrate riotous hues and natural forms, predominantly using hand dyed cloth, printed papers, threads and light.
About the Community
Local residents from the Hartington Park area took part in a workshop with Rachel Gornall to co-create one of the storytelling chairs, and to provide inspiration for the other.
Hartington Park was created in the mid-1970s from the demolition of terraced streets, including Hartington Road from which the park gets its name. The insertion of this new park in a busy, densely populated area gave North Tottenham residents some much needed green space.
The Friends of Hartington Park and Carbuncle Passage help look after this beautiful pocket of Haringey
