Author Archives: Sarah Butler

Throughout 2009-2010, Sarah Butler worked with the fantastic photographer, Eva Sajovic, on Home from Home, a series of portraits and stories of people in Elephant and Castle. The project was driven by a desire to document the stories and connections present in the current Elephant and Castle, as the dramatic regeneration plans for the area start to be realised. As well as a gorgeous book, the photographs and texts are available online.

Word Garden is a digital space curated by the writer, Sarah Butler. It is a commission by UP Projects as part of the Secret Garden Project.

The Secret Garden Project is a new programme of temporary commissions and pop up art events by young and established artists created specially for a trail of London’s secret gardens, lesser known green spaces, and urban corners. The Secret Garden Project website gives full information about all the commissions and associated events.

Sarah has created a body of new online writing inspired by the other Secret Garden Project commissions, conversations with project artists and with audiences.

Sarah also developed temporary installations and led an afternoon of story walks and creative activities in July 2010 at Cremorne Gardens, as part of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s In Transit festival.

Sarah Butler was writer-in-residence in Lower Belvedere throughout 2010. Her commission (from Bexley council, funded through the Heritage Lottery Scheme) was linked to a large regeneration scheme in the area, focused on infrastructure and public realm improvements. Sarah’s commission was to collect stories from local communities and create a series of new text pieces to be installed in the area. A range of the stories are now online and the installation of the texts is currently in progress.

Lower Belvedere, in the London Borough of Bexley, is a fascinating area, once a broad stretch of marshland, close to the Pleasure Gardens at Erith, it is now home to Crossness Sewage Works, a huge new rubbish incinerator, an industrial estate, and a tiny patch of precious marshland, some of which is designated a protected Nature Reserve.

Sarah worked with Year 8 students at Trinity School to explore the marshland’s history and ecology. Sessions included work with the Local Studies Department, and the council planning department. The students responded creatively to the area, creating myths, historical fictions, and proposing a new name for one of the many drainage dykes in the area. The project was part of CABE’s Engaging Places Scheme. You can read some of the students’ responses to the project so far on the Engaging Places Website.

Sarah Butler was writer-in-residence on the Central line from March – September 2009, a commission by Art on the Underground which involved working with staff across the whole of the Central line. New writing, by Sarah, in collaboration with London Underground staff, is available online. Posters and booklets were distributed across the tube network in 2009.