Community

Hope Wall Community Art Project

The concept of Hope Wall is inspired by the remarkable public monuments of G.F. Watts’s memorial at Postman’s Park and Mary Watts’s Cemetery Chapel, Compton. The Watts Chapel is an excellent example of how an artist can bring together diverse voices from individuals of varying expertise to produce an exemplary, unified and quality art project.

The Hope Wall is currently being created by the local community with the support of the potter Myra McDonnell and Writers in Residence Gavin Goodwin and Amy Barnes, to facilitate and draw together the community’s creative input. This will take the form of plaques with a terracotta tile boarder which will become part of the outer wall of the Watts Gallery Sculpture Gallery.

The submissions of 20 to 30 words of text about Watts Gallery, Chapel and/or Compton, will form the basis of the plaques to be made by Myra McDonnell and the press moulded tiles made by local people will surround the plaques. These will be seen by visitors as they enter the building and will celebrate Watts Gallery’s position as a national gallery in the heart of a village, for future generations.

Examples of texts so far submitted

The Watts Gallery is a place where the past meets the future, where myth joins reality, where the principle of beauty embraces the facts of truth.

Sir Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate 1999-2009

"The love of Compton captured in tiles,
So beautiful, so amazing, lining the walls.
Everyone’s hands, everyone’s help,
Forever there, sunlight smiling
On patterns through time."

Lucy, age 10