Tom Tobia

Signwriting: Community-led content for Thames View wayfinding

One of the upshots of our time engaging with the communities of Thames View, Barking Reach and Great Fleete, is that there is inadequate wayfinding, particularly in relation to local green spaces suitable for families.

There is provision of signs to a certain degree, but they often use ‘official’ language to point at sites that are generally recognised by more common colloquial/local names.

This is a bit like trying to find your missing pet dog by posting a sign reading ‘LOST Canis lupus familiaris. Answers to Rex’. It doesn’t mean anything to the people it’s trying to reach.

So, we have been asking around and have started to create a wayfinding scheme that better reflects the local understanding of place-names and topographical features. For example, Buzzards Creek is locally known as ‘The Ditch’, and the Ripple Nature Reserve as ‘the bit of green space by the sub-station’.

Not only that but we’re encouraging families to follow interactive routes with peep-holes, clean-graffiti periscopes and more - all built into the scheme.

To read more about the make:good project of which this is part, please search make:good in the left column of this page.