Voices of Wandsworth WAF 2025

Origami • Storytelling • Community Messages •  Installation

Following the momentum of the original installation at London Design Festival 2024, Voices of Wandsworth was re-commissioned for a new chapter in Roehampton, supported by a Wandsworth Arts Fringe grant as part of the London Borough of Culture 2025.

This iteration grew into a more intimate, community-rooted version of the project. Instead of a grand festival display, the focus shifted toward deep engagement with residents of the Alton Estate — centring conversation, gentle making, and shared experiences and an intimate installation at the Roehampton Family Hub.

Workshops gathered stories from long-time residents, young families, and passing visitors alike. Each butterfly carried a Roehampton voice. The final installation, though smaller in scale, held a profound sense of place, belonging, and continuity — expanding the original concept into a hyperlocal portrait of community life.

Roehampton has a distinct social and cultural landscape, and this project responded directly to that. Workshops were held in welcoming local spaces where conversations unfolded naturally — memories of the estate, hopes for the future, reflections on change.

The installation organically and fluidly became a holding space for the community, offering a gentle, tactile way for people to see themselves represented.

The Creative Process

For this Roehampton chapter, I shaped the project around intimacy, trust and accessibility. I centred the process on slow, meaningful making: open community workshops held across the Alton Estate where people could sit, talk, fold paper, and share stories about belonging, memory and change.

I designed workshops specifically for this community, ensuring every voice — young, old, long-time residents and newly arrived neighbours — felt welcomed. What moved me most was how the making continued beyond the workshops: residents began folding butterflies at home, dropping them into a collection box at Alton Library. This gentle, organic participation became part of the artwork itself, building a collective expression of Roehampton life.

On the day of the celebration, workshop participants and community partners showed up to see their creations suspended in the installation. We had invited Martine Kristelle St. Juste – actor & performance artist who gave a mesmerising performance inspired by the butterflies and their messages.

Community Impact

• Over 500 butterflies created, many made independently at home and gifted back to the project.

• People who had never taken part in arts activities before joined in — drawn by the simplicity of the process and the emotional resonance of the prompt.

• Along with 100+ messages, the project became a conversation starter on the estate: neighbours recognised each other’s messages, shared memories and built new connections through making.

• Families participated across generations, with children teaching parents and grandparents to fold butterflies.

• The final installation reflected the community’s voice in its purest form — not a spectacle, but a tapestry of everyday stories held together by care, curiosity and shared spac