Call to Holy Ground: Connecting People and Place

Abstract

This photo essay describes a community art project that took place during 2020-2021. It was initiated, curated and managed by Art and Christianity and engaged the artist collaborative Fourthland. Through engagement with two active worshiping communities—Christian and Hindu—in Leytonstone, east London, the artists drew together cultural narratives, personal belief, orthodox religious practice and theology, ecological activism, art and performance. The project unfolded organically with participants directing its focus and flourishing; the artists structured and choreographed its visual and performative elements.

Keywords:

• Hinduism
• Christianity
• interfaith
• social practice
• community art project
• performance art
• site-specific art
• ecology

Notes

1. https://www.fourthland.com/about (accessed May 2023).

2. “Launched in 2017, the Mayor of London’s Borough of Culture award brings Londoners together. It puts culture at the heart of local communities, where it belongs, illuminating the character and diversity of London’s boroughs and showing culture is for everyone,” https://www.london.gov.uk/programmes-strategies/arts-and-culture/current-culture-projects/london-borough-culture (accessed May 2023).

3. The Zoom sessions were open to both communities, but it was the Hindu women who joined them.

4. There are two artists in Fourthland, Isik and Eva. Eva was in Spain during the Covid lockdowns, and participated in the project remotely.

5. The nuns and many of the women from the Church and Temple already knew each other through an interfaith network in the area.

6. See https://leytonstonelovesfilm.com/ (accessed May 2023). Leytonstone Loves Film is a free film festival, which began in 2019 as part of the Borough of Culture events (Leytonstone was the birthplace of Alfred Hitchcock, one of the reasons given for the launch of the film festival).

Additional information

Funding

Call to Holy Ground was funded by the Arts Council of England, the Morel Trust, the Prince’s Trust and the Lady Peel Charitable Trust.

Notes on contributors

Laura Moffatt

Laura Moffatt is Director of Art and Christianity, the UK’s leading educational organization in the field of art and religion. She is co-author of Contemporary Church Buildings (John Wiley, 2007) and co-editor of Contemporary Art in British Churches (ACE, 2009) and sits on the London Diocesan Advisory Committee and the Church Buildings Council.