Commissions

Lu Williams

Ebbsfleet Citizen Handbook

Lu Williams, Ebbsfleet Citizen Handbook, 2024. Photo: Sam Wainwright.

Lu Williams, Ebbsfleet Citizen Handbook, 2024. Photo: Sam Wainwright.

Lu Williams, Ebbsfleet Citizen Handbook, 2024. Photo: Sam Wainwright.

Lu Williams. Photo: Sam Wainwright.

Lu Williams, Ebbsfleet Citizen Handbook, 2024. Photo: Sam Wainwright.

Ebbsfleet Citizens Handbook was commissioned by Cement Fields for Ebbsfleet Citizen Archive and is made in collaboration between artist Lu Williams and current residents in and around Ebbsfleet garden city.

This alternative guide to the area features written histories and folklore, visual documentation and interactive sections for residents to add their own memories and dreams for the area. The hand-crafted artefact is intended to be passed down between generations, preserving and sharing the rich identity of Ebbsfleet, Greenhithe, Swanscombe and Northfleet, allowing the publication to grow into the future.

Ebbsfleet Citizens Handbook came together over 10 months of community workshops, public events, walks, research and call outs for contributions. Led by Lu, local people were invited to join hands-on creative zine-making workshops, meet fellow residents to think about the nature of home, place and memory, what they might want from the new city, and how these reflections could be captured in the Handbook.

Inside opens with area introductions by historian Christoph Bull, followed by illustrations, handmade collages, poetry, photography and personal messages contributed by residents. Tucked inside a front pocket is a sticker sheet inviting people to complete the cover stories with their own customisations. A full colour 68-page zine of residents’ artworks can be found in a second back pocket. A pull out poster features citizen drawings of their own homes and potential future homes on one side, and scans of handmade plasticine fridge magnets on the reverse, generated from a workshop with Lu and local families at the Ebbsfleet Fusion Festival in 2023. Readers can also learn of local groups and activities, and discover exercises for past, current and incoming residents.

Ebbsfleet Citizens Handbook is part of Ebbsfleet Citizen Archive, a community-led project capturing and preserving the varied stories and histories of the people and places of Ebbsfleet, Greenhithe, Swanscombe, and Northfleet, inviting local people to work with artists, historians and fellow residents, to explore the area’s unique historic and contemporary identity through objects, sounds, videos and photographs, collected by and from residents past, present and future.

Ebbsfleet Citizen Archive is funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England, and supported by Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, Gravesham Libraries, Dartford Museum and Libraries, and Kent Archives.

All the materials gathered through the project can be now be accessed via ebbsfleetcitizenarchive.org, where you can also upload your own contributions.