The Places That Link Us
A year-long (2025 - 2026) artistic project reaching across the Rushmoor community and the area, inspiring people with the creation of a new community garden, outdoor sculpture and performance, providing opportunities to create and come together outdoors, and increasing awareness of local green spaces.
The Places That Link Us is co-run by two artists, Barbara Touati-Evans and Judita Vivas, in partnership with the West End Centre and Hawley Community Garden, funded by Farnborough Airport Community Environment Fund and Pride in Place Grant.
With their local communities, the artists will explore how we can connect to our green spaces in more respectful and caring ways. How do the green spaces help us come together? How can we breathe new life into neglected green spaces? Can we establish green “corridors” that interconnect our green spaces and raise environmental awareness?
Over the summer/autumn of 2025, The Places That Link Us will invite Rushmoor residents and visitors to free, child-friendly and open-to-all creative activities and events which will take place in three locations:
Hawley Community Garden (Farnborough)
The West End Centre (Aldershot)
Library Green (Farnborough)
The project will culminate in the opening of a new community garden at the back of the West End Centre in Aldershot (May 2025); a large living sculpture installation built at the Hawley Community Garden, co-created with the participants and made out of natural and found materials (September 2025); an outdoor performance trail which will reconnect Farnborough town centre with the green space by the Library (October 2025); and a public exhibition about the project at the West End Centre (January 2026).
Hawley Community Garden
At the Hawley Community Garden, a space where local people come together to connect, plant and share, Barbara and Judita will focus on the idea of GROW.
In March-April, they will take up an Artist Residency at the community garden to explore what needs to grow, what we want growing and how we do it, not only in terms of plants and nourishment but also community cohesion and climate resilience. Inspired by their time at the garden, the artists will invite the Hawley Garden community and visitors to engage in creative activities during the Open Day and other events during the summer, leading towards the making of the living sculpture installation in September 2025.
Westy Community Garden
As part of the project, the West End Centre in Aldershot, with the help from Blooming Marvellous community gardening group, is building a brand-new community garden at the back of the building, transforming a currently unused, concrete, urban space into a shared green space, due to be opened in May 2025.
Together with the West End Centre, Barbara and Judita will use pop-up stalls in the town centre to run community activities and workshops to creatively explore the idea of BUILD, raising awareness of the new community garden, inviting local communities to leave their mark and use the new green space in the future.
Library Green
CARE will be central to our work at the green space between Farnborough Library and Farnborough Skate Park which Barbara and Judita have temporarily named “Library Green” until a better name is found.
Slotted between grey concrete buildings and fencing that indicates possible future urban development, and a stone’s throw away from the town centre yet currently largely unused and neglected, this green space provides a perfect opportunity for creative activation. During the summer, the artists will invite the local community, especially people living in flats in the town centre, to gather for a series of creative workshops and small events, leading towards an outdoor performance trail in October 2025.