April News from Fellowship Square

The Council has been developing the Fellowship Square campus as a welcoming space for all residents to enjoy, creating a new neighbourhood and cultural centre in the heart of the borough. As part of this ongoing transformation, which has seen state-of-the-art fountains installed, we have been building and planting The Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Garden and Sensory Garden which will open in summer 2024, as well as an all-weather footpath through Chestnuts Field.  

You may notice the installation of a sculpture in April, The Arch by Henry Moore, which is finding its home here in Waltham Forest for the next four years. We’re excited to be adding this element to the North of the campus and will be keeping you updated with further news as we get closer to the opening of this new tranquil space.  

Information panels will be installed in the spring which will tell the story of the gardens and sculpture, including the original five relief sculptures on the north face of the Town Hall by John Frances Kavanagh. If you’d like to learn more about Henry’s Moore’s The Arch you can find out more below. 

The Arch has been described as ‘the culmination of Moore’s thoughts on the body as architecture.’ The original inspiration came from a fragment of bone, Moore’s assertion that ‘the bone is the inner structure of all living forms.’ It plays visually on the triumphal arches of past architecture as well as naturally occurring structures such as sea arches and caves. 

Originally made in bronze, this version is a fibreglass cast made in 1971 for installation on the roof of the Forte de Belvedere in Florence. This positioning in Florence brought into relief the relationship between the artwork and architecture while simultaneously highlighting its organic form. Since then, The Arch has often been positioned in dialogue with architecture in cities as far flung as Columbus, Indiana and Hiroshima, Japan.  

The location at Fellowship Square has been selected to maximise the relationship with Philip Dalton Hepworth’s Grade II listed Waltham Forest Town Hall. The Arch will act as a welcoming structure, inviting residents and visitors to explore the newly landscaped gardens, sensory and reflective North side of Fellowship Square.