<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=998375496925788&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">

Watford BID

We Are Acuity were challenged by Watford BID to take a successful series of Watford High Street banners to the next level. The result was a a pop-up art gallery that helped locals and visitors alike connect to the pride and passion of our historic Hertfordshire town.

Amplifying local engagement with a high-profile gallery event.

We Are Acuity were challenged by Watford BID to take a successful series of Watford High Street banners to the next level. The result was a pop-up art gallery that helped locals and visitors alike connect to the pride and passion of our historic Hertfordshire town.

Listen instead?

"The reaction to the gallery and the display of statues and banners was exceptional."

Glen Hempenstall - Marketing & Communications Manager

Challenge

We’d created banners for Watford High Street based on a concept that explored the places and activities that make Watford such a great place to live, work and visit. We’d paired up with young local artist Marco Caruso, who produced a series of fantastic sculptures which captured the spirit of places like Vicarage Road, Cassiobury Park and The Palace Theatre.

 

Our design team then used those sculptures as the basis for this stylised series of banners, which not only helped to promote local things to see and do, but also brought a real splash of colour and eye-catching design to the busy street.

 

Now it was time to take what we’d achieved and create a pop-up gallery in the famous shopping centre; it would be an event which showed off the creativity in the project, and again helped to ignite a sense of pride in local people as they saw iconic Watford places brought to intricately-realised life. We had to be pragmatic with budget and efficient with turn-around.

Iconic_Watford_Launch_SJ_034

 

Insight

Having worked in close collaboration with artist Marco since the beginning, we’d been witness to the astounding level of thought, planning and detail in each of the sculptures. From colours and materials to the backgrounds these pieces of art were presented against, every piece was meticulous and astounding. The only issue was that they were fairly small. We needed a way to explode them into the consciousness of passing shoppers, so they would be drawn in instead of passing by.

 

The answer was to take these intricately detailed sculptures and present professionally-shot images of them as large as possible. They would initially catch the eye and pique curiosity, before shoppers would come in to see the real things.

Solution

The gallery’s home was an empty unit in the shopping centre, so we had the stage and space to create an artistic journey though Watford’s landmarks, with the character sculptures acting as map pins or sign posts on that journey. Images of the sculptures were reproduced on huge banners, along with other campaign wall graphics, which gave the gallery space the real wow factor it needed to draw people in.

 

Once they came through the door, they could marvel at the quality of the sculptures themselves, in a space that they could relax and dwell in. We produced an ‘Iconic Watford’ gallery programme that contained information on the artist, the sculptures and the places featured so that visitors could really get the most from the experience, and feel pride in the place they lived.

 

To encourage a deeper level of engagement with visitors, we also produced voting cards so that gallery guests could let us know which was their favourite sculpture.

Iconic_Watford_Launch_SJ_106 Iconic_Watford_Launch_SJ_102 Iconic_Watford_Launch_SJ_103 Iconic_Watford_Launch_SJ_099 Iconic_Watford_Launch_SJ_098

 

Results

The gallery launched to much fanfare, with an evening event that saw local dignitaries and the creative team mingling and sharing memories of the places featured. The buzz continued during the three days it was open to shoppers, with over 300 people taking the time to pop in to the pop up and vote on their favourite sculpture.

 

The gallery was originally intended to be the penultimate home of the sculptures, which were planned to be ‘hidden’ around the town as part of a discovery trail powered by an app. Unfortunately this part of the campaign had to be put on hold due to the pandemic, but the reaction of the public at the gallery shows that this would have been another winning way to promote pride in our town.

 

One immersive Watford 'feel-good' experience.
24 page printed Gallery Guide
12 vibrant iconic Banners.
3 exciting days for the Town.
A host of engaged local A-listers
300+ delighted Gallery visitors