Memory Maps

Memory Maps, is a project first launched in Essex between the University of Essex and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The project involves noticing where you are in a deep and involved way and capturing it primarily through creative writing. It is about people and their relationship with a place or a particular area. Some people respond to places through painting and as part of the Memory Maps project the V&A has published 150 works by artists who were inspired by the Essex landscape. The works range from classic English landscapes by John Constable in the eighteenth century to popular scenes by Barbara Jones. Her watercolours formed part of the 1940s Recording Britain project. This was a Second World War scheme to record landscapes, buildings and ways of life that were thought to be under threat and, because of its closeness to Europe, Essex figures strongly. Visit the website of the V&A Museum to find out more details about the project, to read many more contributions from other well known Essex artists and to view the paintings.
To go to the V&A Museum website click here.

Well known Essex writers such as Billy Bragg, Marina Warner, Ken Worpole and Robert Macfarlane have made their contribution to the project. We want to share with you their experiences, responses and memories.

Singer and songwriter Billy Bragg, renowned for his blend of folk, punk-rock, and protest music recalls one of his fondest memories of his childhood. It concerns the time his father let him drive his green Morris Oxford very, very slowly across the field that served as a car park behind Shoeburyness beach.
To read the Real Essex article please click here.
To read the complete article visit the V&A Museum site.
To go to Billy Bragg's website click here.

Marina Warner's works include novels and short stories as well as studies of female myths and symbols. Marina writes about Francis Bacon in Wivenhoe, his friends and the James Bond connections with this small town in Essex.
To read the Real Essex article please click here.
To read the complete article visit the V&A Museum site.
To go to Marina Warner's website click here.

Ken Worpole recalls the times he spent at Mersea Stone. For him its the perfect place for watching the Blackwater Estuary change before your eyes and the complete transformation of the horizon as the tides rise and fall.
To read the article please click here.
To go to Ken Worpole's website please click here.

Robert Macfarlane is a travel writer, cultural historian, and literary critic. His memory map talks of a September night on the sea-wall at Dengie, when he watched the thousands of migrating birds being sent up in sudden clouds by big waves, and then raining down again onto the sluiced mud.
To read the article please click here.

We want you to create your very own Memory Maps by visiting the many places that have inspired so many writers and artists of all kinds in the past and the present. Walk through the countryside, sail the rivers and estuaries, notice the environment, respond to the urban world and its rich history and cultural diversity, drive the roads and lanes, wander on coastal paths or on some of the several long distance footpaths, be a social geographer.

Be inspired and capture your Memory Maps by contributing your own writings, photographs, and images about Essex. Check out the Memory Maps website, email your written submissions to memorymaps@vam.ac.uk and leave something for future generations.