Collaborative Toponymy consists in the co-creation of 300 street names for a new government garden village to be built in Essex.  

This project originates as a public art commission where artists were invited to propose a work for the ‘empty’ site to be developed. The plot is currently agricultural land, ancient woodlands and a family golf course.

Focussing on histories, ecologies and community values we created a searchable database of over 300 street names, then a guide. This project showed the abundance of life and connections that is latent in any location. Human and non-human life unfolds in layered narratives that are interconnected and interdependent: whether we acknowledge the first woman hung for witch trial, or an inspirational female Muslim CEO, or the most ancient name for the Thames that reveals the animistic origins of our common spirituality.

The guide Collaborative Toponymy includes a text by sociologist Megan Tinsley from the University of Manchester and is available in all major central UK libraries.

In 2023 the project featured in Antennae Journal and in the anthology Arte e Spazio Pubblico published in Rome also in 2023.