36 C O N T E X T 1 0 6 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 8 A visit to St George in the East a Huguenot chapel and used as a synagogue before becoming a mosque; and the Built on the Rock International Ministry, which occupies a former bed factory behind Bethnal Green Station. Following the building visits, each artist led a series of creative workshops at school. Students could experiment with new creative skills, using techniques such as collage, photomontage and abstract model making to develop their artistic and personal responses to the buildings. The artists interpreted the students’ responses through the three-dimensional artworks, the faith chests. Once completed, students were given the opportunity to comment on the artists’ work at a final evaluation session. The project proposal involved a legacy in the form of resources that would continue to reach out and engage Tower Hamlets residents with the architecture of faith in their borough. The project was designed with replicability in mind, to be disseminated to education professionals as widely as possible. The 10 faith chests provide a physical legacy. They were exhibited in theWhitechapel Idea Store for three weeks in February 2008, bringing the material right to the heart of the community. With a daily throughput of more than 2,000 people making use of the store’s varied services, the social and geographical context of this information hub was exactly suited to bringing the diversity of audience that both the Building Exploratory and the project funders hoped to reach. The audience also consisted of visitors from outside the borough who travelled specifically to explore the project, and school and lifelong learning groups who took part in bespoke workshops using the faith chests as inspiration. The exhibition engaged more than 30,000 local people over its three-week run. The Building Exploratory designed and produced two accompanying publications that celebrate the faith chests and encourage users to delve into the borough’s architectural diversity. The first of these is a portable folding map of the borough with a colour photograph of each building, with its location, contact details and a brief fact from its history. The second publication, a guide to the artworks themselves, takes the form of a small missal-like book containing information about the school project alongside photographs of the 10 faith chests. This book contains maps of Tower Hamlets, showing the distribution of the faith buildings
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