Illustrators at the RCA take on “the dance of life” in a new book focusing on a local market

Dance of Life – Tales from Church Street takes in a collection of stories based in and around Church Street Market, Westminster. A collaboration between illustrators on MA Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art, and the residents of Church Street; the book depicts the real and imagined life of the area.

According to a statement on the book from the RCA, Dance of Life “tells tales of drama, mystery and imagination in everyday life at Church Street Market”. Edited by Andrezj Klimowski and Elie Robert-Nicoud, and designed by Jui-Che Wu, Emily Evans and Frederikke Frydenlund, the book features the work of 12 MA students – Eliza Hancock, Emily Evans, Jui-Che Wu, Tom Harding, Rebecca Cottrell, Frederikke Frydenlund, Georgina Marshall, Pei-Hsin Cho, Tom Gooch, Min Zhang, Amy Austick and Gabriella Marsh – and was a collaborative project with both the community and London Print Studio, with an exhibition at Church Street Library.

The book is one of the first examples of a collaboration between the RCA and a community group, and it’s a great example of the potential held in such projects. The illustrations are lively and atmospheric; a record of general activity, personal interactions, joy and strife. There’s a diverse mix of approaches, from text/visual narratives and comics to portraits of people and the environment; whether representational or abstract, the work in Dance of Life gives a sense of the environment, the lives lived, and the dance between the two.

“Dance of Life – Tales from Church Street” launches tomorrow at Church Street Library, with an accompanying exhibition open through November.