By common consent Lewisham is best conceived as a collection of neighbourhoods or villages and resonates well with residents who have a fierce loyalty to the component parts of the borough such as Catford, Forest Hill, Blackheath, Brockley, Deptford, Downham or Sydenham. But when people say Lewisham do they mean the local authority or the place?

The objective is to create something both for the people of Lewisham as well as to affect its external image by encouraging outsiders to visit. The challenge of animating Lewisham as a whole is immense, so a start needs to be made at key nodal points. These might include: Lewisham Theatre and surrounds, Deptford High Street and the Creek, Forest Hill, Lewisham Town Centre.

Forest Hill seems to be on the turn - Havelock Walk being an example.

In Forest Hill the new station will give the neighbourhood a revitalised heart and micro galleries will display changing aspects of the Horniman's collection and the route leading up to the museum will feel processional and inviting rather like an extended artistic creation. The Havelock Walk effect will have spilled out into other streets.

...Creating beacons or landmarks out of railway stations...to enhance the sense of identity and arrival: an example would be to develop an artistic trail from the Horniman to Forest Hill station; working on a stronger design consciousness by cleaning up the street scene of unsightly advertising hoardings, traffic signs, railings and damaged paving as well as designing out crime and anti-social behaviour.

Capitalising on the re-launch programme of the Horniman Museum throughout 2002. Its collection strengths in ethnography and, within that, music uniquely dovetail into the Lewisham vision. Links with the Music Village/Diaspora project or the World Tea Party initiative, given the Horniman's tea connection, are but two of the obvious ideas. The visibility of Horniman's could be strengthened by developing physical connections to Forest Hill station both along the route as well as making the museum part of the station itself when it is re-developed.

Hold one of the World Tea Parties in collaboration with the Horniman, an unusual yet increasingly well-known international intercultural event; develop an artistic trail such as from the Horniman to Forest Hill station.

....Drawing in new partners to the borough such as the Architectural Foundation, Urban Space Management; re-using empty estate shops for creative uses; instigating some visionary design work around Catford Square, Forest Hill, Sydenham, Honor Oak and the other Lewisham neighbourhoods.

Using the town centre management initiative to develop a stepped, timetabled vision for Forest Hill including the library/leisure pool redevelopment, the Sainsbury's re-furbishment, Horniman's and the new station to reflect the diversity of Lewisham.