Southbury Art Trail

Lorena Charlambous_COOK

Lorrinena has worked in a meals-on-wheels service for over twenty years, preparing between 70 and 100 meals a day for people across the area. She speaks plainly about life and death. “This time of year we lose a few,” she says, noting that people tend to die at the heart of summer or winter. Extremes matter. She lives in the quiet of Goffs Oak but works in the noise of Ponders End. Some people, she notes, love noise. She does not. Her work began as a driver, her baby son in the van with her. Now she works in the kitchen, where everything is constant and there is no time to be bored. The kitchen is her domain: shimmering steel surfaces, tins of peaches, green apples. Cleanliness is as important as cooking. It is a ritual. The first job every morning is peeling potatoes. Vegetable water is reused for gravy so nothing is wasted and people still get the goodness. Meals are traditional English food, cooked fresh daily, with alternatives offered because medication affects taste. Not too many spices. No salt. Warm, nourishing meals. Lorrinena is Italian by heritage, born in the UK, and grew up with food as a cornerstone of family life. She remembers sitting around the table, squashing grapes with her feet, her mother’s homemade sauces, bread and wine made at home. No sweets. Everything in moderation. She believes modern convenience food, full of salt and sugar and lacking vegetables, is killing people early. She speaks critically about the cost of fresh food, calling it frightening, and about the state of the area now, describing dirt, theft, and neglect. Yet she also acknowledges positive change. The Turkish and Hindu communities, she notes, have brought cooking-from-scratch and healthier food back into the area. For Lorrinena, fresh food and cleanliness are eternal forms of human communication. They are how care is expressed without words. She worries about a society moving downhill, about children knowing too much too soon, about hatred simmering beneath the surface. She references Naples and Vesuvius, describing something boiling, waiting to erupt. Still, she holds onto hope. Even when she speaks of ignorance as bliss, she does not let go of her belief in the value of a good meal, properly made.

This is Southbury Art Trail

‘This Is Southbury Art Trail’ is a new creative placemaking initiative celebrating the Southbury and Ponders End neighbourhood shaped by community, resilience and industry. The new public art trail weaves together 3D portraits, poetry, and local voices to honour Southbury’s identity and bring everyday stories into the public realm.

DYSPLA, an award-winning art studio in Enfield, was commissioned by Enfield Council to deliver this innovative digital art and 3D sculptural project working with 30 community members, to shape this bold new public art trail and offers a wonderful opportunity for local people to come together and shape who they are, where they live and how their work is shaping the area.