ACROSS the Land of the Fanns, stories have been gathered to tell the history and celebrate the people and places of the area.

The Land of the Fanns is a partnership project awarded £1.36 million by the National Lottery Heritage Fund in 2016.

The five-year scheme brings together nine partner organisations with a commitment to work towards a shared goal of enabling local people to discover, restore and enjoy what's special about the local landscape.

Thames Chase Trust, which manages the Community Forest in which the Land of the Fanns office is based, is the project's lead partner and other partners are Forestry England, Thames Estuary Partnership, Brentwood Borough Council, London Borough of Havering, Essex County Council, London Borough of Barking & Dagenham, Thames21 and Thurrock Council.

It covers an area spanning east of London covering the boroughs of Havering and Barking & Dagenham, Brentwood, Thurrock (including Davy Down) and into Essex.

The partnership scheme will celebrate the area with a walking and arts festival in 2021 and it has been uncovering the stories from the Fanns with the help of Thurrock-based arts company Kinetika.

During 2019 and into 2020, Kinetika led walks across the Land of the Fanns and a series of creative workshops for people to record their stories of local places that had special significance, important characters from the community and those everyday stories that are so familiar as to become forgotten as the important social and community history they contain. More than 100 stories have been collected and now represent a people's history and community map of the Land of the Fanns.

The stories have revealed the rare jumping spider, Macaroeris nidicolens, to be a resident at Little Belhus Country Park; the tragic happenings at The Harrow pub in Hornchurch, and the saving of and transformation of Bedfords Walled Garden. Tales have been gathered about the Menagerie Wood at Thorndon Country Park which used to house exotic animals and the development of Eastbrookend from a gravel extraction and then landfill site to a country park.

Working remotely, artists from Kinetika have been busy during lockdown scaling up designs produced by the workshop participants and walkers for a series of flags for the Land of the Fanns which feature the 100 stories. These flags will be shown during the Tales of the Fanns walking arts festival in May 2021.

The silk flags have to be waxed, painted and then cleaned ready for display and some of those who have designed visited the Kinetika studio in Purfleet-On-Thames to paint their flags, under strict Covid 19 safety restrictions. Some of the early ideas and designs can be seen on the Land of the Fanns website and the Kinetika website.

Artistic Director at Kinetika Ali Pretty said "I've thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to discover this territory through the lens of the Land of the Fanns, I had no idea how these seemingly disparate places were so interconnected by a shared landscape that ultimately has been shaped by its proximity to the River Thames.

"It has been a privilege to meet so many people who are passionate about the preservation and creation of accessible green spaces and who have generously shared their stories."