The Kings Hill Cultural Strategy (2010) established a long-term framework for embedding culture into the public realm of Kings Hill, one of Europe’s largest mixed-use developments, located on the former RAF West Malling airfield. Developed by Futurecity for Liberty Property Trust UK, the strategy positioned art and culture as practical tools for placemaking, legibility and community identity, supporting a hybrid planning application for the Central Area.

At its core was an integrated, artist-led Wayfinding Strategy that reimagined navigation as a cultural experience. Rather than relying on conventional signage, the strategy proposed permanent, embedded artworks incorporated into paving, seating, landscape and building surfaces, using text, material and narrative to guide movement while revealing layers of local history.

This approach led to the commissioning of A Place of Landings, a site-wide wayfinding artwork by artist Richard Wolfstrome. Drawing on Kings Hill’s aviation heritage and its role as a place of arrival and departure, the work integrates text and graphic elements across the public realm, creating a coherent and distinctive navigational language rooted in place.

The strategy also established an artist residency programme in partnership with the University of the Creative Arts and Turner Contemporary, supporting emerging practice and long-term engagement. This residency programme commissioned designer and artist Yinka Ilori, whose project culminated in the permanent public artwork Slices of Peace, now embedded within the Kings Hill public realm.

Together, these realised projects demonstrate how the Kings Hill Cultural Strategy translated strategic intent into deliverable, site-specific outcomes -using culture to shape movement, memory and everyday experience within a growing community.

Photography by Joe Clark, Rachel De Cesaro and images of site via Kings Hill