About Josefina de Vasconcellos
Josefina de Vasconcellos lived in Ambleside from the 1930s until her death aged 100 in 2005. She was one of the first women elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors and her sculpture Reconciliation has copies in Coventry, Berlin, Hiroshima and Belfast.
Nevertheless, 20 years after her death, Vasconcellos’s body of work remains fragmented across churches, memorial sites, galleries, archives and private collections. Many works have been disconnected from their original contexts, and there is currently no accessible resource documenting their locations, histories or significance.
About this project
This project is creating the first interactive digital map of the work of sculptor Josefina de Vasconcellos – which can be found across the UK and internationally.
Using archival research, oral history and site photography, the project will bring together Vasconcellos’s dispersed, uncatalogued and frequently relocated works onto a single navigable digital platform. This publicly accessible StoryJS map connects sculpture, archives and landscape – and reaches out to the potential global audiences for Lake District cultural history.
The Storymap will connect works held in locations from Edinburgh Cathedral, St Martin-in-the-Fields (London), Coventry Cathedral, St Bees Priory (Cumbria) and the University of Bradford, to memorial sites in Berlin, Hiroshima and Belfast. It will include digital images of works that are hidden in storage at galleries and not accessible in private collections, and will overcome barriers to visiting rural artworks in remote locations. Works on paper, notebooks and sketches will be transcribed and made searchable.
The north west England portion of the map, including Cumbria and parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, will also be available as a print version, to encourage in-person exploration of Josefina’s work.
The project’s international dimension links local histories to Vasconellos’ concerns of migration, spirituality, conflict and reconciliation. Contributors will include archives, churches, galleries, heritage organisations, craftspeople and private custodians across the UK and beyond, creating a collaborative and interdisciplinary research network. By transforming fragmented archival traces into dynamic spatial narratives, the project uses digital tools to reconnect overlooked cultural histories and widen public access to dispersed heritage.
MAPPING JOSEFINA 