Unforgettable Lessons

The Erith Marshes project I've been running with year 8 students at Trinity School, Bexley, is featured in CABE's Unforgettable Lessons exhibition at The Discover Centre in the Royal Naval College in Greenwich. The exhibition showcases each of the 12 Engaging Places best practice projects and is well worth a visit. It's on until the end of August.

The exhibition was launched yesterday. Jody and Jacob from Trinity School came along to talk about their experiences of the prjoect and show off the fantastic guide to the marshes they made with designer Esther Yarnold from Interim.

The Bexley project continues.... we are currently collecting oral histories from local people to inspire a series of new text pieces to be installed in the marshes. Watch this space!

Engaging Places

I am working as writer-in-residence in Lower Belvedere, in the London Borough of Bexley. It is a fascinating area, once a broad stretch of marshland, close to the Pleasure Gardens at Erith, it is now home to Crossness Sewage Works, a huge new rubbish incinerator, an industrial estate, and a tiny patch of precious marshland, some of which is designated a protected Nature Reserve.

I've been working with Year 8 students at Trinity School to explore the marshland's history and ecology. Sessions have included work with the Local Studies Department, and the council planning department. The students have responded creatively to the area, creating myths, historical fictions, and proposing a new name for one of the many drainage dykes in the area.

The project is part of CABE's Engaging Places Scheme. You can read some of the students' responses to the project so far on the Engaging Places Website.

Yesterday, I was at an evaluation day for all of the Engaging Places projects taking place across England this year. I was struck by the diversity of the projects, and the wealth of ideas about how to engage young people in learning about the built environment. Listening to the presentations I was brought back to the thought I regularly have, that learning about the built environment should really be part of the curriculum. I think it is so important to enable our society to articulate and understand their relationship with place, not least so they can have the opportunity to participate in improving towns, cities and places across the UK.

Image Copyright Alys Tomlinson

Poetry, Rain and Tokenism

I've been back from the internetless world of Hawthornden Castle almost two weeks now. It's been a bit of a whirlwind! Here are a couple of interesting things I've done/come across since I've got back:

A mass poetry writing project by Alan Summers, creating a 1000 verse renga, a really interesting Japanese form of communal poetry writing. You can find out more and get involved at: http://area17.blogspot.com/

Last week, I took part in Duncan Speakman’s Subtlemob in Covent Garden (a lovely take on the idea of flashmobbing). Participants loaded one of 2 sound files before the event, positioned themselves in a specified area of Covent Garden with a partner and then listened and followed instructions. It was pouring with rain. My partner was suffering from a cold and I felt bad dragging her through dark wet streets! I liked it though. Liked rather than loved. People were asked to do things (put a hand on their partner’s shoulder, look in a window etc.) and the story was orchestrated so that people were doing actions that were being described to you through your headphones. Some of it worked – I loved it when people were looking up at the tops of buildings, and when we were asked to dance. But there was an uncomfortableness there too. I felt we were asked to hold positions for maybe too long – though I can see it was needed for the thing to work. I was struck by the pacing and how music/soundtracks can influence our experience of a place. I found some of the content bordering on cheesiness, but I loved how it made you stop and look at the city in a way you hardly ever do.

On Monday I went to 'Architecture in an Age of Anxiety', a talk by John Sorrell (about to step down as chair of CABE) at the Tate Modern. He was talking about the state of architecture and the threats posed to high quality places by the recession. He issued a ‘clarion call’ to architects, to stand up and be counted, to turn down compromised jobs, to fight for high quality projects. Unrealistic, maybe, but it was interesting to listen to thoughts about how architecture needs to change and how the recession offers opportunities for reassessment and questioning. He talked about ‘informing and inspiring’ people so they can make informed and inspired decisions about their environment. I asked him to talk more about this – how do we enable people to talk with understanding and passion about the places they live in, how do we empower people to get involved? His answer was not inspiring to me! He talked about working with local people as clients, taking them to inspiring places, educating them about architecture. Fine, but he said ‘we need to find a group of people who represent the whole of the community’ – is that possible? I’m not pretending I have an answer, but I’m not convinced that this addresses the issue that lots of people don’t feel informed, inspired or motivated to fight for better places; finding a group of 5 people with the time to get involved, even if that group is truly diverse, isn’t going to solve this wider issue.

Poetry, Optimism and Delight

I am currently doing an online course hosted by the Homes and Communities Academy, which aims to give people a greater understanding of the sustainable communities agenda. I can't help but feel a bit cynical about the idea of sustainable communities - it's a great idea, but I worry about the achievability of maintaining a growing economy and increased standard of living for all without impacting on the environment or adversely affecting future generations' abilities to improve their quality of life...

Anyway, as part of the course I came across this article by Miriam Fitzpatrick, a member of CABE's Urban Panel, on CABE's website. She begins by quoting from Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol, and argues that "sustainability must address our needs as human beings before obsessing over the measurable". I enjoyed her use of the engineer Randall Thomas' definition of sustainability as "poetry, optimism and delight. CO2, water and waste are secondary." She argues that "it is only after raising our spirits as humans that design for sustainability should go on to tackle quantifiable issues such as CO2 emissions."

A strong argument for the arts, I'd say, though the rest of this article does talk more about physical and design issues than raising human sprits, I notice...