Simon Pope & Sarah Cullen with Film & Video Umbrella
London, UK
November 2009
Proposal in response to: http://www.streamarts.org.uk/blog/149
Calling on Greenwich explores experimental notions of community within the Greenwich peninsula, using walking as a participatory strategy taking the form of a large-scale walking event and film. This proposal builds on the concerns explored through our art practice - walking and sociality, dialogue and negotiation - as well as in our interest in research methods from cultural geography.
As one of the five Olympic boroughs, Greenwich is being transformed by the latest of many phases of 'regeneration' commonplace throughout London's recent history. As a way of exploring, questioning, translating and interpreting, walking is often cited as an immediate and accessible way for people within a locale to give meaning to the experience of such change (de Certeau, 1985). Beyond an immediacy of encounter with the physical fabric or history of a locale, there is also the opportunity to encounter other people - and perhaps the opportunity to walk with other people.
This free-flowing experience, to be recorded in memory and on film, intends to spur new ideas and feelings about the community and to make new connections within it. These experiences will hopefully have a long lasting effect on the way the participants envisage their neighbourhood and the surrounding communities; communities that perhaps they didn't realize were there.
Walking and Talking
Talking whilst walking, according to geographer Jon Anderson (2004), offers the opportunity to "excavate and access" how people understand the world, enabling them to pose questions or think-through answers, such as those raised by the process of regeneration. Participants will explore local knowledge and perceptions as they enter into negotiation while walking. This immersion into each others' worlds can lead to rich and detailed dialogue and towards an empathetic understanding.
Walking Together
We are particularly interested in this opportunity to further develop ways in which the various modalities which bring people together can be brought about by the simplest of everyday practices, namely walking. Walking is at the core of our art practice and forms the primary method through which we will explore the aims of the commission; (aims which are also at the heart of our own practices.)
Working Together
While this has been the form of our individual and joint art practices for some time, this project would represent a significant development of our professional practice, shifting our 'walking work' closer to collaboration: between ourselves, with a wider community of participants and with a production company.
We have chosen to work closely with Film and Video Umbrella in order to ensure the highest standards of production. In keeping with our approach to participation in all aspects of our practice, we value the investment that has been made in this relationship and would seek to further develop the strategies and techniques rehearsed in a recent project, Memory Marathon (Nov 2009). Among these are the development of the existing social networks which now exist as a legacy of this project, as well as the innovative 'light-footprint' camera crew and production team which were intrinsic to the success of the production.
During the morning of this day-long event in Spring 2010, a small group of participants will set-off from their individual homes in the borough of Greenwich, with the aim of inviting others to walk with them. Drawn from a sample of residents and workers in the borough, our walkers exemplify the various modes of sociality made possible through walking, moving from individual to pair, to group. Gathering other walking companions along the way, they converge on a pre-determined outdoor venue - a park for example. Participants may choose to gather walking companions in various ways. Some may call by the homes of friends and family, while others may decide to pass by places such as community centres to find walking companions. This will be where dialogue and negotiation will be key. Everyone in the group is free to suggest a route or individual(s) to call upon.
Arriving at midday with their own 'community' - based on kinship, friendship or from pure coincidence - this amalgamated group, made from the fifteen smaller groups, continues to walk together, again determining its own route and scale. (Our participants movement and gathering en mass in the borough echoes Greenwich's historical association with mass gatherings, such as the camp established on Blackheath during the popular revolt of 1450, led by Jack Cade.)
This live event is captured by three 'light-footprint' camera crews, roving between each group of participants, recording their encounters and negotiations as they sweep through the streets of the borough.
During the lead-up to the live event, a series of preparatory events are held: core participants are invited to a series of workshops during which they are introduced to a suite of freely available online tools (ie. google maps, documents and so on). These tools can be used by the participants after the event to document and reflect upon their experience of participation. The workshops, (and production) are assisted by a team of volunteers, drawn from across the borough.
Snowball as a method
Calling on Greenwich brings together a group of walkers. Starting with a nominal fifteen participants this group will grow as the invitation to walk is extended to others in the borough, reminiscent of children calling on each other to play. This method of gathering walking companions is similar to the snowball research method in which one person recruits another, who then, in turn recruits another and so on; a network, or community of linked people is formed. Developing the snowball in more literal terms, the group will 'amass' these participants as they roll through the streets of the borough, gathering new walkers throughout the day. This way of working is considered to be deep participation, in that there is a movement towards relinquishing control and devolving ownership of the process to those whom it concerns. This is of paramount importance to us in our approach.
Our understanding of community
The snowball will create 'community'; a community which is fluid and can disperse as quickly as it is formed. Geographer Doreen Massey’s understanding of community reflects this fluidity and elasticity. She states that communities do not always imply a single sense of place, as people occupy different positions within any community. Our participants will move in and out of communities as they move, en mass, in and around the borough. This is a community which may only come together in the same way once, but none the less it is a community. The fifteen groups of walkers will move in and out of different geographic locales inviting people to walk with them as they go. While walking constrains the geographic range of the project, it also reminds us of the human scale of community even whilst it enables a mobility and a movement beyond any specific locale.