The Welcome to Finsbury Park project was co-organised with the Transition Finsbury Park association to engage the London N4 local communities with their neighbourhood. It consisted in a 2-month field investigation using videos and was concluded in March 2010 by a workshop and the co-creation of subjective maps (these two activities are documented in the following manuals). Here below is a review of the project and some conclusions, co-written by myself and James Thomson from the Transition Finsbury park association.

Transition Finsbury park, part of the Transition Towns Network, “intends to find ways of living that are based on localised food production, sustainable energy sources, lively local economies and an enlivened sense of community, rather than cheap and polluting oil”. The volunteer group is relatively new in the Finsbury Park area and was looking for new ways to engage with local communities. The Welcome to My Place project that was recently launched fit with that purpose and this is how we started to collaborate. We should also mention the great support we received from the Finsbury Park Homeless Families project, the Green Lens Studios and the Faith, Football and Falafel project.

The N4 area in London welcomes one of the most diverse set of communities in the UK: natives, Moroccans, Kurds, Somalis, Italians, artists, office workers, evangelists, Muslims, musicians and many more. Each of these communities has a different perception of what sustainability is about. Instead of hammering green vocabulary and precepts, the Transition Finsbury park association wanted to first listen to what local communities had to say about their direct environment. As they rightly pointed out, the idea of ‘sustainability’ is a pretty abstract concept – but growing vegetables in a garden speaks much more to people. The solution needs to start from them and be stated in their own words. Following the Welcome to My Place general concept, we asked people to film the places that matter to them in the N4 neighbourhood and to welcome the viewers to the places of their choice. We collected around 24 videos (visible here) that we used in a workshop held at Green Lens Studio’s. We screened the videos and draw subjective maps of the area as a way to reflect on the inhabitants’ perception of the neighbourhood.

Here are step-by-step manuals for those who would be interested in applying the same method in their area. From personal experience, this exercise gave us the opportunity to explore an urban area in a way we have never done before. Working with other people we discovered a rich and multi-layered environment which we might have struggled to imagine on our own. We would recommend anyone to take the time to go through a similar process in their vicinity.

Welcome to Finsbury Park: Review and Conclusions

By Christophe Bruchansky and James Thomson

1.     Meeting the people

It may be a nerve racking experience, but the best way to discover the places important that are important to people in the neighbourhood is to go up to them and ask them. It was not the most efficient method perhaps, in terms of the number of videos we collected, but it was the one that opened our perceptions up the most. We took a map of the N4 area and split it up into several parts for each volunteer to explore. Walking in the streets armed with leaflets, wondering who to get video contributions from – really forces you to look and explore what is around you and find out who your neighbours are.

To provide a perspective of the Finsbury Park area we have the Haringey artist community and the Florentina clothing village near Hermitage road, the Turkish restaurants on Green Lanes, the ubiquitous barber shops, the wealthy Crouch Hill streets, the Jewish community near the reservoirs, the mentally impaired centre, the schools, the churches, the Muslim community, the pubs, the Algerian café’s, library goers and so on. We tried to engage with these communities and discovered an area filled with different interests and preoccupations.

We contacted communities on the Internet too, where many forums focussing on the Finsbury Park area already exist: http://finsburypark.wordpress.com/, http://www.finsburyparkpeople.co.uk, http://www.stroudgreen.org. Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Vimeo are other online hubs where we found people having an interest in the vicinity.

Using the local connections that the members of the Transition Finsbury Park association had already established turned out to be a very productive way of getting video contributions. We would like to point out however that even though most of the people we met didn’t participate in this specific project; meeting with them for the first time was one of the most valuable outcomes. Both in terms of shaping a more holistic perception of the area and in building new relationships, invaluable in the long term for different community groups hoping to work together in the future.

We have learnt how significant local community organisations can be to making projects like ours really happen.  If we wanted to convince individuals to participate, it was essential to first gain the support leaders in the community. Three of them responded enthusiastically to our call and greatly helped us throughout the project: The Finsbury Park Homeless Families project (see the Children chapter), the Faith, Football and Falafel project (see below) and Green Lens Studios (see the chapter on the mapping workshop).

When we presented our project to the North London Central Mosque, they directly thought of introducing us to the people from the Faith, Football and Falafel project; who had organized video workshops with members of the Muslim community to promote grass roots cultural dialogue. They are also behind the Vaudeville Court TV project, a socially engaged appropriation of the seemingly uncharacteristic Vaudeville Court building. The video below illustrates how much the representation of a place, and an entire neighbourhood, can be subverted and reshaped unexpectedly by its inhabitants, for example using Wi-Fi.

The same participants of the Faith, Football and Falafel project filmed cafés and restaurants in the Finsbury Park area. The videos give a true sense of the identity of these places. We were interested to hear that ‘cosmopolitan’ was included in at least two of the videos.

The N4 area is certainly cosmopolitan and highly transient in its population. Many people commute to and from The City during the week whilst at weekends a home game at the Emirates football stadium can completely change the areas dynamics. This makes the process of building a consistent identity quite a difficult one at least – but not impossible. One of us is also a ‘foreigner in transit’ and it’s quite rare to meet a person that was originally brought up in the borough.

In our interpretation the presence of this transient population has in many ways lead to a neighbourhood that is not as socially connected as it could be. In terms of identity, a number of local communities tend to stay in spaces where they can build their own references to identity. The area has its fair baggage of history though and we were fortunate to meet some of its story tellers. But there did seem to be a lack motivation or desire for staking claim to a piece of the areas identity. For an urban area loaded with identity and diversity, this attitude might not be such a bad thing for a population wanting to get on with business-as-usual in the short term. But it doesn’t help an association like Transition Finsbury Park to articulate a message based on the revalorisation of the locale. By motivating people to speak before the camera about place, there is a hope that a collective local identity can be galvanized in the near future.

2.     The many facets of Finsbury Park

In the middle of this non-negotiated facet landscape, the iconic Finsbury Park seemed to catalyse the beginnings of our dialogue. Despite its rich history (see Wikipedia), Finsbury Park may appear to lack a particular identity, and be viewed as a place of pure recreational functionality, ‘a green place in the middle of the traffic’. On the other hand, this is also a place whose identity has been shaped by the people that inhabit it and the stories and relationships which have been built upon it.

Finsbury Park inspires common feelings associated with most inner city green places: old-fashioned, made to be enjoyed with friends and family.

Timely events are organised in the park, like the Kurdish New Year celebrations in the middle of March. As suggested in this related paper, the park could be treated as a “non-place” in order to allow these types of events the expressive freedom they require.

These events play an important role in the vicinity. They offer one of the rare opportunities for interaction between local communities, and for practical discussions that are necessary in the organisation of the events. It could be said however that in their willingness to pacify space, local authorities erase the need for local communities to enter into real dialogue, which prevents any negotiation of public space.

What seems like a completely natural feature of the park, its birds for example, are taken care of by a warden officer. It is people like Les Pope who has lived in the area for over 20 years – who could take a leading role in the identity building process from within the park. However – because the service he provides is maintained by the local council, his fountain of knowledge appears lost to the local population.

3.     Children using the parks and playgrounds

It was great to have the opportunity to work with children on this project thanks to the support of the staff at the Finsbury Park Homeless Families project and the Parkwood primary school. A thorough and detailed outlay of the workshop can be found in our video workshop manual.

Children are well known for their inspiring and often pertinent contributions and so we were half expecting them to show us new and original places in the N4 area. But when asking the children which were the most important places for them, they nearly all replied saying that it was the playground and the two nearby parks: Finsbury Park and Clissold Park. While longer sessions may have lead to more original locations, green open space seemed to be the most natural answer. So, we took them to the parks and the playgrounds. We filmed what they had to show us. Afterwards we invited them to draw their places and we added the drawings in the videos

Their choice to film playgrounds and parks seems characteristic of the relationship people have with the N4 area. Beyond the numerous coffee shops, restaurants, bars and religious centres – the rest of public space is apparently perceived as purely a place of transit. Children are generally not allowed to explore the streets on by themselves and are kept in dedicated recreational spaces. These places appear to become something of a micro-neighbourhood for them. We both wondered what the result might have been if we had facilitated the same workshop in a rural environment – where children are possibly freer to explore their surroundings.

That being said, the children we worked with managed to symbolically recompose the outside, with its legends, quests and stories (read Christophe’s research here on how narrative elements play an important role in that process). The youth we worked with seemed to do this very well given the obstacles that seemed to stand between them and their local environment.

This analysis is closely related to movements that advocate the re-appropriation of public space (see this video created by the think tank Demos for example).

4.     Workshop

At the end of our call for video contributions, we organised a workshop at the Green Lens Studios, a photographic studio and project space that aims to connect creativity and sustainability. At this workshop we screened all of the films to provide local perspective and context. We then asked the eleven participants, all somehow related to the local area, to draw a series of ‘subjective maps’ of their neighbourhood. This was fun.

We used a series of techniques to facilitate the exercise – including rolling a dice to determine whose turn it was to draw a piece of the map – explained in our subjective maps workshop manual. They worked pretty well, and just like the creating the videos, the most interesting element of the process were the conversation between the participants.

We noticed quite soon into the workshop that the blank piece of paper we had provided the participants was less a source of confrontation than we had expected it to be. Instead the exercise turned out to be more about discovery and sharing of ideas. Participants didn’t know one another, nor did they recognise many of the places discussed by each other. There were some landmarks which emerged with consistency however, such as parks, streets and churches, but each seeming to tell their own subjective stories by way of graphical interpretation. It seemed useful for participants to exchange these stories, either to discover aspects of the area they didn’t know, or to confirm perceptions of places they had never had the occasion to express in a group.

Map 1: Finsbury Park Area: 23/03/2010

The resulting subjective maps look more like a mythological tale than of a contested space. A strange sense of place quickly emerged, parks populated by mythological animals contrast local shops and supermarkets – identified by their staple consumer products. A mythology made of dark secrets such as the street of the second-hand phone accessories (Blackstock Road) and the needles that once littered Finsbury Park before it’s clean up in the 90s. Looking at these maps you get the feeling that a at least a couple decades have been etched into these creations, punctuated here and there by the closing down and reopening of buildings – new and old identities overlaid.

Likewise the visual representation of ‘smell’ came as something of a shock – thick charcoal smog emanating from the underground tube network fills the park, London’s body odour. Also worthy of note is the considerable influence memorable events, specific to the area, played upon the subjective landscapes illustrated. Like the time the police heavy-handedly invaded black stock road – for better or worse – shown in Map 2. The map making process equally demonstrated our ability to define things that aren’t physically tangible. For example, the appearance of mythological labyrinths beneath the Finsbury Park Lake – perhaps representing ‘escape routes’ or gateways out of the city towards the romantic English Countryside. And while these maps are evidently effective in recording historical truths – they also show themselves to be revealing in their predictions of how the future may look in the local area. Map 1 demonstrates this well – showing the agricultural cultivation of local parks for food, and inner-city wind turbines painted purple. A tree also protrudes out of the roof of the Vaudeville Court housing terrace.

It is surprising to say that in creating the maps there were almost no disagreements within the two groups, when they did occur they were more about the geographical location of places than their actual presence or representation. Without an i-phone or ordnance survey map to hand though, our local geography did seem to suffer a little bit however – but most participants were quick to let go of their preconceived notions of accuracy. In fact this seemed to enable them to become more focused on their personal, subjective experience of the vicinity, rather than the coordinates which have attempted to define their own neighbourhoods in recent years.

Map 1: Finsbury Park Area: 23/03/2010

5.     Conclusions

Catalysing neighbourhood dialogue has remained at the heart of this project from the start, from collaborating to produce the first videos of the N4 area through to the creation of subjective maps. Commuter lifestyle, constant flux of populations, and pacification of the area by local authorities all made community dialogue almost non relevant it would seem. Cohabitation remains peaceful and everyone seems contempt to make sense of their own private space the way they want. But much of public space appears in the shape of ‘non-place’ transit functionality, that even children can’t or don’t take the time to discover. While the area is filled with pockets of rich cultural identity – it took considerable effort to open some of these doors to the rest of the community. We have the local charities and volunteer organisations in Finsbury Park to thank for the solid ground work which enabled that to happen.

As very well explained on the website of the Transition Town Network, many of the global challenges that are likely to affect us all in the near future need to be resolved locally. If cultural corridors remain as closed as they are, future strains on local resources over the next decade (such as our dependence on cheap oil for food production) may lead to insurmountable challenges. Mapping activities certainly seem to provide the individual and group alike, a sense of empowerment towards achieving these types of goals – many of which are being promoted by local grassroots organisation like Transition Finsbury Park.

Having gained a better understanding of the London N4 area after two months working on this project, we believe that in order to encourage people to think locally – you have to promote the value and cultural identity of the places in the vicinity. Perhaps the videos, drawings and maps that have been produced here could for example be exhibited publicly as part of a local celebration already planned. But crucial to this happening, it must be stressed, are the social figureheads and story tellers we have met on the way.

Mobilisation around environmental sustainability from all corners of Finsbury Park will not happen all of a sudden. Cultural corridors need to be actively prised open in due course. Creativity, play and self-expression could be the catalysts at the heart of these efforts.

Friends of the Westminster Reference Library welcome you to their place. Watch their videos and discover what is the life of a library today.

See more videos from the Welcome to My Place project.

The theme of the Dreams of Progress exhibition and most of its videos have been set before I found the hosting venue. I still wanted to arrange the exhibition so that it links to its physical context, or at least doesn’t deny it. I first looked at the history of the Westminster Reference Library, which is well known for being built on the former house of Isaac Newton, Lord Macaulay famously stating saying that the home of Sir Isaac Newton would be “well known as long as our island retains any trace of civilisation”. I was tempted first to incorporate this reference to the description of the exhibition because it fits nicely with the theme of progress. Later, I found it diminishing. I felt that it was denying the current function of the building. I was then inclined to instrument the fact that the space is a library, its mission of education for all is a dream of progress by itself.  I decided after all to not introduce any connections with the library in the theme of the exhibition. What was much more tangible was the help from the staff of the library, which was felt by every visitor.  The Dreams of Progress exhibition was in this space because of the help of its staff and their utopian vision of what a library should be; it came from their own initiative, not a mission statement.

During the exhibition, the staff of the library displayed books related to the theme of Utopia and Progress, which I found marvellous.

Next: The exhibition space

The exhibition space

Setting an exhibition space within the reading room of the Westminster Art Reference Library is a very exciting opportunity but also a big challenge. It must not disturb the daily activities of the library but still make enough of an impact and it should provide excellent conditions for the viewing of the videos. The tactic I opted for is to encourage a one-to-one experience between the viewers and videos by providing an intimate space where visitors can sit down and relax while looking at the videos. However, one of my responsibilities as a curator is to promote the art works exhibited in the space. I believe it is necessary to display physical signs of the importance that one attributes to a piece of art, in order that it is noticed and can be evaluated appropriately. The legends offered the perfect support to mark this statement. I hung them on the walls as if they were works of art themselves, they stood behind the television screens though so that were not the primary focal point. Instead, they signal, without imposing, to visitors that the videos are not randomly selected but artefacts worth careful attention.

The second decision I had to make was how to group the videos. The space and my budget did not allow one screen per work. It may not be suitable, as it would mean someone would have to change seats for each video, some of them last only a few minutes. So, how to group them? The case of the Microsoft video was simple, I got a separate dvd from Microsoft and so it had to be on a separate screen. The “Discovery of Magnetic North” video being the longer and most immersive one, I decided to play it alone on the only projector. I separated the rest of the videos in 3 groups:

• 3 utopians visions by corporations
• 2 artistic reactions to today’s ongoing progress along with a an original vision of the future. The 2 artistic reactions and the futuristic video are all colourful and entertaining.
• 3 artistic views at the past

Associating the videos this way creates a dialogue between the videos sequenced on each monitor but also between videos played at the same time on different screens, not far from each other. This dialogue purposively generates tensions and similarities.  Though the corporation videos are grouped on one side of the room, they were not isolated but well linked with other videos:  ‘Some things won’t change’ and  images of ‘Discovery of Magnetic North”  for example.

Interaction with visitors remain basic. They could add their email address to the guest book and take a program and flyer with them. I felt this was appropriate for an exhibition of this size. The philosophical debate and children’s workshop provided large enough spaces for dialogue.

Next: Legends and introduction to the exhibition

The curatorial practice is not only about setting up the theoretical framework of an exhibition, writing and selecting artefacts. It is also about federating people around a project they understand is beneficial for them. Dreams of Progress was my first exhibition, it gave me the opportunity to gain experience on every front:

• Getting the permissions from artists to display their work and getting additional material. Overall, I got the permission to use all the work I wanted to use but the artists’ responsiveness was really varied. Some were excited about the project and very supportive, some had to be reminded many times before delivering their part.

• Getting permission from Microsoft and Squint/opera. This was very easy and I got all the help I needed in obtaining the dvds. Utopian visions from corporations generate a lot of criticism in the public but corporations seemed to be very open to discussion. This experience made me less cynical about their views as they make the first move after all.

• Finding a venue, the Westminster Reference Library, and then a sponsor for some the video equipment, Westminster Arts.
• Marketing the exhibition by sending the press release to art websites (it was featured on www.artrabbit.com and www.criticalnetwork.co.uk), distributing flyers to venues around the exhibition, putting posters in the Library.
• Marketing the philosophical debate by contacting the philosophical groups in London, philosophical colleges, members of the library, putting the event on facebook, upcoming, eventful.

As part of the Children’s Art Day 2009 and the Dreams of Progress exhibition, a storyboarding workshop was organised for the pupils of the year 4 from St Clement Danes School. Children learned how to create storyboards from pre-existing video material. Besides the fun and practical experience gained from the workshop, kids also learned how the same video footages can be sequenced to create many different stories;  how what is showed everyday on TV is not an exact representation of reality but the result of a montage.

Children used the footages from the  utopian video ‘Design for Dreaming’ (General Motors  – 1956) to create their storyboards. The workshop was inspired by the ‘Same video, different use’ collaborative project initiated by the video artist Remyyy; where artists can each post online their remixes of the same archive video. The best storyboard from the workshop has been transformed in a movie and posted online next to the contribution from video artists.

Winning storyboard of the year 4 from St Clement Danes School.

During the workshop, children were first presented with the original video. I showed them thereafter an example of storyboard (two of them were created before the workshop:  ‘Once upon a time’ and ‘I had a freaky nightmare’). The kids were split in 4 groups, each having in front of them a little less than a hundred printed images representing scenes from the movie. They randomly picked up a sentence to start their story with, e.g. “1..2..3..Action!”,  “This is the future”, “Dance to my beat”, “It was a freaky nightmare”. The groups had 40 minutes to create their storyboard, made of scenes from the original movie and of texts that they could add in between. In the last 10 minutes of the session, the groups presented their storyboard to the rest of the class, so that pupils could vote for their favourite story.

The winners when they presented their storyboard to the rest of class.

Everyone listening at the story of the second group.

The third group busy making their own story.

The fourth group starting their storyboard with the teachers.

The storyboard of the fourth group.

The children didn’t have any problems understanding the concept of sequencing movie scenes. The main challenge they experienced was to not replicate the original film but to invent a new story; which they succeeded after a short time necessary to distance themselves from what they’ve just seen.

The storyboarding workshop would not have run so smoothly without the commitment of Rossella Black from the WRF, all the volunteers helping out preparing the session and the facilitation of the teachers from St Clement Danes School.

A philosophical debate about Utopia and Progress was held at the WRF in July 2009, as part of the Dreams of Progress video art exhibition. The debate attracted around 50 people from various backgrounds, including professors from London universities, philosophical students, art curators and engineers.

In these days of economical, environmental and sometimes ideological uncertainties, the debate took a look back at our previous visions of the future, how they materialised and the way that they relate to the dreams we nourish today. The debate was punctuated by projections of videos, questioning the meaning of progress, between modernism and post-modernism, individuality and utopia, human nature as opposed to mega structures.

Philosophical debate on Utopia and Progress

The predictions for the 60s from General Motors in 1940 served as a perfect introduction to the concepts of Utopia and Progress. I asked the audience their first impressions, to describe the vision presented in the video, if it is realistic and what were the assumptions made. The video attracted a lot of interest because I think it embodies so many of the modern utopias.

In the second part of the debate, I showed the Productivity Vision for 2019 by Microsoft, the Future of Cities by the Danish Royal Academy of Architecture and the Tokyo.future by Ian Lynam. I asked people what kind of utopias and progress the videos showed, what were their assumptions and why they were made. The vision by Microsoft monopolised first the attention, it was perceived at the same time inhuman and very realistic. The Future of Cities was unexpectedly the most controversial video of the debate. Some people felt that its message was closer to their preoccupations, others thought it was not that different from the other visions and that its humanity was only superficial. The last video from Ian Lynam was sadly a little lost in the debate even if its screening got great reactions during the exhibition.

In the last part of the evening, I showed the Mardi Gras video from the artist Keith Loutit and McCool!!! from Julian Roberts and Namalee Bolle. I asked if the videos were showing utopias or dystopias. Because of the previous videos and the discussions that followed, the reference to McDonald’s was heavily debated. The Mardi Gras video was well received but came a little late in the debate to really be properly exploited.

I got many positive feedbacks from the participants of the debate. The use of the videos worked very well in engaging the audience and the contributions were challenging. It was only an introduction as two hours is just enough time to open up the conversation. Some important questions about the nature and role of contemporary utopias started to emerge by the end of the debate. One problem I didn’t anticipated though is that my selection of videos biased a little the debate towards a judgment on corporate visions, avoiding sometimes the more difficult question to define our own utopias.

You can find here the philosophical paper that I prepared for the debate, updated with some of the arguments that were raised during the evening.

(press release)

6^th – 18^th July, Westminster Reference Library, London, free admission

Short movies from international artists have been gathered along with corporate videos to form the Dreams of Progress art exhibition. Taking place at the Westminster Reference Library between the 6^th and 18^th July, the event will showcase past and present visions of the future.

In these days of economical, environmental and sometimes ideological uncertainties, the exhibition ‘Dreams of Progress’ will take a look back at our previous visions of the future, how they materialized and the way that they relate to the dreams we nourish today. Videos of utopian visions will be presented along with the sensitive perceptions of emerging video artists.

Predictions for the 60s from General Motors back in 1940 are juxtaposed with the recent vision of Microsoft for 2019; bitter-sweet feelings from early memories of the artists Richard Jerousek and Brian Phillips are confronted with the galactic voyage of Tokyo imagined by Ian Lynam.  These videos and more will question the meaning of progress, between modernism and postmodernism, individuality and collective dreams, human nature as opposed to mega structures.

The videos will be displayed at the Westminster Reference Library, in the heart of London’s West End. The exhibition space, opened to the art reading room, will provide a relaxed environment to view the videos in tranquillity.

The exhibition is curated by Christophe Bruchansky as part of the Curated Matter project, a non-profit venture dedicated to the organisation of exhibitions that catalyse social innovation. The Dreams of Progress exhibition features a philosophical debate which considers the existence and possibilities of utopias as well as the fear of dystopias. Part of the national Children’s Art Day program, a workshop will be organized to teach children how to create artistic films from pre-existing video material. They will be encouraged to exercise their critical thinking by remixing the utopian vision from the video ‘Design for Dreaming’ from General Motors (1956).

Christophe Bruchansky, curator of Dreams of Progress, says “I’m very proud of this exhibition. I was impressed by the quality and diversity of the art videos and I’m pleased to present the work of emerging talents to the London public. The theme of progress is particularly appropriate in a period aspiring for change. I hope that visitors will be as inspired as I was by the exploration of past and present utopias, obsolete ideals and forward thinking visions. I’m also very grateful that Microsoft and squint/opera allowed the display of their videos for the exhibition. They offer along with the corporate videos from the Prelinger archives a rich material for thoughts on utopias and progress.”

Rossella Black, event commissioner at the WRF, says “Our wish is to generate a sense of excitement and inspiration. The aim of these events is to use a creatively dormant space such a traditional Library as a resource, study and temporary hub of debate and interaction, a ‘creative city’ which opens up to a new and ever changing audience.”

Art videos by Adam Pelling Deeves (UK), Julian Roberts and Namalee Bolle (UK), Keith Loutit (Australia), Ian Lynam (Japan), Richard Jerousek and Brian Phillips (USA), Sam Fuller (USA), Urizen Freaza (Spain) and Misty Woodford (USA).

Visions of the future by Bell, The Danish Royal Academy of Art, General Motors and Microsoft.

Westminster Reference Library

6^th – 18^th July, Mon – Fri: 10am – 8pm, Sat: 10am – 5pm

35 St Martin’s Street, London WC2H 7HP

Nearest tube station: Leicester Square, map

Free admission

Supported by

More details on http://curatedmatter.org/dreams-of-progress/