WED 15 MAY 2024
Wed 15 May 2024
Quieter today. Walking into the space I feel the concentration. The team are editing upstairs and have a new trainee being trained up by a former trainee. That is good. Knowing what the next few days hold, I have a precious morning in the studio to work on the material tests for a work of symbolic destruction of the infrastructure of fossil capitalism. It involves layers of collaboration and participation and we’re lucky that we have an expert ceramicist as studio holder advising on glazes and firing methods. Ideally this destruction would not be solely symbolic but this public ‘demonstration’ aims to make visible and visceral the dramatic energy transformation required. That’s always been at the heart of the work – on the one hand contributing to building new systems, on the other, aware of the urgency of the parallel work of dismantling the old ( How to Blow Up A Pipe Line). And how sometimes destroying things is more fun. And totally necessary. In our ever-evolving exploration of what it means to be ‘solar punk’ this comes up a lot and relates to how you make work that really engages – that’s not preachy or ‘worthy’, that challenges and has the sense of mischief and anarchy that really makes things happen.
In the realisation that there’s no need for ten jig saws or 20 rakes on one street, neighbours pop in for tools from the locker system that just about works for sharing built on trust. Studio holder Poppy works on the Council’s climate education team and today she has the borough’s Youth Climate Leaders in for a session. We’ve linked them up with a young journalism student and active Just Stop Oil campaigner from City University who we first met on the rooftop and who has since been producing a podcast with us on forms of action/activism. They’re working together to produce a series of films to share in their local schools and be part of an exciting venture she’s leading – helping journalists put people at the heart of stories about climate change and biodiversity loss. It seems to help that this isn’t a seminar room. It’s a space infused with the work of hope. It makes a difference. At the bank, 100s of students visited. Courses from economics to anthropology and design all watched the films we produced and then got stuck in printing, making, doing – these acts a different form of empowered learning and thinking.
The electric van arrives from Organic Lea with the bag drop off for local resident pickups. There’s been an increase in demand and a solidarity rate that means that organic fresh fruit and veg aren’t reserved for the affluent. Food shortages are becoming more noticeable. Community growing in the housing estate has a new momentum. When we began growing sunflowers it sometimes felt like a futile task but it was a beginning. That feeling of taking such joy in seeing a leaf glowing viridescent in the sunshine is a feeling that this place brings. The moments George sometimes tells me he’s feeling. When you are just so overwhelmed in that instant with the wonder of life. It was always tempting to think ‘why are we doing this?’ Putting so much pressure on ourselves, putting so much energy into trying to make things work. Sometimes it works.
From the Archive Wed 17 May
Woke with a headache and sun streaming through curtains attached with bulldog clips. Must fix properly. After the late delivery of 500 tiny sunflowers to the school last night I get there for 8.15 to water them and they’re perking up. I ‘m just hoping no slugs or snails were harboured in their trays ready to launch an attack on the rest that are growing so strong and so green. Early bird children spot ladybirds and as I roll up the hose I say good morning to an Ofsted weary Head teacher, aware we need to talk about Sun Dance dates and solar panels.
After a period of calm growth slugs have managed to get up the table legs to the batch of sunflowers in the garden. I fit in a quick bit of repotting and adding canes. As I reach for the outdoor tap to fill the watering can I see that the robins are back. A tiny face peeping out from their nest in the woodpile with curiosity and a certain trust. My heart feels like bursting.
I rock the top of the front wall back and forth planning to sledge-hammer it to fit more sunflowers. I admire the telephone worker’s cherry picker just above me and it reminds me that my first message of the day is from Kristin about how we should bypass Council - hire and drive our own tipper truck and sort an alternative delivery site. Recent communications with the local Authority have had a touch of ‘Living’ or maybe ‘Living Dead’ about them. In ‘Living’ Bill Nighy plays a fatally ill senior bureaucrat in London County Council who decides to actually respond and act rather than shift paper and responsibilities. In Living Dead they’re just zombies.
Today we leave the area. This is unusual in this moment. We’re invited to give a talk to the Ashden Climate Change Charity. Their offices are near Victoria station and the tube line is already sweltering. I wear a dress of bright floral that I’ll probably end up wearing every day until it falls to pieces. We take a claustrophobia inducing lift with no buttons and are greeted by Katie of the Sainsbury family of Trusts. We had the option of doing this via zoom but it felt important to go in person. There are about 7 people in the room and a randomly unconfirmed number of between 16 and 129 online. Local friend Sue zooms in from Verona and sends a picture of a public library corner that reminds her of our old ‘rebel bank.’ She says such nice things about us it’s almost tear inducing. Questions include the finances of the solar panels which is the massive job we’re just working through - the complexities and sensitivities of sorting household contributions per house and talking to houses that have to go in a second wave of works which require planning and possible structural surveys. It was good to go but I ‘m in a low mood. Pledges on the crowdfunder share offer site come in as we walk home - we must have reached some people. We’re doing well but this is urgent and it feels like we’re beginning to work on building a good campaign. Having to launch before 100% ready. Having no choice but to act fast.
I stop to ask Joe and George who have run the garage at the top of the road for the last 30 years if they remember the other uses 95a Lynmouth Road has had. George has lost an arm and although we’ve interviewed him and talked a lot I ‘ve never asked him how. I didn’t actually notice until Dan pointed it out. I didn’t notice my Uncle had only 3 fingers until Dan did. Strange for someone who considers themselves to have good observation skills. George immediately mentions that when they moved to the street the place was owned by John Young – a classic car collector and racing driver who kept it full of Ford Mustangs. A later google finds him – racing at Brands Hatch and Goodwood. According to George, in WWII it was an engineering shop with a spraying license that it was hard for the Council to rescind in peacetime so more spraying and breaking went on. Later I put a call out on the Walthamstow Memories facebook group asking for any anecdotes or photographs of the space and Brian Ward remembers it in 1952 being a gym with fitness classes and strict instructions to keep the noise down and not swear. Someone else mentions it hosted fibreglass moulding of table and chairs.
E comes in tired. We make rather dry peanut butter and almond cookies and sip tea. She’s watching Harry Potter and checking to see if I ‘m watching at the dramatic bits but I ‘m absorbing it whilst tidying up a laptop desktop and getting up to date on new developments with compost delivery. Kristin has secured the allotment. We need to organise the delivery truck and then there’s the email about logistics for The Grange planting session and picnic this Saturday that I need to grasp and respond to. As I work, the marauder’s map of Hogwarts comes to life on the TV screen. As a child, despite Roald Dahl’s warnings I insisted that television definitely wasn’t rotting my brain. Everyone knew what time the favourites were on – leaving bicycle stunts half mastered to race home for City of Gold. The BBC’s Friday Film Special was my favourite. Dad making scrambled eggs on toast. Me drawing and writing as I watched from our purple psychedelic sofa. Every week a different children’s film from the 60s, 70s or 80s made by the Children’s Film Foundation screened: Lucky t-shirts transformed by power surges, 4D special agents recovering jewels, musicians busting robbers, a time machine through local history, radio controlled planes battling diamond smugglers, nuclear threat and slate mines. A world of dungaree clad adventures where children had power and freedom I fell in love with.
I fill in required forms for Sheffield International Documentary Festival’s ‘Meetmarket.’ The POWER film has been selected for this two day pitching session and we’ll soon find out who will be there and who we might be able to meet. It’s often brutal and somewhat soul destroying but we’ll attempt to go in open to possibility. We reply to an internet streaming platform who have expressed first interest in a series of the POWER STATION. Recommended to us by a friend it asks ‘What if we could make documentaries into popcorn worthy entertainment? Turn people from passive viewers into active doers? Invite everyone to go from doomerism to domoreism? It sounds a good match. It has a navigation that enables you to search films about animals. My kind of tab. Wolf. The Wonderful World of Goats. My childhood was lacking in goats but full of stories… of otters (Tarka), lions (Jane Goodall), kestrels (Kes) and other animals (Gerald Durrell) and for a long time I wanted to be a wildlife cameraperson. The recent Oscar nominated documentary ‘All That Breathes’ with its close ups of the teeming ecosystem we inhabit is inspiration and reminder of what we are doing with this project. Beyond the constant production, we look again at a place and all its diverse inhabitants - human and non-human. Go beyond ‘all that breathes’ to all that has once, formed of decay and pressures - the layers of earth, brick, metal, the embedded stories and histories that make a site so specific.
Maybe we can’t capture all of that in a film but it is there. All around us. Informing this.
