Public & Private Space in London with Akil

In our first session with Akil from MArch he introduced us to public and privately owned spaces in London and it was surprising how many of the spaces we consider to be public property are actually privately owned.

I was particularly interested in the history of The Great Fire of London and how this presented the opportunity to rebuild and re-design London.

Christopher Wren planned a new urban landscape based on interaction and community. His design incorporated a number of piazzas with streets that led off them, creating areas that brought people in and opened up the landscape compared to the small dark alleys that London had grown accustom to.

Wren's Plan For Rebuilding The City Of London After The Great Fire of London 1666.

Unfortunately due to complications with ownership of land/subletting, the city ended up being rebuilt exactly the same as before.

Christopher Wren's plans inspired me as I was keen on the idea of public spaces that could be utilised for performance and piazzas presented the perfect opportunity to access and audience of passers by, crossing at different intersections.

Akil went on to discuss the topic of

Ownership and Accessibility

We discussed how personal agenda imposed on privately owned spaces impacted how accessibility those spaces were to everyone in a community and how often, insurance companies dictate what is allowed and what is not allowed in order to avoid damage, vandalism, health and safety breaches etc.

Even the London Underground was impacted by private land ownership and was forced to curve around areas of private land that could not be obtained by the engineering company.

Today's task was to begin to explore a performance concept relevant to Public and Private Space in London

My initial ideas were focussed on some kind of outdoor public viewing space that could accomodate performance whilst conforming with social distancing guidelines/restrictions.

Carrying forward the work we did in Monday and Tuesday's sessions, I was keen to not lose the idea of 'things that you don't want people to see' and to flip this idea on its head, 'things that you want people to see but can't'.

I began to think of ways of accessing a range of people efficiently so plenty of people are able to view a performance without congregating.

I considered a carnival/parade like set up, with pop-up, fringe style performances that could take place on lorries/floats, or be shown on screens that would travel, moving on after each short performance to avoid crowding and access a new audience.

Nina mentioned that she had started to explore intersections in public space in a previous project.

This followed on quite nicely from Christopher Wren's plans for London that had inspired me earlier on in the session with Akil.

I came up with the question of:

"How can performing across an intersection, force an engagement from an audience that would not usually actively seek out live performance"

With the intention of increasing accessibility in mind and curious as to how passers by would interact when passing through a performance, Nina and I agreed to meet at Gunnersbury Park which separated our homes in Kew and Acton.

CO-LAB ONE - PART 1

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