Busy weekend (27th & 28th of June)

We're making progress at Abbey Gardens and a huge thanks to everyone who came down last weekend with all their seedlings. We have a VERY impressive selection to use in the garden.

Although some of the raised beds are still being constructed from next week we will be officially starting our Garden Club sessions led by Chris
chris 'at' whatwilltheharvestbe.com

These run at the following times - all welcome - there's a variety of jobs from mulching to planting, everyone can help out - beginners or experts!

Free Garden Club Sessions (June - Nov 2009)

Saturdays 10.00 am - 2.00 pm
Tuesdays 10.00 - 1.00 pm
Thursdays 5.00 pm - dusk

This weekend (27th & 28th of June) we have a bumper two day session -
Chris will be leading there all day Saturday (10-5)
and Nina will be there all day Sunday (10 - 5)
All welcome, why not bring a packed lunch & join for the day.

On Sunday you might also want to visit our friends at Three Mills where FOAG have a stall as part of the The Story of Three Mills Island event.

Looking forward to seeing you on site

It's fun to 'trespass' kids...

Sandwiched between the slow progress on What will the Harvest Be? Somewhere had a day at the seaside c/o our Jaywick Parklands project, helping redesign the diverse green spaces around this down-at-heel but very inspiring bit of the Essex seaside.
We took Year 11 kids from Frobisher School on an unorthadox ramble across where once the local trainline went - and found that though the land is now in local development authority ownership - certain local factions believed otherwise. An informative scene where our merry band were challenged by a man on horseback failed to temper enthusiasm for the adventure...

Abbey Gardens Needs You!

We really need volunteers this week (15th - 19th of June) to help us construct and fill 800M of raised beds.
If you have a spare day, or even an hour after work, come down to the site and we will find a way for you to help out. It's helpful to let Chris our Garden Club Leader know you're coming (chris 'at' whatwilltheharvestbe.com or 07723 733056), but you can also just drop by and ask for Nina, Karen or Chris. The wonderful construction team (led by Danny from City Wood) are happy to accommodate helpers in their team, or you can just get stuck in to the literal mountain of topsoil we need to move.

We take all types of help and a massive thanks goes to Joan who today bought down home made buns for the whole team - they were massively appreciated.

Hope to see you on the wheelbarrow line.

Watch us work or ...

Thanks to a neat bit of work by the lovely Dorian Moore, brothers French & Keith Roberts at Newham you can now watch us work at Abbey Gardens ... and it's very hard work!

*Click here to see the live webcam*

Better still you can come down and help in person!!

Day one - a tube strike and it's raining

At last we have started to layout the shape of the Harvest Garden at Abbey Gardens.

Day one was quite challenging! This is the team committed to marking out the site despite the rain and tube strike ...

Themes : Abbey Gardens, harvest

Almanac Launch at Cinema City

A mere 6 years after we were originally commissioned to make a piece of work for the new Cinema City in Norwich the final piece 'Almanac' is launching there on June the 7th. The piece is a 'digital calendar' that creates a unique time-lapse trailer for the cinema each day, whilst also documenting East Anglia’s changing landscape and recording locations in the region made famous through film.

We will be launching the project in Screen 1, on Sunday the 7th of June at 14.45.
More details and an archive of the films can be seen here

The afternoon will begin with the launch of Almanac and a special screening of some of the short films from each site, this will be followed by a screening of our feature length documentary 'Living with the Tudors', also shot in the region ...

Following the screening, we will discuss, and answer questions about the making of the two projects. After this you are warmly invited to join us in the bar for refreshments. The screenings will last approximately one and a half hours, book through the cinema city website.

At Last

After what feels like an age, activity has finally begun at Abbey Gardens, as I type remediation of the site is being carried out and from June 10th we will be on site building 1000 meters of raised beds and then sowing the seeds to fill them - come and join us!

More details are available on the project website: What Will The Harvest Be?

Themes : Abbey Gardens, harvest

Bata-ville autographs here ...

Thanks so much to the Zipp team for inviting us to the Czech Republic to take part in their conference Utopia of Modernity: Zlín. I travelled out with Mike and Joan who were both passengers on the Bata-ville bus and boy did we have a great time. We saw the film in the original Bata cinema (which is enormous and features in the film) we signed autographs (I'm not joking) and generally enjoyed being at the heart of a great event.

'Uncle Mike' (despite being some years my senior) put me to shame on the social front - as I left the Bata villa with Joan on our last night, I saw him in the thick of a crowd of young Euro-architects all laughing like drains and making their way off to a rave in a grain silo - that's regeneration for you.

Themes : Bata-ville, Zlin, architecture, utopia

We love Zlin

... and so it turns out do lots of other academics into the idea of Zlin as a Utopia of Modernity.

You can see more images from our most recent trip on the Zlin Flickr group.

Themes : Bata-ville, Zlin, architecture, utopia

Radiophonic rock out!

I always like to think that Somewhere supports innovation and is ahead of the game and last night I experienced something of an uncanny direct result of this! In 2002 for TV swansong we commissioned the wonderful Generic Sci-Fi Quarry by Rory Hamilton and Jon Rogers in collaboration with members of the original BBC Radiophonic Workshop. As I understood it at the time some of them came specially out of musical 'retirement' to work on the project. Anyway it seems it was a success as last night they were back together and on stage performing at the Round House for a night of nostalgia.

What I hadn't expected to see was chunks lifted directly from the TV swansong quarry piece ... when the show began with the opening sounds and visuals from the quarry I thought for an awful moment I might have paid to watch a whole show I had commissioned 7 years earlier!! Anyway to be fair they only used two sections of the TV swansong work ... however I'm sure Rory and Jon would have liked it if these had been credited! As it was they will have to be content to know they screened alongside clips from Dr. Who, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Quatermass and err Sea trek.

Themes : music, TV swansong, BBC Radiophonic Workshop

This is Chris

Welcome to the world of Somewhere and the soon to be active Abbey Gardens!

Chris Cavalier is our newly appointed Garden Club Leader who will helping us to answer the question of What Will The Harvest Be?

Oh we do like to be beside the seaside

We're delighted that we have just been appointed as Artist Consultants for the Jaywick Parklands Project on the Essex coast.
The brief includes revisioning some 55 acres of land around the seaside town and also redesigning some smaller areas more immediately. We'll be working alongside the Council's landscape architect and also with the local school to inform plans.
The project has already been rather controversial locally - but Somewhere's never scared!

Can be sown NOW!

As mentioned in previous postings we will be beginning our project What Will The Harvest Be? on site at Abbey Gardens in May 2009, with the realisation of our plans for the Harvest Garden. Although I know lots of people will get involved with the project it's hard not to panic about the mass-germination of seedlings needed to fill such a large space, especially when my studio is already full of seedling trays and lots of boxes of seeds with PLANT NOW written on the top. We have 800 meters of raised beds to fill and make amazing by the end of the season.

SO do get in touch if you're a Newham local & you'd like to be involved with this project, especially if you would like to bring on some seedlings for the project at home. We can post you some of our amazing selection of Chiltern Seeds!

Show down in Devon

My Exmoor National Dress is on show in May down in Devon in a brand spanking new art centre (for some reason this flyer doesn't have the address so here goes!)
Venue:
Duchy Square Centre for Creativity
Tavistock Road
Princetown
Devon
PL20 6QF

Telephone : 01822 890828
www.duchysquare.org

Preview of the show 'Triparks' is 6-8pm on Friday May 1st, then show runs till May 27th

Join us & Friends of Abbey Gardens, Sunday April 26th

You're warmly invited to Abbey Gardens to find out about getting involved in our 'What Will the Harvest Be?" project - an open-access garden in East London.
Somewhere & FOAG (Friends of Abbey Gardens) will meet at the gardens (Baker's Row, London E15) on Sunday 26 April from 11.30am. Joining the FOAG is free, all welcome.
Seeds sponsored by Chiltern Seeds will be distributed free at the event, with help and advice on sowing these for planting in the garden next month. There will be refreshments on hand too!

Themes : Abbey Gardens event, Chiltern Seeds

Somewhere spring events

What Will The Harvest Be?

Spring waits for no commissioning process and just in the nick of time it seems that all the pieces of the laborious Abbey Gardens funding and permissions process are slipping into place. SO we are delighted to announce two up and coming events for those who would like to visit the site (before it all changes) and find out more about becoming involved:

Meet the artists: Join the artists and Friends of Abbey Gardens on site.
We will be at Abbey Gardens from 11.30 to 13.00 on Sunday April 5th. We'll have the site plans with us and free seeds to give away to anyone keen to start growing plants for the Harvest Garden - instructions given for gardening newbies!

You are also welcome to join us on the ‘Three Mills Loop’ walk (led by Gordon Joly) which immediately follows the meeting and will take walkers across the Olympic site ending at Three Mills.

Friends of Abbey Gardens Meeting: FOAG will be meeting at the site on Sunday April 26th at 11.30 am, this meeting will provide a progress update for members and a chance to sign up for activities at the garden over the next few months. New members are welcome. Free seeds available.

I think they said yes - green light for What will the Harvest Be?

Finally, some news on our Abbey Gardens public art commission.
At a meeting last week in opulent Stratford Town Hall, Newham Council, us and Friends of Abbey Gardens took a collective deep breath and decided to go for the Harvest Garden we'd proposed - in time to grow fruit and veg there this summer!

Guerrilla Seeds

As mentioned on the project blog progress with What Will The Harvest Be? is proving VERY slow at present, so l really enjoyed catching Richard Reynold's talk at Broadway Bookshop this week. Seeing the very immediate and fresh efforts of other gardeners who are in contact with him from around the globe was quite uplifting.

If all else fails with Abbey Gardens perhaps the residents should just adopt the Guerrilla approach and get on with it!

In return for the free sun flower seeds he gave us (which personally I've never been keen on but I can see they are ideal for this type of gardening) I just emailed a link to the Plaistow Landgrabbers (who inspired our project) and of course offered some of our own wild flower seeds gathered last summer.

His book,website and seed packets all look great so you won't be surprised to hear that his 'day job' is in advertising!

Living with the Tooooodursss

Nearly a year since my relentless promotion of the film at Austin's SXSW Festival, Living with the Tudors is finally out on DVD stateside c/o Indiepix!
See here for more:
http://www.indiepixfilms.com/film/3643
Please buy it, you lovely Americans!

Themes : USA DVD release

Preview of films made with H.M.P Preston

At long last the series of short films I made whilst on residency at HMP Preston last summer are going to be shown - on the outside at least!
The Preview of a show of different works by offenders working with artists and writers
"The view from my house"
is on
Thursday 5th March from 6pm - 7.30pm
Preston Harris Library
Market Square, Preston PR1 2PP

RSVP catherine.sadler@litfest.org