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!

Posted Friday 27th February, 2009 at 2:32 pm by Nina

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!

Posted Tuesday 10th February, 2009 at 1:40 pm by Karen

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

Posted Tuesday 10th February, 2009 at 10:11 am by Karen

Chicago & my lost tape eureka moment

I've been a bit slow getting into the Somewhere New Year so this posting is coming a bit late BUT we're excited to say that Living with the Tudors is enjoying two special screenings at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago.

For more info on the actual screenings go to the Gene Siskel Film Center web site and click on the "Stranger than Fiction" section. The dates are:

Sunday, January 11, 5:30 pm
Wednesday, January 14, 6:00 pm

Also, fingers crossed, I hope the production of the US Tudors DVD is now finally underway after what feels like months of trying to sort out the lost master tape of the all important extras, which somehow disappeared when the UK version was made. The whereabouts of the original still remains a mystery (lost somewhere in a vortex between 24-7 & Soda pictures) but just at the point I had almost resigned myself to re-editing 40 minutes of material from about 40 different tapes in all different formats I experienced one of those "I'll just have one last check in this unlikely looking shoe box" moments and found a safety master the wonderful Matt Jones from Illumina must have made for us. He too had felt my lost tape pain over the last few months when searching the not insignificant archive of our work held in storage at Illumina! Anyway, it will hopefully now all end well, with a lovely new NTSC set of shiny DVDs assuming the new master arrives safely with Indiepix in the US ... now where did I put that UPS tracking information ...

Posted Wednesday 14th January, 2009 at 2:04 pm by Nina

Beauties of Exmoor

I've put up a gallery of my portraits from my Exmoor residency here...

Posted Friday 21st November, 2008 at 4:14 pm by Karen

Triparks preview

This weekend I made an arduous but worthwhile trip back to Exmoor for a local preview of my work from the Triparks residency. I had 5 portraits of local people wearing my Exmoor National Dress and also my 20 minute film of the project, which met with much amusement from the locals who recognised their friends dressing up and looking daft.

Posted Monday 17th November, 2008 at 11:45 am by Karen

Sometimes I love my job ...

... can you tell from this picture?

Yesterday Newham Homes (many thanks) allowed me to go up to the top of the tower blocks you see from Abbey Gardens (see image below) and take pictures of the layout from above (all on Flickr here). As we walked over to the block the wind was enough to knock you back and I did have a brief panic about my own sanity. However after a short H&S intro I donned my hi. vis. jacket (as pictured) and we took the lift up and out onto the roof - it was REALLY exciting - and strangely not that windy at all. I used to live on the 17th floor of a similar block in Holloway but I never got out onto the roof ... it felt really different to seeing the view through a window. I was also excited to see the lift mechanism in operation from inside and out - so excited that once I came down I got a call revealing I had completely missed a meeting scheduled for that afternoon at home!

Posted Wednesday 12th November, 2008 at 7:35 pm by Nina

Mark Up Day

Over on the What Will The Harvest Be? Blog you can read about our antics at the weekend trying to layout the design for Abbey Gardens (this photo was taken a couple of days later, with less people and string) and about Karen's encounter with garden goddess Carol Klein.

Posted Wednesday 12th November, 2008 at 7:29 pm by Nina

What Will The Harvest Be? Weekend Events

The Friends of Abbey Gardens & Somewhere invite you to two weekend events as part of

WHAT WILL THE HARVEST BE?

On Saturday the 8th of November we will be leading a 'layout day' at the Abbey Gardens site. Working with string, tapes and spray paint we will be literally marking out the design for next years Harvest Garden onto the grass at Baker's Row.

It should be a fun afternoon outdoors with lots of potential for measuring and string mistakes! Liberal tea brakes will be programmed into the schedule.

We will be meeting at Abbey Gardens at 12.30 for the all-afternoon project, please wear suitable clothing and footwear, and do bring along any coloured string you have to help us mark out the beds. Children are welcome but must be supervised.

Following on from this we will also be meeting on Saturday the 15th of November to build some compost bins and a test raised bed on the site ... again all welcome. Meet at the gardens from 12.30 onwards.

Please let us know if you are planning to attend

Posted Friday 7th November, 2008 at 1:39 pm by Nina

East Tilbury Interview

I enjoyed one of my regular visits back to East Tilbury this week, catching up with Bata-ville friends at the Bata Resource and Reminiscence Centre. These are always busy events and this Wednesday they had 300 visitors! One of these was Michael Casey who has bravely set out to start a new kind of news site for the area focussed on local views. It's called YourThurrock and links to all of the clips he makes on YouTube ... you can see the quick interview he did with me about the film here.

I've also added some new images to our Bata group on Flickr, it's now got some good shots from Bata communities all over the world.

Posted Friday 24th October, 2008 at 11:10 am by Nina