Fun in the Treehouses

Very interesting adventures this summer, mostly focusing around the Treehouse Gallery in Regents park. A group of artists have constructed two treehouses, and a set of other structures for art and workshops over the summer. I know some of the group through Dougald, and have been spending a lot of time there learning various new things, doing workshops from poetry on human rights to printing, Feast of strangers has got to have been the most interesting. I find it great to have a collaborative space in London that isn't so businessey, unlike various other events. I'm creating an ever bulging flickr set of all the goings on there (settling into my self appointed role as documentor in general). (Also, one quick mention of Parliament of Fowls performance by Warhourse Theatre Works and The Beekeepers, also excellent, and where also the guys behind Pirate Day).

Its also seemed to turn into a central point with a lot of people I know. Dougald especially seems to be involved in organising a thing ever week. Fascinating talks from De-schooling society (which influenced my poem, the right to learn), Dark-Mountain (which videos still are not uploading correctly :-( ), Pirate day which where fun adventures tracing the River Fleet (and lots of chasing about, but great acting), and Spacemakers network. All of these events are interesting in their own right and so I'll talk more in detail as I get the media uploaded for each of these, but each one of these talks has been fascinating in their own way and has been a great learning experience.

It was also good to bring these discussions to a wider audience, there was definitely a feel of lots of new people coming to these events, and particularly with 'Feast of Strangers' where several hundred strangers turned up and we had very heavy discussions on radicalism. It was a nice format too, very much like the philosophy restaurant scene in Monty Pythons Meaning of Life. Find someone you never met, and pick conversations from the menu. I had a fascinating discussion with a parole officer of a nature of rebellion, and our different perspectives on have we rebelled in the past, and how is that changing now. This brought up a section 44 stop and search that I had to go through in the last year, which while I have moaned about it, though not much of it, it was a random search I thought, little did I know that it was recorded and is now (apparently) on record. Theres an obvious sense that we are becoming less passive and more assertive in enforcing our rights now, where as before there was trust.



Onto what I have been working on, I will post more when it is done, but along with artist Anna Cole, we are using an old typewriter to write a collaborative scroll, a story of absurdity, and have been inviting participants to write part of it. It has been an interesting experiment. I sometimes feel a bit awkard about asking people to participate in projects, sometimes I get protective, but there is something about the treehouse space that makes that disappear, at least from my perspective. It has been a real learning journey on how to get other collaborators, with most of the kids just wanting to type their name, or asking, 'what's a typewriter?' The early days people where nervous, but we hit our stride on day 3, and over the weekend we had a lot of people writing various bits in. I think it is interesting that want to just add new plotlines, and not carry on the story too much, while Anna and I weave the narrative back together, and again, had a very interesting talk with Dougald about the ins and outs of improvisation. We're almost wrapped up, and now we need to think about the reading, which should be the most fun part...