Social Art Practice, East London

Social Art Practice, East London

by | Feb 12, 2018 | Participation

Social Art Practice, East London
2009 – 2012

the drawing shed is led by visual artist / directors Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd. Labern+Lloyd practice both collaboratively and individually; their work uses diverse media and engages with issues of resilience, resistance, commonality and displacement. Both artists are interested in the edges of spaces and their ‘shadows’ as well as the objects – art and otherwise – whose resonance is changed by interaction. Both explore ideas that interrogate ‘the edges’ of (often contested) places and communities, working with the unseen, the debris and the dis lodged. These are the pathways into a dialogue and creation of a new form and this is integral to our methodology around social engagement. Using mobile studios the drawing shed delivers socially engaged projects, while both artists also respond as individuals and in collaboration to commission briefs for site specific work that extends their ideas and work.

Social engagement

In their socially engaged practice Labern+Lloyd have worked together for the past few years, as well as on independent projects for the past two decades in East London and beyond, working with communities experiencing high levels of social exclusion. They often develop long-term relationships with individuals which allows complex and rich collaborations to emerge as trust develops. Integral to their work is a strong focus on developing dialogue and celebrating difference through the visual arts. Socially engaged projects can lead out of Lloyd+Labern’s collaborative practice and/or run parallel to it. Always the content works in tandem with the form and the work is ideologically charged; or indeed the converse can be true, collaborative practice triggered by the richness of creative and social interactions that unfold in the socially engaged projects.

the drawing shed mobiles

These were established in 2009/10/11 as an artist-led project/resource/collaboration, they form a central platform for Labern+Lloyd’s creative practice and are at the heart of the drawing shed. These three mobile studios – the drawing shed, ClayOven and PrintBike – live in the drawing shed’s two garages on The Drive housing estate E17, from where the artists currently run socially engaged projects both on the local estates, in the YMCA and across London. Through these mobile projects the drawing shed is able to go to where people are rather than waiting for them to arrive, also using online tools, such as Twitter/Blog, where and when it fits.

Well London and Be Creative Be well

As part of the Be Creative Be Well (BCBW) Well London programme in E17, 2009-2011, the drawing shed took a strategic community development role working alongside UEL and London Sustainability Exchange to develop catalytic projects and access to training that could support behaviour changes for local residents. The resulting real changes in the well-being of individuals created the foundations for community led projects by a ‘Delivery Team’ of residents who then set up a new community group (‘…Ask Freda’) to continue and sustain this grassroots development. the drawing shed wove creativity and well-being through a community cohesion approach to supporting a healthier community.

In E17 Labern+Lloyd continue to use the existing signage that looms large and loudly punctuates the estates, creating text/visual posters with participants, developing skills of local people to forge deeper connections with their neighbours. The new Twitter-based ‘conversation’ in the public spaces on the two estates (which are separated by a wide road) changes their tempo and shifts them into ‘common’ space with Labern+Lloyd as artists negotiating the content of the posters as they are made, and working with residents – children, teenagers and adults – to change the conversation.

the drawing shed has also set up a teenage Girls Estate Based Theatre project supported by partnership organisations as part of the Communities Against Gangs, Guns and Knives, building on the positive vision and aspirations of the girls, the families and the community. This project has seen the coming together of five partnership organisations and the local Hoe Street Well Street (HSWS) Network as co-producers, with the girls taking the lead.

We have also worked with local partnership organisations to co produce projects Eg. With Learning Mentors of three schools and an ‘…Ask Freda’ Volunteer we ran a Monoprinting project in the community to attract 20 hard to reach families; we worked together to create an exhibition which went up on the signage on the estate acting as an art trail leading other local people down to the opening of a new community garden created by and for residents at the back of two sets of flats.

the drawing shed seeks to achieve its vision of challenging preconceived ideas through:

  • Developing projects and the drawing shed ‘mobiles’ in other public spaces also using digital/Social Media tools (GPS, Blog, Twitter, film, sound) with particular communities, that are as accessible to adults as to children
  • Setting up ‘the drawing shed’ workshops in ways that create open access and an atmosphere of sharing, understanding of difference and  tolerance within the community ; Fostering community networks to share new experiences and the understanding of the value of innovative arts projects and creativity to Well Being

The VALUES which underpin the drawing shed’s work include:

  • PARTICIPATION – increasing access for people to enjoy drawing, and to confidently use drawing/art making as important tools for imaginative communication and Well Being.
  • Co-producing contemporary arts projects with communities is central to our work as is INCLUSION ensuring that ‘the drawing shed’ activities and marketing are accessible, relevant and attractive to a culturally diverse audience and that ‘the drawing shed’ continues to seek new participants for creative projects that lead to creating new dialogues within and across communities
  • COLLABORATION strategic partnerships with local community groups and organisations (voluntary,arts,educational,community, corporate), developing projects with those who share complementary aims.

READ THE PROJECT’S EVALUATION: Click here

 

Silence – Attlee Terrace 2012

Silence – Attlee Terrace 2012

by | Feb 10, 2018 | Curatorial, Drawing, print & text, Performance, Residencies & Commisions, Sited

Silence – Attlee Terrace
2012

In the winter of 2012 Sally Labern worked for a month visiting Attlee Terrace E17 and the site of a murder to make a performative drawing work in response to the ‘silence’ surrounding the death of a teenager:

18 year old Wahab Zaaki was stabbed to death on Friday 13 March 2009 on a stairwell at the Attlee Terrace Estate, Prospect Hill in Walthamstow. He suffered a total of five stab wounds and died on the way to hospital. A friend was with him at the time of the attack was also stabbed as he tried to protect Wahab. This friend was witness to the attack but it wasnt until March 2011 that he identified the two defendants. Two men were sentenced separately on July 6th 2012 on charges including: on one count of murder, two counts of wounding with intent, and one count of manslaughter.

For many months there was silence within the community surrounding the murder and it took the distance of time and an ongoing enquiry to get enough information together to charge individuals. Before the final sentencing Labern worked on the site where Wahab last fell to create a work marking this difficult silence and the value of a lost life. The flats are built in a quad style with many flats overlooking the place where the attack took place.

Labern used the social media site Twitter on a #hashtag ‘Lost Edges’ to write during the making of this work; although a ‘public’ site, no one person took part in this monologue connected to the long held silence within this community, mirroring the complex reasons why, when such terrible things happen within a community, the witnessing and the responsibility of witness pulls people together in a silence that conceals the possibility of ‘natural justice’.

Silence was made by pressing powered graphite for hours at a time into A2 paper on the pavement at the site, both ‘picking up’ and by the deliberate orchestration of marks that created the panels for the the installation. Many local people came up to the artist during the making of the work and Labern deliberately avoided the questioning process that accompanies much contemporary ‘dialogical’ arts practice; people brought their thoughts, assumptions and ‘received ideas’ to the conversations which were not used by the artist to dig around or stimulate a voyeurism on the ‘real and fictitious’ accounts of memory relating to Wahab’s murder. People were markedly respectful of the transparency of the artist for the reasoning behind the making of the work. At no point did the artist contact Wahab’s family.

One response that stood out above all others was the recognition that this was ‘work’ – perhaps the long hours of the artist working and the difficult conditions, and the imaginative transmission of the subjectivity of the work to its laden content, in which the community’s fragmented knowledge became a mute but potent part of this quiet but performative work. So far this work has not been shown on the estate where Labern&Lloyd run the drawing shed, but has been part of a group show in the UEL gallery, Docklands, London.

The work remains unfinished, unresolved and Labern is to return to make another in 2013 with a planned showing of the work on the estate.

IMAGES HERE….

Labern creates interventions closely made with non artists, where trust and familiarity can lead to invitations to take risks in art making where the creative spaces and relationships made with participants throw up ‘edges’. It is this practice that she currently refers to as ‘lost’, making works that are driven out of that space. Silence was made on such an ‘edge’; the relationship with residents on the two housing estates where the drawing shed is based, allowed the space for this work to be made.

The Irregular Bulletin

The Irregular Bulletin

by | Feb 10, 2018 | Curatorial, Drawing, print & text, Participation, Residencies & Commisions, Sited

The Irregular Buletin

arlington

the drawing shed co-authored The Irregular Bulletin a contemporary arts project using its iconic PrintBike – a mobile pop up printmaking studio activated by it’s sponsored Brompton Fold-up and artists Bobby Lloyd, Sally Labern, and Joseph Kopiel. Space Studios and Arlington were our funding partners. Arlington provides temporary hostel accommodation and services for homeless people.

The artists consistently led and supported the workshops with Arlington residents, creating a community workshop atmosphere around the ideological concept of ‘The Irregular Bulletin’ – inspired by and rethinking the work of avant garde artists and drawing from popular culture and radical forms of poetry, [lending a contemporary take on William Burroughs Cut-Ups, John Cage ‘s Rules, Corita Kent’s Open Studio ethos]. Here the ‘making and re-making’ of rules allows us to work with whatever is brought into The Creative Space in Space Studios: Studio5 by residents taking part.

Corita Kent, John Cage and William Burroughs were working and active during at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and the anti vietnam war campaigns in the 60’s. Sister Corita’s community screen print workshop with a pop up community cafe open to everyone and this became the hub for discussion, art making, teaching, the making of new rules, and shared community actions.

the drawing shed’s exhibition of The Irregular Bulletin at Arlington on 18th and 19th July 2013 as part of The Creative Space project, took the form of placards carrying screen printed image and text created with residents as both a personal and political take on the world, alongside a pop up café during the Private View in partnership with City Dining, and the more thoughtful and profoundly beautiful series of ‘lost prints’; These are created from the residual traces left on each screen as the prints are pulled. Some of these prints on A1 archive quality tissue reflect the fragility, resilience and endurance of participants and The Irregular Bulletin as the contemporary form chosen by the artists.

PrintBike itself was transformed into a huge lightbox; The Irregular Bulletin format mirroring the ad hoc lightbox created by a resident during a workshop, and showed a series of hand screened multiple prints on foolscap tracing paper.

Paper Stencils as multiple objects of the vast number of prints created throughout this project flooded over one wall of the Creative Space itself so that visitors can get a live sense of Space Studio’s Studio5 as The Irregular Bulletin space.

'men with no work'-The Irregular Bulletin, A1 archive quality tissue

the drawing shed’s original proposal to Space for the Arlington Residency

“the drawing shed will take up residency at Arlington in Camden each Wednesday for a 6 month period in January 2013. In the Creative Space Studio  the drawing shed will be using PrintBike, its fully equipped mobile print workshop powered by a Brompton fold-up bicycle, sponsored by Brompton, to create new work with residents, with content influenced  and inspired by the work of (Sister) Corita Kent – the radical nun and avant garde artist known for her work in the 60′s around the civil rights movement and anti vietnam protests in the US. Kent’s extraordinary images were drawn from a collision of capitalist marketing on the streets and political community actions on the streets,  capturing the dynamism of the struggles and ideas of the times.

Corita Kent was a passionate teacher and set up a screen-print workshop inside the convent which was open to everyone. Kent also created the ‘irregular bulletin’ – a multi-authored publication that took various forms from posters to papers, placards and political community protests, to happenings and performances.

the drawing shed will develop and deliver a project with residents called The Irregular Bulletin with an emphasis on cutting things in, rather than cutting them out. Using PrintBike, the drawing shed is joined by artist Joseph Kopiel,  a highly experienced print-maker who will be part of the pilot phase of this project. Later in the year we anticipate Joseph Kopiel will join us, funding permitting as part of a professional development residency with the drawing shed’s lead artists to develop his professional art practice alongside a workshop programme at Arlington.”

“Consider Everything An Experiment”


Suban:
“The Irregular Bulletin project opened my eyes to my abilities and possibilities – it got me motivated to go out and do the creative things I’m doing. If it wasn’t for the drawing shed I wouldn’t have done my screen printing course, so it’s helped me do the things I found that I enjoy!
The Irregular Bulletin gives me space to be myself – get stuff down and into print…maybe in future I might do an Irregular Blog!
When you have peace and some space, your mind works wonders!”

Pasquale:
” I’m very glad to be back here, I feel okay here, it’s a good space for me, I like to be around people who think like me.”

Richard:
“I’ve discovered that I have an interest in art… and talent! …. I take inspiration from other people and  I gain knowledge from looking at the artists ( Corita, William Morris, Cut-out poetry-William Burroughs), and i develop ideas from things I see around me. I think a lot so I reckon I’m a conceptual artist!”

arlington 3

arlington 2

Artists Notes :

Residents will use text and screen printing in particular to transfer expressions / visual / fluid text stories of ‘residence’ informed by identity, culture and personal experiences; workshops will be a social process, and build upon an expression of flow between imagination, ambition and the commonplace in all our lives.

The Irregular Bulletins will be created over the 24 weeks, divided into 4 X 6 week projects, and will focus on celebrating difference. These ‘bulletins’ will be created in a number of formats that will be decided with participants and may therefore include:

PAPER

  • News Paper – Bulletin – Headlines
  • TEXT – ‘From the Street to Poetry’
  • PORTRAIT ‘Self’ – Photocopy, photograph to cut out to make stencil
  • and PRINT, screen, mono-prints

OBJECT

  • a story, a Platform, a Stage
  • Signs Placards Protest
  • stories, lost and found
  • experiences, real and aspirational
  • identities, real and imagined
  • imaginative platforms – digital soap boxes, tenuous physical structures, screen printed soap boxes…!

FABRIC

  • OF ME / OF YOU
  • Overprinted on existing old T-SHIRTS – SLOGANS, like Westwood t-shirts, carrying ideas, poems and image: transformation, sublimation, transliteration

BANNER

  • protest – STORY – individuals – RULES: made, Broken, aka John Cage and Corita Kent – Rule Number 7 = WORK (artwork or work ethic?!) BasicSeven #7

HEADLINES

  • I AM…..and I AM NOT…..

PAPER – POSTER – BULLETIN

SIGNAGE

  • in the building, in the streets – TEMPORARY LOCATIONS – Concrete Poetry, Visualisation

Groups of residents may work with an introduction to text where we shall start with famous quotes referring to Freedom, Liberty, Equality and HOME etc. cut up, play with and add to, aka Sister Corita, from graphic influences around us.

Print-Making workshops will:

  • Stimulate a process of a shared enquiry  – ongoing throughout the 24 weeks
  • Enable participants to gain practical skills – and use these to lead and enter into a dialogue together and with others
  • Create a counter culture of enterprise, making products not-for-sale: t-shirt, poster, and all forms of The Irregular Bulletin to be ‘free’ etc
  • Create dialogue between texts – inspired by sharing with the local residents PeopleLikeUs Collective in E17 who have created the most beautiful ‘open source’ poetry in the form of tweets, here at Arlington we shall use existing texts and poetry/texts created by residents.

An INDIVIDUAL and Collective FOCUS

SNAPSHOTS 

Possible work with disposable cameras – to personalise the images and content, ‘snapshots’ will provide additional source material for the print workshop activities and underpin positive image and self esteem.

GROUP SHOW 

For the end of project group show we have an idea to create a focus of the The Irregular Bulletin Art works in the building – like the Sister Corita Café – we can use the Arlington Café and residents’ social spaces by working together with residents.

RESOURCES 

PrintBike is a fully equipped and totally mobile resource; It is powered by a Brompton Fold-up Bike, donated to us by Brompton and needs nothing else but the activation of artists’ and participants’ imagination to transform materials into great projects using strong ideas and a passion for  skill sharing. Throughout the project, artists Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd will join Joseph Kopiel for each of the sets of 4 X 6 week sessions. the drawing shed are more than pleased to be able to add value to this project by raising grant funding resources to underpin the delivery of The Irregular Bulletin project.

Future Developments …. Arlington and other homeless organisations

We are proposing that later in the year The Irregular Bulletin project, with Space and  Arlington, will create an opportunity to make connections with residents through other homeless organisations as part of a drawing shed project on the wider dialogue of cultural exchange around the issues of Homelessness, Mental health and Work; it will offer a space for an exchange of voices and  explore participants’ own text through The Irregular Bulletin format, to share and disseminate ideas developed creatively with Arlington residents, with another group outside the Arlington building /area, but with others whom they may have things ‘in common’ and things ‘in difference’.

During March, April, May 2013, the drawing shed developed research as artists in residence with UCL Bartlett around a pilot project called #BasicSeven7, creating ‘platforms’ (performative happenings, screenings and physical stages) to explore and exchange ideas around housing and mental health and the importance of ‘taking [creative] agency’ in shifting the balance in how and what it is we value in ‘Home’. #BasicSeven7 is develop in its research stage over the next months as we fundraise beyond its developmental stage.

the drawing shed has been funded through HoeStWard, a local LBWF Councillor-led fund to develop this piece of work and is focusing the political framing of #BasicSeven7 around partnerships in Hoe St and beyond. Artists will be joining the drawing shed over the summer and autumn of 2013 in its new project garage ‘white cube’ space for a series of residencies for #BasicSeven7.

Festival Here – July 1st, 2012

Festival Here – July 1st, 2012

by | Feb 7, 2018 | Communities of Imagination, Curatorial, Mobile, Participation, Performance, Research & Proposals, Residencies & Commisions, Sited

Festival Here – July 1st, 2012

the drawing shed invited residents, passers-by, friends and other organisations to participate in their mini youth festival, ‘Festival Here’, on Sunday 1st July 2012 from 12pm to 5pm on the green area at the intersection of Prospect Hill and Attlee Terrace (E17 3EG).

Festival Here was led by the Young Women’s Estate-based Performance Project with the support of Roisin Feeney, performance director from The Albany, Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd from the drawing shed, and “…Ask Freda”. The day centred around the girls’ new performative work that used film, Twitter and den-making. The girls have been using the quad spaces and streets of Attlee Terrace to explore how teenage girls use ‘public’ spaces, how contested these spaces are (who owns them?), and how they can feel safer to use local spaces / streets – redefining and examining their rights to be more visible within their communities.

the drawing shed invited artists EMILIE TAYLOR and SINEAD LOFTUS to make interventions and socially engaged works as part of the festival, while  ClayOven provided more than 70 pizzas for over one hundred local residents, passers-by and invited guests. The project was supported by Walthamstow School for Girls, Asham Homes, Waltham Forest Council and Epping Forest’s Branching Out Project. It was funded by Arts Council England and Hoe Street Community Fund.

For further information email thedrawingshed@gmail.com

PERFORMANCE PROJECT. For more information Click Here

Conflict Resolution with YIAG

(Waltham Forest Youth Independent Advisory Group)

Guest Artists: EMILIE TAYLOR and SINEAD LOFTUS


PEOPLELIKEUS

PEOPLELIKEUS

by | Feb 7, 2018 | Communities of Imagination, Curatorial, Drawing, print & text, Installation / Films, Mobile, Participation, Performance, Publication / on-offline, Sited

PEOPLELIKEUS, A LIVE TWITTER PERFORMANCE, 2012

The PeopleLikeUs Collective led its first Live Twitter Performance as part of the E17 Art Trail in September 2012. This public Twitter writing performance has further extended this space beyond the estates and into the ether where others were able to join the PeopleLikeUs Collective in writing to the hash-tag #bestow during the recent E17 Art Trail, September 2012. See our Blog During Spring and Summer 2012, the drawing shed @WordintheHand worked with writers Jacob Sam- La Rose and Dorothy Fryd on a Twitter live art writing project PeopleLikeUs, with residents of Attlee Terrace, The Drive and Hoe St in E17.the drawing shed’s interest in using Twitter for Live writing and Open Performance is in pushing the creative boundaries of dialogical art practice led by artists in both public and community spaces, exploring innovative ways to connect communities and to build virtual relationships; The value of difference and cultural values exposed and in creative collision, has become the material fabric of a rising and responsive Community of the Imagination.

Over the spring and summer of 2012 the PeopleLikeUs Collective met regularly to write together and use Twitter as a creative space to explore, share and riff off each other in the ether.

In collaboration with the E17 Art Trail Poetry Trail organisers, we warmly welcomed everyone with Twitter on their mobile phone to join us on Sunday 2nd September, with Jacob Sam-La Rose, in a Live performance during the E17 Art Trail. On the streets of Attlee Terrace , The Drive and the Hoe Street Ward  and using the 140 characters of Twitter, we wrote on the hashtag #Bestow to embrace The E17 Art Trails Poetry Trail. Participants needed to have Twitter on their mobile phone to join us in this collaborative writing project. A full briefing  at 2pm at garage number 11, Fanshaw House, The Drive, E17 3BY was given to all participants. No previous experience of using Twitter in this way was needed, though the basics of Twitter and a Twitter name were.

At the end of the performance at 4pm, tea, flapjacks and scones were served courtesy of “…Ask Freda”, a local residents’ community group, at garage number 11, Fanshaw House, The Drive, E17 3BY.

TO TWEET:

1 – Set up a Twitter Account, Click Here

2 – Download on your mobile the Twitter App (For info about Twitter for Android Click Here, for info about Twitter for iPhone Click Here)

3 – Tweet under the hashtag #bestow

4 – Alway leave a single ‘space’ before and after #bestow or it will not be picked up within the group of Tweets and your contribution will be invisible to all of us!

5 – To read the stream of #bestow tweets, click on the hashtag #bestow

 

Festival Here

Festival Here

by | Feb 7, 2018 | Communities of Imagination, Curatorial, Participation, Performance

Festival Here

Between January and July 2012, the Young Women’s Estate-based Performance Project worked on a new piece with the drawing shed, Roisin Feeny (associate producer at The Albany) and two volunteers, Kelly and Sonita.

The new performance was presented on July 1st 2012 at ‘Festival Here‘ and used film, Twitter and physical theatre in the quad spaces  and streets of Attlee Terrace, exploring how girls use ‘public’ spaces, how contested these spaces are (who owns them?) and how they can feel safer to use local spaces / streets, redefining and examining their rights to be more visible in their communities.

the drawing shed set up the Young Women’s Estate-based Performance Project  in 2010.
The project is supported by partnership organisations, including  Walthamstow School for Girls, Epping Forest’s Branching Out Project and it is funded by Art Council England, Hoe Street Community Fund and Walthamstow and Chingford Almshouse Charity.

Making dens with Epping Forest’s Branching Out Project

FESTIVAL HERE, THE DRIVE, JULY 1ST 2012

Twitter signage dialogue in Lille, 2012

Twitter signage dialogue in Lille, 2012

by | Feb 7, 2018 | Communities of Imagination, Curatorial, Drawing, print & text, Installation / Films, Participation, Performance, Sited

Twitter signage dialogue in Lille, 2012

In October 2012, Bobby Lloyd took a series of twitter signage dialogue screen-prints from the estates in Waltham Forest, East London to the city of Lille in northern France as part of the city’s annual Portes Ouverte des Ateliers d’Artistes and at the invitation of artist Phoebe Dingwall. Having exhibited the prints within the ‘gallery’ setting, Lloyd and Dingwall then took them to the streets, setting up further dialogues and new elements of surprise. Click here to watch a short film made by Dingwall in response to this intervention in the city where she lives and works.

This was the first in a series of outings for the Twitter signs, the second being to Portland Bird Observatory on the Isle of Portland in Dorset where they were installed in the lighthouse by Sally Labern in early November 2012.

YOUNG WOMEN’S ESTATE-BASED PERFORMANCE PROJECT, 2012

YOUNG WOMEN’S ESTATE-BASED PERFORMANCE PROJECT, 2012

by | Sep 26, 2017 | the drawing shed

* YOUNG WOMEN’S ESTATE-BASED PERFORMANCE PROJECT, 2012

Between January and July 2012, the Young Women’s Estate-based Performance Project worked on a new piece with the drawing shed, Roisin Feeny (associate producer at The Albany) and two volunteers, Kelly and Sonita.
The new performance was presented on July 1st 2012 at ‘Festival Here‘ and used film, Twitter and physical theatre in the quad spaces and streets of Attlee Terrace, exploring how girls use ‘public’ spaces, how contested these spaces are (who owns them?) and how they can feel safer to use local spaces / streets, redefining and examining their rights to be more visible in their communities.
the drawing shed set up the Young Women’s Estate-based Performance Project in 2010.
The project is supported by partnership organisations, including Walthamstow School for Girls, Epping Forest’s Branching Out Project and it is funded by Art Council England, Hoe Street Community Fund and Walthamstow and Chingford Almshouse Charity.

Making dens with Epping Forest’s Branching Out Project

FESTIVAL HERE, THE DRIVE, JULY 1ST 2012

PRINTBIKE

PRINTBIKE

by | Sep 26, 2017 | Curatorial, Drawing, print & text, Installation / Films, Mobile, Participation

PRINTBIKE

PrintBike – the mobile print workshop powered by its Brompton fold-up bicycle (and sponsored by Brompton!) has been working both on the estates in Waltham Forest and across London since Autumn 2010. Currently it resides at Arlington, the large homeless hostel in Camden where the drawing shed is in residency with its Irregular Bulletin project.
In 2012, PrintBike worked hard at a local primary school in E17 as part of a series of Saturday printmaking workshops with families, during the Silver Jubilee street part on the estates and as well as took part in the E17 Art Trail in September. 2011, Labern+Lloyd were invited to take PrintBike into a number of diverse settings, from a park in a deprived part of Waltham Forest to the heart of the City of London to the Peoples Supermarket in Lambs Conduit Street near Holborn (and to Adhocracy at the Rich Mix in Bethnal Green, August 6-7). These three pieces of work were visually linked by the astonishingly direct and equitable medium of mono-printing that engaged a vast array of people and led to the re-tiling of a duck house, the dressing of shop windows and fleeting words on a city square bench.

The PrintBike project’s conceptual intention in E17 has been to get individuals to physically move from one estate to the other so as to set up adult discourses using PrintBike. To this end, Studio Polpo designed a simple mobile printing-making trailer for the drawing shed, built in Waltham Forest and powered by an orange Brompton fold-up bicycle.
‘We have used screen/mono-printing as the main tools with which to trigger ongoing visual ‘conversations’ in contrast to the omni-present negative signage that loudly punctuates the estate. In agreement with the estate manger’s CEO – indeed, with whom we have discussed the project intentions in some detail – and with residents, we have slowly ‘taken over’ the over-blown signage to create different levels of discussion through which to explore and not exclude uncomfortable, potentially ‘critical’ voices within this temporary exchange. We anticipated that these voices might at times be discordant, and inevitably diverse, ranging from the descriptive to the poetic to the banal to the political, therefore moving back and forth between the external and the internal’.
‘We have involved a volunteer resident in two lots of training and we are building in more of this so that the residents themselves can start to co-lead creative workshops with participants linked to the signage project. Thus our developing competence as printmakers is beginning to be transmitted down to residents, a number of whom are now developing skills and realisable means of expressing their ideas, concerns and creativity’.
‘We are using print to encourage debate amongst residents across both estates, as well as for residents to explore experiences and language, and contribute to developing a sense of place and ownership in what has historically been a somewhat fragmented community with a documented low level of ‘well being’.