Presented on the 5th October to a gathering of pensioners, sailors, artists, geeks, developers, politicians, children,historians, teachers, technicians, barstaff, writers, activists... at the Greenwich Yacht Club.

I’m Happy to have the chance to present this project to a gathering of so many people who care about the Greenwich Peninsula. I’ve enjoyed getting to know the area and the people. During my research I regularly placed myself under the tutelage of local children, in order to learn from their ways of being in the place. And when I asked them where they would take a visitor their replies included:
• to HMV,
• to Sainsbury’s,
• to Boots to try on all the makeup,
• to the yacht club
• and to kaya’s house because he has really good video games.

When I was invited to work here I realised that I was dealing with a complex context.
I was commissioned by a independent photography a community arts organisation here where massive economic and infrastructural developments are taking place and the commission is funded through Greenwich council and the arts council.
The use of creativity in such a context can sometimes act as an attractive way to obscure and so perpetuate social and economic inequalities. As I approached this project I considered these potential potholes and carefully, as carefully as one might avoid the gaze of a security guard when dipping your feet in a fountain on a hot summers day. I wove a project out of a variety of collective experiences most importantly
• a walk with Rich Sylvester local historian and guide,
• the ideas of children in Paul Lambert’s class at Millennium primary school,
• an event gathering together people who would not usually meet and distracting them/you! from the familiar social relations and hierarchies,
• talks with Isabel and Andy from IP
• And my own wandering and thinking
The result is this guide, which I present to you this evening entitled Accidental Holiday and subtitled a wildish guide to the Greenwich Peninsula. It contains a walk with suggested activities and a map with the words of people who came on an adventure/ research outing with quoted verbatim in the hope that the project might contribute to discussion of concerns of people in the area rather than glossing over them.
The guide invites you to experience the peninsula through active engagement with its walls railing and hiding places taking you deeper into the textures and the detail one misses when moving through it on the way to somewhere else. Inspired by characteristics such as persistence, lawlessness and exuberance which I observed in the wild and feral plant and animal life that is really thriving in forgotten corners of the Peninsula, the activities in the guide make use of risk taking and play as strategies and explore three questions:
• What do people need in order to thrive?
• Is there such a thing as public space?
• What is appropriate behaviour in public space?

Behaviour shapes our environment and our environment shapes our behaviour. The ways we act, the things we do, where we walk and how we walk can be political acts as they shape the places we inhabit and change them in accordance with our own needs and desires. Take the area around North Greenwich tube, along the surrounding roads there are barriers and specific places for crossing the road but local people just walk straight through the beds of ivy to get to the station quickly. And now the gardeners actually maintain the new self made paths, so without any master planning the most direct route to Greenwich tube has been made by its users.

During the project I sought the guidance of local children who’s natural inclination to transgressive behaviour in the street can make adults question where the boundaries of acceptable behaviour in public space lie. Eg my 7year old nice pulled down her pants to have a pee in a park recently. The desire to eat wild food and love the places where it grows, to explore undergrowth, swing on a bike rack or hide something in the bushes are the kinds of things one is required to forget in order to be a valid member of society. But this kind of playful behaviour can continually shift the boundaries at a time when public space is determined and regulated to such a degree that it is becoming acceptable only to move through it on the way to and from work and for consumption of leisure activities. Wandering around in a state of openness to the pleasures and adventures that one can create in relation to place and others around you is a mode of being in the world that is out of step with developed, adult, urban society but a skill that teenagers and children have not erased from their ways of being. I’m aware that in a different context using such experiential research strategies as urban climbing and making a fire on disused land I would be awarded an ASBO rather than an arts commission. So I’m very happy to have had the chance to make this guide inducing you to a little more playful even devious behaviour and to seek the kinds of boundaries that suit us that allow us to grow, be safe and use our strengths and to thrive on the Greenwich Peninsula.

And I would like to invite you all to join me in a mass trespass later this evening.



Is any one available to answer a question raised by a local resident about the ground water in the millennium village and whether it is likely to contain cyanide and Benzedrine?
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