Meet 18.00
introductions - what i've been doing ie developing this guide which is part of Peninsular a series of arts commissions investigating the Greenwich Peninsula.
Names what do you need to thrive? (wine, family, time to self, sex, money, adventure?)

What are we going to do?
The event will be about two hours maybe a bit more, at seven there will be a break for refreshments.
This is a guided walk with a difference we’re not just going to talk many of us spend a lot of time thinking and talking we are going to experience the Greenwich Peninsula playfully, together by doing activities that will hopefully give us fresh ways to look at the factors at play here. During my research for this event i noticed that all over the Peninsula plants are bursting through fences and concrete and foxes and cats are going about their business. Sometime in big cities people are doing little more than surviving while feral plants and animals are really thriving. this lead to the question 'what do people need in order to thrive?' Do we need to copy some of the characteristics and be lawless, lazy, challenging, devious, risky,nurturing, curious, patient, trusting?

One of the outcomes of this event will be a printed map a bit like this one with your thoughts on what people need in order to thrive.
We will use story sticks as a record of what happens – collect small things along the way to place on here, looking back over it will remind us of what has happened.

Perhaps what we need in order to thrive is playfullness and risk taking we’re going to have the opportunity to do both – with ideas, physically, socially, with what we think we can do. Being quiet or trying something new, considering an idea that doesn’t fit with your usual framework for making sense of the world can all be risks. Going beyond the limits we have imposed on us and the ones we impose on ourselves usually shows us that we are braver, stronger and smarter than we realised. Use your judgement do only what you feel comfortable doing just watching is useful too.

Do everything in your own way – we are all different you have skills that no one else has all kind s of ideas and ways of doing things are valued. If you are having trouble with one activity you might love the next one. having the wrong shoes feeling tired can be advantages they mean you find your own challenges.


Why here and why you? This area is constantly changing there are so many factors social, environmental and political at play here. Why you? Because each of you has views and experiences of this place that are valuable Value each person’s point of view and your contributions in whatever form are important.

Hand out maps
18.25
Curious Activity
Go down to the shore

Watch out for
be very careful on the rocks they are slippery.
Curious Activity
Sit quietly and listen to the sounds, take in your suuroundings then some one open the sewage pipe and look for a frog

Thrive?
I ask everyone what do people need in order to thrive? Please give us one idea each, you will get the opportunity to do this at each location we visit. Your silence can also be a contribution.
My answer is - compost toilettes.
Resourceful activity
Please look for drift wood of this kind – over to Rich

Carry to the Park
Follow desire line

Get equipment

18.40
Challenging activity
Build a shelter a place to be in two teams. Think together about what it could be like, have a look at the materials we provide, try to include everyone’s contributions. Don’t think about it too long just begin and see what happens. It’s a very short exercise so have fun.

19.00
Tell us about your dwelling and show us around.

Thrive?
Again what do people need in order to thrive?
My answer -To grow our own food – it takes time, it means being intimate with the soil, the seasons, the weather and re-establishes the link between our bodies, the food we eat and the environment instead of relying on the exploitative and environmentally damaging infrastructures created by supermarkets.

so lets plant some weeds and some sunflowers tomato plants?

Nurturing activity
Plant – trowel and compost.

19.15
Over to the kids to demonstrate how to play on the low walls in the park

19.25
Get into the fountain
Watch out for
The surface is very slippery find ways to move that don’t involve falling over unless you want to.

Kids show us how to play on the bike racks


Patient activity
I produce the refreshments hidden in the bushes
We sit down have some thing to eat and drink then sit quitetly and wait for a mouse.

Thrive?
Again what do people need in order to thrive?
My answer To make compost – in landfill where most of our rubbish goes decomposing vegetable matter produces methane which poses a threat when it leaks out of landfill and co2 which contributes to climate change.

Anyone who wants to can go at this point.

Others we will do the lawless, devious and primal activities so be prepared!
Again only do what you feel comfortable with.

The rest of us stash the cups and stuff in the hiding place


Then we walk down to Boord street and try to pick mirabelles.

Lawless activity
When we get to the boarded off land on old school way.
Discussion – this is challenging is anyone up for climbing over? We can follow the fox paths to the blackberry harvest and I’ll show you the horse radish growing wild.
Keep connection to those on the other side show them the horse radish ask should we try eating it? Would this make a good geurilla garden? Shall we take the tyres and make a potato harvest some where?

Thrive?
Ask the same question again
My answer – complexity co exist with wide variety of organisms even one we can’t make use of and don’t understand.

Head back up past the gasworks through the car park past kenny’s diner and
at the tube station The hole in the bushes.

Devious activity
Does anyone want to come in here with me?

Then in the last leg we go to the shore by the river
I collect the food bag I have hidden in the bushes with more water and wine
Rich will ask people to be careful as they make their way over the shrubs and the flotsam.

Primal Activity
Rich will have already prepared the fire he will ask everyone to place their piece of wood on the fire and say what they think people need most in order to thrive.
Rich I would like at this point everyone to say what they feel people most need to thrive.
Have a drink and some food





At each destination we will stop and I will ask you again the same question what do people need in order to thrive?
Every one is asked what they think
My ideas are:
At the river
We need to think again about how we deal with the things we would rather ignore sewage is a great example if we treat it as a totally negative thing and try to make it disappear it becomes pollution or requires elaborate processing. The claim that the Thames is one of the cleanest metropolitan rivers in the world was made untenable last year when during the flash floods last summer gallons of raw sewage leaked into the Thames. But with compost toilettes we keep our pee and poo and use it. it becomes nutritious compost in which to grow plants. Compost toilettes also drastically reduce our consumption of fresh water.

At Central Park
To grow our own food – it takes time, it means being intimate with the soil, the seasons, the weather and re-establishes the link between our bodies, the food we eat and the environment instead of relying on the exploitative and environmentally damaging infrastructures created by supermarkets.

At the Billboards
To make compost – in landfill where most of our rubbish goes decomposing vegetable matter produces methane which poses a threat when it leaks out of landfill and co2 which contributes to climate change.

In the fox’s playground
Complexity -To acknowledge that there are multiple factors and dynamics in all systems and to co-exist with such things as weeds and foxes – things that are considered by some as undesirable. To even live with things we don’t understand.

At the Fountain
Play – time spent engaged in activity that has no obvious goal

Risk
Trying things outside of the frame of socially acceptable behaviour shows us that often our abilities far exceed the limits we have become accustomed to living with. Taking risks extends our abilities and world-view. You can take risks on many levels ie physical risk or considering an idea that falls outside of your usual framework for making sense of the world.


See how urban and rural man made and nature are totally entwined – since the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago we have been breeding plants and animals to eat and as companions. The transition from hunter gatherer to a settled agricultural lifestyle may represent the fist time people had a concept of home.

Empty spaces physically and mentally
Time and space for things to just be.