SUCH A LOVELY CO-WORKING SPACE LOCATED IN THE HEART OF VICTORIA!
More than 7 organisations are based full- time in the space together with community members from Vauxhall estate.
Loads of activities are taking place in Small Works Victoria; from Wednesday’s film night, computer classes for adults, Photoshop workshops to sharing day lunches. Organisations and members of the community are totally involved making the space a comfortable place to work and share.
The 4th of July, we had the Open day at Small Works Victoria, an opportunity to show Peabody and other members of the community how the space has improved since December and how the organisations are moving forward.
If you want to learn more about the space, you can read our report in here.
SMALL WORKS HACKNEY
A DYNAMIC MOTOR OF REGENT ESTATE
Small Works Hackney is also getting better. We have done several activities to engage community members such as Global Sharing Day last June by hosting a Big Lunch with the community of Regent Estate, where we all brought some food to share.
Last month, we worked with children from St. Paul, with Saint Michael’s CE Primary School as well as faith groups from the area to gather ideas for Marlborough square, the space next to Workshop 44.
We are preparing an Open day soon to show to everybody what has been going on and trying to get more people involved.
CLEAR VILLAGE came off an incredibly successful series of Labs at the old Lloyds Pharmacy space on Tottenham High Rd. We investigated, designed and reflected – along with our local community partner the Friends of Down Lane Park – on all the inspiring ideas that over 150 Tottenham locals shared with us during our two-week residency. We did everything we could to make sure that everyone could have a say and the results, if we say so ourselves, are fantastic.
Find out more here if you want to hear more about this project in Tottenham.
WALLED GARDEN
AN HISTORICAL TREASURE SURROUNDED BY NATURE
Thanks to our garden coordinators, workers from Havering Council and volunteers from the community, the garden looks great, green and edible. We have been organising a series of workshops and events to promote the garden as well as involve people from nearby areas to be part of it.
On 16th March 2013, in concert with London’s Big Dig and with the excellent support of the Parks of Havering, CLEAR VILLAGE, the Friends of Bedford’s Park, and a group of eager local volunteers massed at the poly tunnels in the Walled Garden for an exceptional day.
The night of 21st June, approximately 100 people come for the first public viewing of the garden in over 200 years. Guests walked around the newly planted beds while garden experts explained the methodology and purpose behind some of the more specialist plantings; ‘3 sisters’ traditional native American Indian planting, Bio-intensive planting, Quinoa and planting by phases of the moon, amongst others.
We are excited to have started a partnership with Ocean Voyages Institute and Architecture for Humanity to design and create a community centre in the island of San Cristóbal, Las Galápagos. We will be working in conjunction with the New Era Galápagos Foundation doing several workshops and activities with locals. Thomas Ermacora will be visiting Las Galápagos together with the other partners at the end of October. We will keep you updated.
WORKSHOPS & EVENTS
LET SOLEIL SHINE!
The 2013 Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Etienne, which focused on empathy in design methodologies, was the perfect platform for Alice Holmberg to talk about the CLEAR VILLAGE approach to participatory design. Not wanting to simply tell people about our methodology without giving them a chance to engage with it, Alice also conducted a live design workshop that challenged participants to re-invigorate the post-industrial Soleil area of Saint-Etienne. The results included long-term plans to knit together divided parts of the community by celebrating its incredible diversity: Let Soleil Shine!
ASSOCIATION FOR URBAN CREATIVITY AT KING’S COLLEGE, LONDON
The 2nd annual conference of the Association for Urban Creativity (AUC) at King’s College, London focused on “New directions for research on Cities, Societies and Cultures”. The objective of this year’s conference, which was opened by professors Andy Pratt (King’s College London) and Masayuki Sasaki (Osaka City University), was to investigate new and emerging agendas in cities, culture and creativity. CLEAR VILLAGE gave two presentations: Lucia Parrino talked about her work on the impact of cultural policies in Hackney and Alice Holmberg introduced Small Works under the broader theme of designing co-working spaces for communities.
DID YOU SENSE THAT? AT HUMAN CITIES, BELGIUM
Taking as its point of departure our everyday experience of the public realm, the CLEAR VILLAGE workshop at Human Cities Brussels focused on how we perceive the city and how it can fulfil our desires. Using a variety of tools to map public space through touch, hearing, taste, smell and sight, the workshop emphasized common experiences of places like the metro, street, hospital and library. The outcome was a live experiment that tested how humane the city of Brussels actually is and highlighted the personal and social experiences that are so often constituted in the public realm.
In March 2013, CLEAR VILLAGE founder, artist and strategy director Thomas Ermacora was invited as a guest lecturer to the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou to guide and curate the development of a series of novel installations to change public perceptions of the Grand Canal.
David Theakston 
Kirsty McArdle 
Teresa García 
Mirjam Wurtz 
Chris Wise 
Merrin Layden
Paul King 
Lisa Newberry 
Keith Brown