The London American » London People

Iain Sinclair on “London: City Of Disappearances” pt1

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:12:34 +0000

Inteview in which the author and psychogeographer strolls though Abney Park cemetary in Stoke Newington. …

Duration : 0:7:3

Interview: Francesca Panetta Of The Hackney Podcast – Londonist

admin — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:49:22 +0000

Francesca in action Once a month, the Hackney Podcast dips into the arts, culture and politics of the borough. The mix is as diverse as the population, with recent features on the Olympics, the Hackney breakfast, and a particularly poetic episode on the area’s watery affinities. Presenter and producer Francesca Panetta answers our questions about hyperlocal podcasting.

Could you give us a little background on where the idea for the podcast came from?
We set it up to explore the different sides of Hackney – it’s one of Britain’s poorest places but culturally one of its richest and most exciting. We wanted to combine local politics, environmental issues and everyday lives with art, literature and music. Part of it is about experimentation – we’re professional programme makers and the Hackney Podcast provides a space with no rules, a platform to push the boundaries of traditional programme making. In our Kingsland Road edition and in the latest water-themed edition, we used sound design, environmental recordings, new music, poetry, readings, and commentary to allow residents to hear their neighbourhood in a completely different way.

How difficult was it to set up, and to keep the monthly momentum going?
Technically it’s extremely easy to set up a podcast. For the online bit we use iWeb which has a podcast template that we’ve tinkered with which sends the programmes automatically to iTunes. Creating the audio is also pretty straightforward. We record using our own microphones with hard disc recorders and we edit on a variety of sound editing programmes on our computers at home. Making quality podcasts isn’t expensive or difficult, you just need good microphone technique and a novel way of approaching a subject.

Keeping the momentum going isn’t hard either. Hackney has endless stories and interesting characters to interview. The problem is less material, and more finding time to do it. We could make a weekly programme easily, but we fit it around our full time jobs!

It’s beautifully produced, and I know you have a producer’s background, but do you use a professional studio to make this?
None of the material is recorded in a studio. It’s part of our philosophy for the podcasts. The programmes are about the borough so all material should have the sound of the area. All links (the formal bits of radio shows that tell you where you are and why) are recorded on location (ie out and about in the area).

What has been your most rewarding experience putting the podcast together?
It’s always most rewarding talking to everyday people. Stopping people on the street to interview them can be daunting but can lead in to unexpected and interesting conversations. It’s a real opportunity to engage with our local community, ask questions that without a microphone you would never dream of asking. Then there is the sense of real community action, or creating meaningful dialogue, when we manage to take these concerns to the decision makers in the borough and hold them to account as we did with fears of the Ridley Road market traders who wished answers from our Mayor Jules Pipe.

Do you have any plans to expand beyond a local podcast? For example, a community website/forum for Hackney residents…video podcast…etc.
As online local communities grow we’d like to grow too. It could be in the way we collect and produce audio (we’re keen to get more professional radio and podcast producers involved in the programmes) or it could be the kind of content we are generating. Our only criteria is innovative and high quality content.

And geographically, it’d be wonderful to see similar podcasts for the other 31 boroughs. Do you have any plans to expand to other areas? If not, any advice for someone who might be interested in recreating your idea elsewhere?
We’d love to see other boroughs in London creating their own podcasts. In fact we’d like to see a global network of local podcasts. It’s outside our capacity to produce more content at the moment but we’d happily work with other teams. Our main piece of advice is the same advice for any good journalism. What story are you trying to tell and how can you best do that?

Good London podcasts are a rare thing. Can you recommend any others?
Visit London and the Guardian are producing six travel podcasts this autumn which will be insider guides to the capital. The series kicks off next week with a tour around Vyner street’s art scene with Jessica Lack.

Despite all it has to offer, many Londoners will not have been to Hackney. Can you suggest three things in the borough that everyone should visit?
The hide at Hackney’s Waterworks is not just for bird fanatics. It’s a peaceful place to spend an afternoon, peering out at the herons and moorhens (although they claim there is far more exotic birdlife to be found there) and the surrounding Hackney marshes provided vast quantities of blackberries this year.

Hackney Wick’s new impromptu flea market gives you an undercover glimpse of the art scene. I found quite a nice striped teapot there last weekend, it’s also an interesting area for fans of industrial architecture.

We love Cafe Oto, the music programming, its Berlin vibe, and are pleased it’s started to serve food.

And tell us one piece of trivia about the area that not even Iain Sinclair would know.
Studio A at The Premises on Hackney Road is solar-powered

Have you ever been sick on the Tube?
No, there are no tubes in Hackney. Everyone cycles!

The Hackney podcast is produced monthly, and is available via iTunes. The next podcast will go live at the end of October, tackling betting in Hackney (with an interview with mayor Jules Pipe and photographer Stephen Gill), a bat walk around Hackney Marshes, and a London Review of Breakfasts review of the Bruncheon Club, one of the areas ‘underground resteraunts’. By M@ in Miscellaneous on
About Us “> add londonist Yahoo NewsGator Bloglines

Iain Sinclair on “London: City Of Disappearances” pt3

admin — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:07:55 +0000

Inteview in which the author and psychogeographer strolls though Abney Park cemetary in Stoke Newington. www.bbc.co.uk … iain_sinclair psycho_geography author culture london

Duration : 0:2:52

London Rain at Night ….in Covent Garden~~~~

admin — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 02:14:53 +0000

London Set | Architecture Set | Night Set

EXPLORE # 281

We had another wet night and day in London, it just didnt stop! i just managed to take a couple of reflection shots in London at night in Covent Garden

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Covent Garden (pronounced /ˈkɒvənt/) is a district in London, England, located in the easternmost parts of the City of Westminster and the southwestern corner of the London Borough of Camden. The area is dominated by shopping, street performers, and entertainment facilities, and it contains an entrance to the Royal Opera House, which is also widely-known simply as “Covent Garden”, and the bustling Seven Dials area.

The area is bounded by High Holborn to the north, Kingsway to the east, the Strand to the south and Charing Cross Road to the west. Covent Garden Piazza is located in the geographical centre of the area and was the site of a flower, fruit and vegetable market from the 1500s until 1974, when the wholesale market relocated to New Covent Garden Market in Nine Elms. Nearby areas include Soho, St James’s, Bloomsbury, and Holborn

In 1913, responding to political feeling against large holdings of real property, and wishing to diversify his investment portfolio into less politically sensitive fields, the Duke of Bedford agreed to sell the Covent Garden Estate to the MP and land speculator Harry Mallaby-Deeley for £2 million. The following year Mallaby-Deeley sold his option to buy to the pill manufacturer Sir Joseph Beecham for £250,000. After delays caused by the First World War and the death of Sir Joseph, the sale was finalised in 1918, the purchasers being Sir Joseph’s two sons, Sir Thomas and Henry. The transaction included the market, 231 other properties, and sundry other rights. The property was part of Beecham Estates and Pills Limited from 1924 to 1928 and from 1928 it was owned by a successor company called Covent Garden Properties Company Limited, owned by the Beechams and other private investors. This new company sold some properties at Covent Garden, while becoming active in property investment in other parts of London. In 1962 the bulk of the remaining properties in the Covent Garden area, including the market, were sold to the newly established government-owned Covent Garden Authority for £3,925,000.[3]

By the end of the 1960s, traffic congestion in the surrounding area had reached such a level that the use of the square as a market, which required increasingly large lorries for deliveries and distribution, was becoming unsustainable. The whole area was threatened with complete redevelopment. Following a public outcry, in 1973 the Home Secretary, Robert Carr, gave dozens of buildings around the square listed building status, preventing redevelopment. The following year the market finally moved to a new site (called the New Covent Garden Market) about three miles (5 km) south-west at Nine Elms. The square languished until its central building re-opened as a shopping centre and tourist attraction in 1980. Today the shops largely sell novelty items, though street performers can be seen almost every day of the year, both on the pitches within the market, and on the West and East Piazza’s/James Street outside. More serious shoppers gravitate to Long Acre, which has a range of clothes shops and boutiques, and Neal Street, noted for its large number of shoe shops. London’s Transport Museum and the side entrance to the Royal Opera House box office and other facilities are also located on the Piazza.

In August 2007, Covent Garden launched the UK’s first food Night Market. Fresh produce from over 35 different stalls included Neal’s Yard’s specialist cheeses, Spore Boys’ mushroom sandwiches, Gourmet Candy Company, Ginger Pig sausages and Burnt Sugar fudge. The aim of the Night Market was to bring Covent Garden back to its roots as the “Larder of London”. Organisers are hoping to make it a permanent event in 2008 as part of a wider initiative to regenerate interest in the Covent Garden area.

Covent Garden Market and Piazza was bought by Capital and Counties in August 2006 for £421 million.[4] In March 2007 Capco also acquired the shops located under the Royal Opera House.[5] The complete Covent Garden Estate owned by Capital and Counties consists of 550,000 sq ft (51,000 m2). and has a market value of £650 million.[4]

Covent Garden Market reopened as a retail centre in 1980, after the produce market was moved to its current location in Nine Elms. Currently one of the most famous and popular parts of the covered Covent Garden market is Apple Market, a small subsection of the main market. [6] Street entertainment at Covent Garden was first mentioned in Samuel Pepys’ diary in 1662.[7] Today Covent Garden is the only part of London licensed for street entertainment with performers having to undertake auditions for the Market’s management and representatives of the performers’ union and signing up to timetabled slots.

Currently performers operate in a number of venues around the market, including the North Hall, West Piazza, and South Hall Courtyard. The courtyard space is dedicated to classical music only. There are street performances at Covent Garden Market every day of the year, except Christmas Day. Shows run throughout the day and are 30–40 minutes in length.

In March 2008, Capital and Counties proposed to reduce street performances by approximately 50%. In the Courtyard, shows currently run back to back from 10:30 am to 7:00 pm, with short breaks in between each show, allowing for two shows each hour. Under the new proposal, performances would be cut to one 30-minute show each hour. The musicians and performers staged a demonstration “busk” in the Piazza against these cuts on 27 March with the opera singer Lesley Garrett who is supporting their campaign.[8] They have organised a petition which so far has over 5,000 signatures including Ken Livingstone, Brian Paddick, Vasko Vassilev, Brian Eno and Victoria Wood.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covent_Garden

London Rain at Night

London Churches, Part 1 by Edward Picot

admin — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:16:59 +0000

London Churches, Part 1
Submitted by Edward Picot on July 6, 2009 – 10:26.

The idea of the London Churches project is to visit every church in the City of London – and probably a few outside – and use the visits as the basis of an online work. This isn’t a blog, and it certainly isn’t a historical or architectural guide. It’s a work of hyperfiction, but derived from real places, real experiences, real observations and real conversations. In many ways it isn’t about the churches themselves, but the experience of visiting them.

Part 1 is based on a visit made on Monday 6th April 2009, which took in the following:

St Martin-in-the-Fields
St Paul’s, Covent Garden
St Clement Danes
Temple Church
St Dunstan-in-the-West
St Bride’s, Fleet Street
St Martin, Ludgate

To view the London Churches project, go to http://edwardpicot.com/londonchurches/ .

- Edward Picot

http://edwardpicot.com – personal website
http://hyperex.co.uk – The Hyperliterature Exchange