Community Anchor

We're now undertaking a Locality Survey. The purpose of this survey is to get to know the local community, find out what interests and skills local people hold, and begin the process of bringing people together for a better Southgate. The survey will be casting out for opinion & interest in a number of initiatives, including the Sunday Street Market and Local Health project, and we'll also be encouraging local resident and worker attendance at the forthcoming series of Community Anchor meetings. The first of these to be held on Tuesday 20th and Sunday 25th May.You can read more about the concept of a Community Anchor, here.
For more information about these meetings, or if you'd like to receive a copy of the survey in Word to comment on and/or fill in and return, please email us at greenpeaproject@gmail.com

Update

As some of you know, we've a host of initiatives in the pipeline, and we're now awaiting the outcome of different meetings before we move forward further, specifically about the Health Project & Street Market, but also about funding streams and use of TfL land (at Mayfair Terrace) for a Community Garden project.

This site will updated soon to let you know where we're at in some more detail. In the meantime, please scroll down to read more, and thanks for your patience.

A Real London Pea Souper

Readers will be happy to hear that the Green Pea soup plot has now thickened considerably, although there is, as to be expected still a fair bit of stirring to be done. In the best (or worst) of the modern tradition, absolutely everything got consumed in the market. So, my apologies (a) for being a bad capitalist (b) as with my garden, for not having tended this blog more regularly..

Thankfully, the fog has now lifted. Aside from the impending, exciting return of Revolutionary PM Tea we have four other pieces of news, about (1) a brazen attempt from trusted local parties to steal the market right from under our very nose (2) an equally brazen theft of aforementioned koanic building design by the powers-that-be (3) a little story about a big camera and how, as with that delightful film about the rat who becomes a gourmet chef, the best ideas will often spring up in unlikeliest of places and lastly, (4) terrible red tape.



Verily, the less said about the first and last probably the better, for fear of upsetting fragile egos, not to mention using clubs where bridges of light may well suffice. So, instead, let's focus on the middle two, which are not unconnected and well worth recounting. Middles making the very best stories, and bridges, after all..

About Green Pea

Green Pea is an arts-for-education organisation, with charitable purposes started when a number of Southgate residents met randomly, at least two members falling in love in Mr Bagels Cafe on Ashfield Parade, in 2007. The little group were enthused about the need to make a difference to one another's lives, and the future of Southgate. From that origin came the idea that wherever possible a locality should be providing services for itself, from youth provision to mental health, from street market to public events, and from street cleaning to overall democratic self-governance (and tax raising powers)..

Green Pea is not associated with any political party, but its genesis as a public project came out of the grassroots 'People in Common' Parliament Square Picnic initiative. This started in 2005 with the launch of a weekly Sunday picnic against the Government's no-protest zone around Parliament.

The picnic united a diverse group of people in defence of freedom of expression in the vicinity of Parliament, and stemming from this in turn came a series of debates & public fora about the British Constitution, and the path to true democratic fulfillment. This series of fora, called C421 or the Campaign for a 21st Century Constitution concluded that the only way to build a truly democratic constitution is to start at the bottom. Hence our desire for a publically owned market, for local services to be owned and run by the people and the concept of community anchor meetings..

1st July 2008


A. Green Pea Arts Constitution

Our objective is to use the power of art & social enterprise to rebuild and enhance community cohesion and promote friendship, health and good citizenship in and around Southgate.

As a community arts organisation we aim to attract funding through collective social enterprise and if necessary, public sector grants. We are now in the process of setting up a regular street market, the rents from which we hope to make a source of funding for the wider community. Membership of Green Pea and / or the community anchor project is open to all.

October 19th 2007 with update 20th July 2008

B. Our Ethos

1. communities should be running things for themselves, both decisions about their locality and, where possible all other services such as street cleaning, recycling, health, local market etc etc.

2. everyone must be given the opportunity to work out what they really want to create with their lives, in other words if 'everyone is an artist', what is your art? in citizenship terms, this is identity politics, 'the personal is the political' and how to move from citizen-consumer to citizen-creator.

3. we need a process and methodology of how to connect the two, the path to individual self-realization - and its rewards - but also the contribution of that realization to public service provision, or stewardship (of system and society) or, in old fashioned terminology, the common weal.

4. this process can't be rushed, nor can its importance be avoided.

17th January 2008

C. Where We're At - Update
We’re now casting out for support and interest in developing these, or any other relevant Southgate-based community led projects.

(1) Southgate Town Market

We want to see a regular, eclectic, carnivalesque market with performance art to bring in punters, revitalise and Southgate Town on the map. We’re now applying for a licence to hold a Sunday market near to Southgate tube station: a market for local and international art, craft and food, with activities for the kids and room for other social, environmental and educational enterprise. So, we’re looking for artists, craftspeople, musicians and other potential stallholders, sponsors or enterprising individuals to help make this happen.

(2) Community Centre

We’d like to see an independent local community space, with garden and cafe, in central Southgate. We believe there should be a space, to be held and run by local people for the community as they see fit, in every community: an intercultural space that exists for no one interest group, but for all. A place where people from all walks of life can get to know one another, fostering community spirit and developing positive, community-minded solutions, together.


(3) Green Pea Youth Projects

Two potential projects have now been identified: the first at the Alan Pullinger Centre in Southgate, and the second across the Borough. We’re presently putting together a proposal for both. More information on this will follow.

(4) Newsletter

We are now working on the first edition of our newsletter, PM Tea to be accompanied by the survey mentioned below and a call to C421/People in Common meetings.

(5) Locality Survey

In order to gauge support for these, and help identify other key projects, we'll be conducting a Q&A survey of the locality. This survey will include open-ended questions of immediate and long-term concern to Southgate residents and users, including the question of a regular market and the future of Ashfield Parade.

The broad purpose of the survey is to map the area in terms of resources interests and goodwill, to identify issues that are important to the members of the Southgate locality so we can move them up the public agenda, to locate cultural leaders and other interested parties to help move forward the various projects.

After the survey is done we hope to be able to connect those interested in working on the same issues and projects with each other, moving towards a series of C421 meetings that are intercultural, Southgate future orientated and community led.

(6) Local Health Service

We want to ensure the provision of a local community driven holistic health service, something that takes patients out of the usual drug/one off referral left to their own devices treatment loop for addiction, depression, anxiety and into a more sustained healing process operating out of a single location.

If you are a practitioner interested and qualified to work in emotional health we want to hear from you. The basic idea is to secure a space in which to create a regular programme of activities such as meditation, music, art, dance, plus Cognitive Behaviour therapy, NLP and intellectual/academic presentations, life coaching for skills such as career and debt/money management, job hunting and relationships etc. For more info on this project, please contact Arul Vettivelu on 0773 4921607

And if you have any questions about, or are interested in helping with any of these projects, please do get in touch. Email greenpeaproject@gmail.com, text/call Mark on 0785 439 0408 or join the group at http://groups.google.co.uk/group/southgatelondon

17th January 2008

Christmas Markets

Phew. We managed it. After what seemed like months of preparation we promoted a successful street market, transforming the end of Ashfield Parade each Monday in the month of December. Thanks to Elena at TfL, Zoe, Justine & Rhianna at Enfield Council, Mary Rose at the Nightingale Trust Hospice, Paul, Hannah and Charlie at the Enfield Independent, David Burrowes MP, Mehmet & Cem at Icon 3, Andy and Susie (Saxy Andy featured here with Susie Dalrymple, Santa with the maddest look in his eye, please be reassured he is gently smiling underneath cotton beard) Ginger & Rich in Texas, plus local residents & traders extraordinaire Anne & Peter, Ed, Arul, Sinead, Lucie, Georgia, Luca & Ali for everything they did to make it possible.

In spite of highwinds, no-shows, freezing weather and host of other logistical problems we created a cross between a village, mini-festival and temporary utopia with our Christmas street markets, and on Xmas Eve we were blessed with the presence of a good number of locals who came to sing carols along with the Enfield Brass Band and Father Christmas, who gave out sticks for a ceremonial smashing of pinata.

The aim of the street market was to support local artists, grassroots community organisations and other creative traders, while at the same time team building for a regular street market. And, to contribute to the town's overall economic regeneration and creative revenue for other Green Pea projects, some of which you can read about here, but only the less Top Secret ones. You can see lots more pictures of the market at the Flickr photo link to the right.

House of Rising Sun

An interesting art project we are now undertaking is the building of a series of scale models for a unique community building.

The design is a cone or tipi shaped structure which, when built to full scale could feature trees inside and a DNA double helix staircase up the middle among many other features.

The basic idea is that by building our maquettes with young children to begin with, and then progressing towards a larger version (working also with older children, including young adults as we go) we can begin a process of creative, intercultural community building, through inspiration and the linking of art to individual, and cultural transformation.

Enfield and Southgate MP David Burrowes is supportive of this project and he has kindly us in touch with a local primary school, located in one of the more socially deprived areas in the borough. This seems like an excellent place to start, and the head teacher is keen to develop the project.

Ultimately we aim to finish with some permanent structures, the first one to be built somewhere in the Southgate/New Southgate area. David has also suggested a number of possible plots of land for this.

So, we aim to start the project with the construction of a small model, or maquette at said primary school but we also want to build larger models to a higher standard of engineering, using art and design machinery and perhaps student facilities, while working with older kids as mentors. This process of model building could take between two weeks or three plus months (depending on the school or colleges's needs) with the young people engaging in the process, and with the artists involved, in whatever way the college feels appropriate.

Model building artists colleagues Edmond Beus (Ed) and Arul Vettivelu, plus myself, artist and teacher Ilham Sadellah, Peter Fennel (local architect) are the core team on this.

The design is a bit like the Eden Project in Cornwall. It's about the individual's relationship with society and the natural environment - from consumers to creator-artist-citizen-stewards. It's a cone, or tipi shaped structure, symbolic of indigenous human wisdom, it's transparent at the sides and at full size could feature trees growing inside. It's got three floors, a spiral staircase in the middle (in the shape of human DNA strands), a maypole structure at the top (with a crows nest for good views/meditation or prayer) plus (possibly) a helter skelter waterflume around the sides.

Since initially posting on this and proposing it to various schools and local leaders we've been advised to start with the reclamation of a small piece of land for a community kitchen gardening/eden project. Two potential plots of land, one in New Southgate owned by the Millennium Trust, and one much closer to home on Mayfair Terrace in (old) Southgate, next door to West Grove Primary School have been suggested. Currently the Mayfair Terrace land is used for drug use and as it runs underneath a set of arches it could make a really great garden, involving the both residents and school children in common cause. We are now in the process of contacting the land owner in question to move this forward.

Carnival as Culture

'A Model for Culture' by Brian Eno
What makes for a great carnival? I've pondered this question, as I've watched, year by year, the Notting Hill Carnival in London expanding to become the world's second largest (after Rio's).

My conclusions: Carnival is good when the number of participants isn't grossly outweighed by the number of spectators. Carnival is good when many of the `spectators' are actually also joining in (dancing and singing along). Carnival is good when the participants exhibit a range of skills from the absolutely minimal to the absolutely astonishing (the first being an invitation not to be intimidated -- "Hey! I could do that!"--and the second an invitation to be amazed). Carnival is good when people of all ages, sexes, races, shapes, sizes, beauties, inclinations, and professions are involved. Carnival is good when there's too much to look at and everything's mixed up and you have to sort it all out for yourself.

Carnival is good when it dignifies and rewards all sorts of abilities-singing, jumping, laughing infectiously, dressing weirdly, writing the hit song of the carnival, wiggling your backside, standing on a soapbox praising Jesus or the local hardware store, frying salt fish over an oil drum in public, inventing symphonic arrangements for steel bands, designing and building fabulously impossible things. Carnival is good when people try to outdo each other, and then applaud with delight those who in turn outdo them. Carnival is good when it gives people an alibi to become someone different.

Carnival is good when it lets people present the best part of themselves, and be, for a little while, as they'd like to be all the time. Carnival is good when it gives people the feeling that they're really lucky to be alive right here and now. Carnival is good when it leaves people with the feeling that life in all its bizarre manifestations is unbeatably lovely and touching and funny and worthwhile.

Now substitute `culture' for `carnival.' There's a vision for the future of culture..

Read about the mother of London's Notting Hill Carnival, which began with the motto
'A people's art is the genesis of their freedom', here:
The Great Claudia Jones
Claudia Jones Biography

With thanks to Massimo for these two links.