After a busy week planning the Wandsworth Arts Festival Hub, looking around the old Ram’s Brewery, and meeting new friends at LSE Cities, we spent the weekend doing a community consultation in Balham.
Balham Town Centre has been awarded some money through Outer London Fund Round 2 and have identified five public realm spaces to improve. The architects on the case – Metropolitan Workshop – wanted a creative way to gather ideas from the people of Balham, and so the Wandsworth Arts Team kindly put them in touch with us. The Arts Team are on the OLF Working Group and input creative opportunities whenever they can.So our job was to ask folk want they would spend the cash on. Dressed as balloon pilots. We had flown in from the past (in a beautiful basket made by Peckham-based artist and new woodland friend Jonny Allams) on our way to the future but crashed because we simply ran out of ideas. Ideas which could only be supplied by the Balhamites. See?
It’s quite lovely how friendly people are when you look like a damn little fool (read in the voice of Max de Winter in Hitchcock’s 1940 classic Rebecca). Strangely, the clipped vowels and old-fashioned politeness is a wonderful leveller. The majority of people we spoke to were incredibly pleasant, and genuinely interested in discussing how their commonly owned spaces could work better. And, unsurprisingly, most people said the same thing: more green space, more flowers, more play areas for children, more inviting places which encourage people to socialise and meet their neighbours. They wanted pleasant and safe places to be; less car parks, traffic and litter.
Other top suggestions included solar-powered rentable jet packs, a Caribbean climate and a statue of Peter Sellers celebrating ‘the Gateway to the South’. Every single suggestion will go back to the Metropolitan Workshop office and some of them will inform the designs, which are being overseen by Kim Sullivan, Balham Town Centre Manager, and the Balham Town Centre Board. Good luck with it, chaps!
So thank you, Balham, and chocks away – it’s been throughly splendid.
