We will be on the Silwood estate today at the Silverlock Centre from 2.00 till 4.00 to film some location shots. There will be opportunities to use the camera equipment and all are welcome to join!
If you have any questions feel free to contact us. Our number is 02072236677.
The London Olympics Committee off the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) is facing the prospect of legal action from a number of hotel chains in the UK, who are currently reviewing the contracts they signed offering the committee preferential prices for hotel rooms during the 2012 Olympics.
The chains allege that the rooms they offered are now being sold at inflated prices by the official London 2012 travel agent Thomas Cook. The controversy broke last week, when Thomas Cook made its prices public. The Evening Standard quotes a package for three nights at the Hyatt Regency with a face value of £1,740 being resold on for £6,499.
This is the latest in a series of criticisms levelled against LOCOG over their plans for the Games’ infrastructure, most recently over their plans for creating jobs in the communities around the 2012 Grounds. More to follow…
As part of the Bradford International Film Festival, Cineworld at the Bradford Leisure Exchange will be hosting two screenings of the new Spectacle documentary, Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo on the 26th and 27th of March.
The March 26th viewing will also host a panel discussion of the project with filmmakers Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, along with former detainees Moazzam Begg and Omar Deghayes following the screening.
Outside the Law offers a powerful and personal insight into the claims that Guantánamo holds “the worst of the worst” and how those detained as “illegal enemy combatants” were given no chance to defend themselves and, even worse, given no rights whatsoever.
Information and tickets are available online as are DVD purchases
Click Guantánamo for more blogs or visit our Guantánamo project pages for more information and videos.
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The Silwood Video Group continued this week as workshops were held on Tuesday in the Silverlock Centre and around the estate. We were able to conduct our usual sound and video workshops, taking new location shots around Silwood and engaging with residents curious about our work. This was followed by a screening in the Silverlock centre from 6 to 8, and preparations were discussed for a joint celebration of the culmination of the Silwood project and Spectacle’s eleventh anniversary of filming on the estate. Watch this space!
This week’s workshops will take place as per usual on Tuesday 22nd March, with location filming around the estate from 4.00 to 6.00 and screenings from 6.30 to 8.00 PM at the Silverlock Centre. Newcomers are welcome, and we look forward to seeing you there
Mark Saunders lecturing on the Urban Practices course at UCL:
An Urban media Practice: documentation, agitation, participation
8th February 3pm in Room 114, 26 Bedford Way, Department of Geography, UCL
Drawing on 30 years experience of independent and community based media practice in London, Brussels and Rostock Mark Saunders will describe the political and technological development of Spectacle’s practice and use of media in urban struggles for social justice in the built environment.
This will include, Despite TV, an innovative video co-operative in East London (1981-94), Jako Co-operative and the making of The Truth Lies in Rostock (90-98) establishing resident video groups in gentrifying Brussels (2000-2009) and long term video workshops on “regenerated” estates Silwood in Rotherhithe (10 years) and Marsh Farm Luton (15 years) and recent work on the London Olympics and Battersea Power Station.
Key Readings:
Olympics
Battersea Power Station
Battersea Power Station project
Suggested further readings:
Surviving Participation Fatigue< Erased Social Geography
Video in the City: Possibilities for Transformation in the Urban Space
We had our first workshop with the Silwood Video Group on Tuesday, which allowed us to get a lot of new footage and more location shots to add to our ever-expanding archive. We are looking forward to getting the project up and running, with lots of positive contributions by residents. We are lining up interviews with pensioners and schoolkids alike, trying to get to the root of the changing nature of life on the estate.
Get involved!
Click Silwood Video Group for more blogs
Or visit PlanA our general blog on urbanism, planning and architecture.
See our Silwood Video Group project pages for more information and videos.
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Mark Saunders presentation at HafenCity Universität Hamburg department of Urban Design.
Thursday 13 Jan 2011. 7.30
In the Fog of Games the first casualty is the truth. The Olympics, like other sporting spectaculars, are only brief and transitory television events that disguise and justify Mega projects of vast urban restructuring that permanently distort our cities for the benefit of a few business interests . The common features of these Mega projects are unprecedented land grabs, the peddling of myths of “regeneration” and the “legacy” benefits for the host community, the sweeping away of democratic structures and planning restraints, the transfer of public money into private hands and “information management” to hid truths and silence critics.
Mark Saunders will be showing some “work in progress” extracts from Spectacle’s film on the London Olympics.
Zeit:
Donnerstag, 13. Januar 2011
19.00 Uhr
Ort:
HafenCity Universität Hamburg
Averhoffstraße 38
Erdgeschoss, Raum 16 b
Eine Veranstaltung im Rahmen der UD-Vortragsreihe “Feste feiern. Kollektivierungen urbaner Praxis”
Click London Olympics for more blogs
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REO continue to shoot themselves in the – what by now must be, given their perilously brittle financial circumstances, bare – feet. Their persistent corporate prostitution of the inner sanctuary of the Battersea Power Station (for yous philistines who don’t know is now renamed THE BOILER ROOM) rips away any last layer of credibility from the assertion that the iconic chimneys of Battersea Power Station should be demolished for safety reasons.
Photo taken from beyond the danger zone
This declaration is a major part of REO’s planning application, stating that the chimneys are monstrously dangerous actually, given that they could fall down imminently. This is the reason, according to Planning Director of REO and Treasury Holdings Jeremy Castle, that there is a strict thirty metre exclusion zone around each of the chimneys at each event. Quite how they maintain this INSIDE the structure of the power station is a mystery.
What undermines these claims is that there have been a slew of conferences, dinners and even large scale events in and around the power station throughout the year; from the recent Red Bull X-Fighter Motorcross event to the upcoming SHINE benefit dinner in November (where a canopy and walkway to access The Boiler Room will be constructed for guests). These events, inclusive of the Paul McCartney gig inside the station back in July, would not be permitted to take place if there was any truth to these safety concerns, so this fallacy of collapsing chimneys is but a clever marketing shoehorn to strengthen the application process. Which ironically of course, will be slowed down to increase the value of the land if the application is accepted.
This flagrant contradiction only adds to the controversy surrounding REO, given that they are over a billion in debt, unable to pay interest to creditors, heavily criticised by heritage institutions such as the Victorian Society, Kew Bridge Engine Trust and the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society, and planning an unwanted underground line extension. The current plans for the station, which you can read more about on our Spectacle Battersea Blog, also include planning requests for an office and leisure complex, riverside access, a hotel, and 3,700 luxury flats.
To send in a written objection to the plans to demolish the station and its neighbouring Grade II* listed sister pumping house, address it to Bob Leuty at Wandsworth Council, planning applications@wandsworth.gov.uk . The deadline for written objections is 5pm tomorrow (30th September), and you can also contact your Wandsworth Councillor and ask them what their view is on this before deciding how to vote.
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Residents of Basildon are beginning a petition against yet more prospective public land sales to private developers in the wake of the agreed Sporting Village project. The public-private partnership between the council and construction company Morgan Sindall is part of the ‘Olympic Games’ Legacy’, and has already claimed a substantial piece of Gloucester Park, the town’s gymnastics club and Markham’s Chase Leisure Centre.
However, despite funding from sizeable organisations such as Sport England, there is an outstanding £19 million of the £38 million projected cost still to be paid, which means that other public areas have now been targeted by the council as expendable, notably including the Pound Lane Recreation Ground which is used by local clubs and youngsters.
Olympic preparations are already reducing local opportunities for sports activities
With the land in the hands of private developers, it will not only be used for the promised top-grade sporting facilities, as planning permission has already been sought for 73 homes on the former Markham Chase Leisure Centre site, and also 25 new houses on Northlands Park playing fields. This story is becoming a familiar sub-plot in the narrative of London 2012, with Hackney Marshes and Drapers Field in Waltham Forest also conspicuous casualties of the Olympic legacy.
Although the actions appear reactionary in frantically (and apparently reluctantly) trying to raise money for the benefit of the local area, the significant gap in funding suggests the opposite; that these areas of public use have been previously marked out for redevelopment at the expense of affordable – and often free – opportunities for local residents to play sport with the ultimate product being private gain. Many residents are also anxious that the planned facilities will be too expensive for them to use, and will only be exploited by elite sportsmen and women.
500 signatures have so far been garnered by those organising the petition, underlining the top-down approach to so-called public land.
Click London Olympics for more blogs
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‘Work experience’ is usually shorthand for tea-making, errand running and general office serfdom. Spectacle however has a very different interpretation of work placements.
You get into the thick of things straight away. For me, I was sent off into the City of London to do an interview with two other work placement participants. Before we left we were told how to use the equipment and given some tips on basic interview technique, but we were trusted 100% to go and bring back usable footage and audio.
The Spectacle program is here to help its participants get a grasp of what working in an independent video production environment is like. The placement lasts 15 days and participants can expect to spend 20% of their time on shoots working in different capacities, 40% editing in FCP and the remaining 40% assisting in the office with the day to day maintenance of the website, blog and office itself. Obviously the more dull office errands need taking care of, but Spectacle like to make sure that no one work placement participant is stuck doing all the humdrum and everyone in the office helps out.
For more information check the Work Placement page here or drop us a mesage on the contact form here.
