Contested Commons

Public Signage dialogue, Twitter on the Drive Two, E17 Art Trail September 2011

For the past three years, Labern+Lloyd have used the existing signage that looms large and loudly punctuates the two estates, creating screen-printed text/visual posters with participants, developing skills of local people to forge deeper connections with their neighbours. These temporary Twitter-based ‘conversations’ in the public spaces on the estates (separated by a wide road) change their tempo and shift them into ‘common’ space with Labern+Lloyd as artists negotiating the content of the posters as they are made, and working with residents – children, teenagers and adults – ‘to drag the poetic through the every day’.


Project’s origins:

Twitter on the Drive Two began as a conversation the same week that the Tottenham Riots led to 46 riots across the communities of the UK. Across the duration of the drawing shed’s larger project on The Drive and Attlee Terrace estates over the past couple of years, Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd have used the existing signage to create posters with residents, developing temporary ‘conversations’ that change the tempo of these spaces, shifting them into adhoc ‘common’ space’ – exploring the nature of these public spaces and what happens when they are contested.Artists Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd supported three resident Art Activators to become workshop leaders within their own communities using the disciplined format of Twitter – the Tweet using up to 140 characters to create poetry, prose, print and mehndi within the communities of the Drive, Attlee Terrace and the YMCA. Posters on the signage that punctuates the green spaces across the estates, and poems in Mehndi (henna) on participants arms and legs, came together to form the Twitter on the Drive Two – A Word In the Hand exhibition.The Art Activators led a series of workshops in August and September 2012, working together for the first time and to create the text for the posters exhibited as part of the E17 Art Trail, September 4th-11th 2011.This work has been funded by Arts Council England and the Walthamstow and Chingford Almshouse Charity.