There’s a brilliant organisation called Common Ground that, unusually for a modern charity, keeps the meaningless jargon to a minimum and actually helps people to do things. It’s even more offbeat in thinking that the best way to encourage people to get involved in their communities is not to swamp them with endless wasteful, target-driven initiatives that have no basis in reality, but - wait for it - to give people practical ideas that make them look at their surroundings afresh, and to take pride in them.
One of Common Ground’s main campaigns is for ‘Local Distinctiveness‘, and it has lots of ideas for opening people’s eyes to what makes their areas different to others. One of my favourites is making an ABC for your neighbourhood, which is a great way of looking out for the commonplace, the things you might ordinarily miss. I wandered around the wider N16 area yesterday with my camera and took lots of photos of street signs, adverts, placards and other details, from which I knocked together the simple ABC at the top of this post (though the main graffito was taken in Stoke Newington Church Street a few months ago).
It’s not great art, but I enjoyed doing it a lot. I think it would be fun to do an extended one for the whole of Hackney, including not just details of letters, but pictures of places. So, after the letter C there could be photos of Clissold Park, Clapton Pond and even Crack Addicts, Councillors or similar.
Of course, you don’t have to use pictures to make an ABC: Juliette Adair has used prose to create an A-Z of the Lea Valley Allotments. But I think a big A3 or A2 photo collage for the whole of Hackney would be a brilliant thing to produce. So:
1) Are any of my Hackney readers interested in helping out?
and
2) Any ideas for which aspects of Hackney should feature?
Responses and ideas in the comments, please.
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This is a great idea Ben. Yes sign me up!
Greetings from Gatwick … later on — greetings from BLACKPOOL!! x
Hi Quinkie
I too think Common Ground are a wonderful organisation. Count me in.
xxx
Pants
I’d like to get involved please! C could also stand for Crap Website - I tried to get onto Hackney.gov.uk yesterday to pay my council tax and the entire thing had disappeared. Impressive!
I live right on the border of Hackney, so my knowledge of the borough is decidedly not great; but will have a think about the parts of Hackney I know.
Great news - I’ll drop you all an email later in the week so we can get started before it gets dark at about 2pm. The Gazette says it might be interested in doing a piece on it too, which would be great for getting more people involved.
And, yes, Miss Hacksaw, we had the same problems with the Council Tax, though we got it paid in the end. I think, to be fair, they had put a note up to say the site would be down, but it wasn’t exactly the most convenient time.
would love to get involved sounds like a great idea
[…] been a great early response to the idea of creating a pictorial A-Z of Hackney, and I’m hoping lots more people are inspired to take […]
Hi Ben
Anything that gets me out of rewriting chapter 3 seems incredibly important right now. I’m in!
xxxx
[…] it has. It’s a nice idea, isn’t […]
Hi Ben
I’ve only just found your blog - maybe a bit late in the day for your A-Z. I wrote the Lea Valley Allotments piece, and live in N16. I’d be very happy to contribute something if you haven’t done with it altogether.
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