King's Cross, Urban Pioneers

Hey, Antony here again, thought I'd just do a blog about a pretty important day, the final evening of the urban pioneers project. Interesting day really, it felt like a celebration of our achievements and results from this project, and this was a way to show our apprieciation to all people who gave their time for us lot, and also to Ruby and Sarah for their help and setting up the project. But on the other hand, it's over, this is the final chapter in the King's Cross urban project, so it was a day of celebration but a day of goodbyes. And it was great to see the support for the project and the turn out for the evening, I was never in doubt (i think) but when you see the crowd, you can't run away from them. I think they really enjoyed the evening and intrigued by what we had to say, so I'm grateful for that.

Anyways, the six of were nervous at first, especially naomi because she was the chair of the panel, but we got through it, and it was a friendly audience so that helped relax us. It was never hard to talk about the project because it really left an impression on us and we really enjoyed it so we had only good things to say about the project, and our response and opinions on the different tasks that we carried out. Naomi was great as chair and we just said what we felt and the audience was interested in it. Good stuff.

Other highlights of the night were the films, all six of them were truely awesome, I thought all of them were witty, clever and well thought out. The fanzines were also on par with the fanzines, they are to good for words. It was really great to see the end products of the project because we invested alot of time snd effort into the videos and the fanzine, and also the models that we made with Squire and partners and the posters with public works. And it was great that they recieved a good reception, and evening was really the culmination of the project and was a fanastic way to end it. Looking forward to hearing about the next group of pioneers.

Finally, all thanks to Ruby Sarah, everyone at the AF, all the great people who gave their time for this project, and everyone who supported us on the final night and elsewhere. And also, thanks to the other five pioneers, its been a great couple of months.

Well, we'll have to see what the future brings and I think Ruby's keeping the blog up for future entries so this isn't a goodbye, cheers.

Antony

Photographs by Emanuele D'Angelo

The wonderful films made by the Urban Pioneers with Harriet Fleuriot are now available to watch online.

Today we received 100 copies of the Urban Pioneers' fanzine... if you want to get your hands on one, you'll have to come to the celebration event on Tuesday. Email Ruby for information.

Hello all readers of the blog, nice to see you nice, well, it's finally over, the ten days are up and the final event is just around the corner. Looking back on it, it has been a great time, i've learnt truck loads of stuff about King's X and architecture, so it's been well worth it and I suppose i'll go into more detail in the event.

The last two days, Friday in Lille and Saturday fan-zine making was a nice cresendo to the project. No problems getting to and back to King's X surprisingly, Kofi got there at 6 am, Ruby wasn't too stressed out, and no massive queue and disappionted people in the station, good times. We arrived at Lille about 10ish, and Tom gave us a quick talk about the Eurolille station and shopping centre, although, i certainly felt i wasn't in France yet, the interior and exterior of the shoping centre didn't seem, well, 'French', or it didn't give me the French vibe. Certainly an impressive megastructure, post-war buidling always look impressive. Then we took a walk into old town, then the real old town, and now it felt like i was in France, it was great, the outside cafes, no curbs, just a chain to seperate people and cars, and the tiny details on seemingly insignificant buildings impressed me more than the megastructures. Then lunch, no matter where in the world you go, one can always find chicken and chips. Then we walked around for a bit, looking at buidlings, history, context, the usual architecture talk. A visit to a couple of cake shops and a metro ride later, that was it, back to London. Good day.

The next day, we worked with Tom Keeley, who we met on the first day, on the fan-zine. I came in the afternoon to work on it, and we agreed on the name: More arrivals/Too many departures,  which is a sweet title. And we met Sarah for the first time, who is the director of the architecture foundation, so it was good to met the person who made this happen. The fan-zine production was great and can't wait to see the final print.

So it's now time to get ready for the event, watch this space 'cause this isn't good bye from us.

Antony

Friday 20^th March 2010

Everyone arrived on time, and I knew this was going to be the day that the Urban Pioneers would go to France. Although it was not Paris, Kofi and I still expected to see the Eiffel Tower. I think it is because we had built up a stereotypical image of France but in all fairness, there is to France than the Eiffel Tower and I saw that on Friday.

Walking through the more modern side of Lille, my eyes were bombarded by concrete, metal and glass and the EuraLille. It was a formidable monster, which stuck out like a sore thumb in contrast to the rest of Lille. I definitely preferred Old town, the more historic side of Lille and wow! There was so much intricate detail and design in the every aspect of the buildings. The roads and pavements were interesting, as there was no differentiation between the two; they ran into each other with only bollards outline the roads. Sometimes this got the better of us and we would stop to talk, not realising that we were in the middle of the road. (But no one got hurt.)

The food was nice, the wine was great, and the Cathedral was stunning. I was just a shame that there was not enough money to finish the outside wall, especially when you saw how lavish the inside was. But snapped up some amazing pictures! Tom was great company, he was the walking, talking ‘encyclopaedia’ and there was ALMOST nothing he didn’t know. Top Tom story was when we walked to the city centre and he explained how the government paid for that opulent, spacious area in exchange for people’s co-operation. All roads that lead out of the centre where specifically made with a perfect line of symmetry, so that when the working class would try to invade, the cannons would be deployed, hitting it’s targets with perfect accuracy. I was shocked!

 Quotes of the day...“Is that Spanish Euros?” - Naomi and “Star trek is 2000 years old” – Kofi.  My six word story for Ruby “Lille with Ruby and Tom. Sightseeing”

Friday 12th March was event planning  day. We were invited to Jefferson Communications HQ at 3 London Wall where we sat down for 2 hours or so and talked. This may sound like a very boring day, but if you were in the room with us you would no that it was far from it.  We were introduced to directors Ian Lindsley and David Reilly. Amongst us, we had executive Martha Dalston.

Within the 2 to 3 hours we were there, we went through the setting and layouts of how our final presentation evening would be like. We also had to decide weather or not we wanted to sit on a high table faceing the audience or on a low table standing up to the audience when it is our turn to talk. It may seem that we were dicussing pointless presentation problems that do not make any difference what so ever, however, a wise man once told me "It takes one hour of preparation for each minute of presentation time". The little points make the biggest differences in the long run.

We also tended to stray off topic most of the times into the seriousness of the real world and the tricks that many newspapers/journalists may use to portray you differently. (If I were to tell you, I would have to send a virus to freeze your computer).  Overall, it could be said that we were educated in am area where our knowledge was less accurate. David and Martha told us a little bit about themselves and how they came across to get to their positions of high importance in the companies through paid work experience/internship they did after university I think. (Do not quote me on that, (I might be a little bit off) 

Anyway, we volunteered nioame to become chair women on the event night, this means that it is her duty to get every one to talk and every one to ask questions. Basically it is to keep everyone talking accordingly and in time, because there is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting. (To me, that spells chaos) 

To cut things short, i feel that this day has been one of me best experiences from our whole 10day programm. I have gained alot of information from JC that would help me in the near future. They would be definatly hearing from me soon. 

Thanks a lot

Kofi Asiedu 

Prior to this day we were told to upload some recording onto our ipods that wasn’t to be listened to until the day. Admittedly, I did listen to them and was quite baffled by the random voices and stories I heard. It was not until that Wednesday; when meeting Richard Knight at Holborn Library did it all make sense. Richard was a part of an audio-time capsule project, where a team collected hundreds of hours of footage, capturing the history of Kings Cross and stories from its inhabitants.

After we meet Alan Dein, an award winning radio broadcaster, we learnt that were going to interview random people, unscripted and totally unprepared! I was really excited, until I started of course. Having a microphone shoved in your face with an interviewee more ready than you are and eyes glaring in your direction with the read light on, isn’t the most comfortable situation it the world. Nevertheless, after asking a few questions, things became easier and by the end of the day, Naomi and I were fearlessly approaching people in St. Pancras and it was exhilarating! One of the highlight was definitely the interviewing the bartender from ‘The Boot’ pub and her ghost stories.