Trading Places

What is the street you walk down every day really like? During Autumn of 2006, on Lower Marsh, we go to work finding songs and stories, snapshots and memories of a market street, a place where people grow up, go to school, go to work, and discovered hidden poetry.

Johanna Primary School, SE1 United, Lower Marsh People and Waterloo Action Centre  worked with us on a project inspired by Kwame Dawes' 'Wisteria: Twilight Songs from the Swamp Country'. From the Swamp Country to Marshland, through September and October old and young in and around Lower Marsh joined together to form a portrait of their street through poetry and photographs.

Roving poets Malika Booker, Breis, Charlie Dark, and local girl Anna Robinson wandered the street creating poetry with the adventurous, shop owners and market traders shoot 'A Day in Their Life' on the unqiue LOMO camera, Johanna Primary children exchange stories and peotry with seniors, a weekly group create poetry from shared stories and experiences and young people of SE1 United rap 'n' rhyme about the life of Lower Marsh. All the pictures and poems created through this will made up an interactive wall of image and sound displayed outside the Southbank Centre from October to January '07.

The South Bank Centre's dedicated Trading Places website has now closed. If you'd like more information about the project please contact Spread the Word.