Posts Tagged ‘homelessness’
Billy Waters: The Busker of the West End
Thus poor Black Billy’s made his Will, His Property was small good lack, For till the day death did him kill His house he carried on his back. The Adelphi now may say alas! And to his memory raise a stone: Their gold will be exchanged for brass, Since poor Black Billy’s dead and gone.…
Read MoreStreetkind UK on Southampton Street
‘For several years my sister always came out and gave out little care packages for people sleeping rough’, Ijlal explains, ‘but we had our first outreach in March and then it’s been once a month every month since’. It’s 2:30pm on what, for many visitors to the Strand, is a regular relaxed Sunday. However, for…
Read More"I sing of a world reshaped": editing your local area; editing your story
This was my second session leading the creative writing group at the Connection at St Martins. The previous week I met Judith Chernaik, who, with poets, has selected poems for display on London’s Underground. Over 300 poems have been displayed on the Tube since the ‘Poems on the Underground’ programme was launched in 1986. Judith…
Read MoreDonald McDonnell – an artist among the people
“It is a living place”, said Donald McDonnell to me near the beginning of our interview. Donald is an artist living and working on the Strand. He is heavily involved with the Peabody Trust, and his artistic mediums range from poetry, photography and painting, to sculpture. Having spent the last (and my first) three years in…
Read MoreSockmob Walking Tour
On Wednesday last week I was given a new perspective on the Strand area. Certainly I had walked its lines before: I had been to Temple tube station, the arches under the Adelphi, Embankment Park, the Cole Hole, and Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Yet, I shall now look these familiar places and spaces differently: they have…
Read MoreNo Sleeping on the Strand
The ebb and flow of the Strand
Submitted by David Green The Strand means the same in English as it does in various other languages – Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, German – even Old Norse and Old English. It’s a place where land and water meet; where things run aground, where things are ‘stranded’ – left when the waters recede. This is true…
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