Do Fest Experiment #7: Animating the Inhedge
As well as bringing doing to Dudley market and the High Street, we took the opportunity during Do Fest to run a small experiment to animate the Inhedge, an unloved green space right next to and behind the High Street.
We wanted to keep things really simple, introducing ideas involving sharing and using public spaces which people could do themselves whenever they chose to. We’d never seen anyone picnic on the Inhedge green space, so we started with the idea of a picnic. We also wanted something which would spark curiosity, so the idea of a musical picnic grew, and we approached some local musicians who could play acoustically.
We had also been approaching choirs for an experiment involving singing in strange places in the town centre, and the brilliant Feel Good Choir were willing to sing during Do Fest but needed a space that was accessible and easy for their members to get to. So we added them to the programme for the musical picnic.
However on the day the skies opened and we decided with the choir to cancel their session as it would put their sound equipment at risk. Plus there weren’t many people likely to picnic on a rainy day. We still strung up some bunting, laid out some blankets and shared some food. And made a dash to get the gazebo from the parklet when the trees weren’t providing enough cover!
Given the weather and lack of people around the market, we moved Holly’s activity from our Do Fest Discovery Zone up to the Inhedge, which created a great environment for sharing histories, ideas and aspirations for the High Street.
Do Fest Friend and architect Holly blogged about the mapping activity, describing the range of inspiration shared and timescales considered:
They pooled their collective local knowledge to map parts of the High St that are active and inactive. They shared inspiration on street art, east Croydon, and Bristol, and added layers to the map with their long-term and ‘meanwhile’ strategies. Their dreams for the future bode well for Dudley: street park, shutter art, allotments, roof gardens, wild flowers and food forests.
She also noted:
This isn’t a far distant vision of the future, it’s happening now. Do Fest was just a snippet of the creativity and doing that is happening on the High Street. From Paint Dudley’s stunning work with Dan Griffin-Hayes and Seven 9 Signs bringing forgotten frontages to life, and harnessing the ‘power of out-of-place’ by creating a parklet, to building relationships through conversations while doodling, learning about living plastic free, taking photos, painting stencils onto streets, and making bird feeders, films, zines and pom-poms for loneliness.
Holly’s blog post
Tomorrow we’ll share our final experiment, which was a tool for detectorists. Then next week you can discover what we have learned from all these experiments.
Related posts:
- using festival signals to inform Do Fest 2019 design
- Do Fest Experiment #1: A parklet
- Do Fest Experiment #2: Zero Waste conversations and making
- Do Fest Experiment #3: Doing in Dudley Market with Do Fest Friends
- Do Fest Experiment #4: Imaginative ideas from other places
- Do Fest Experiment #5: Invitations to make art on the High Street
- Do Fest Experiment #6: Paint Dudley sign writing
