Our new initiative in Finsbury Park, the People’s Park Plinth, cedes co-curational and co-creational control of our cultural activities to the people of the park. It’s your park, it’s your pick!
We believe that if there is more accessible cultural activity in the park, and more people have more of a say in those activities, then the activities will be more representative of local communities and issues, more people will participate, and more people will feel more of a sense of community and connection within the area.
We have therefore developed the People’s Park Plinth to operate as a dedicated place-shaping initiative bridging the histories, values, physical location, needs, and social practices of local communities. We aim to connect people to the park, surrounding areas, and each other, through free co-creational public digital arts activities which nurture and strengthen community cohesion alongside the biodiversity of the park itself.
We will work collaboratively via place-based partnerships to support and involve communities in ambitious high-quality cultural experiences and improve access to a range of cultural activities where people live, by:
Turning the whole of Finsbury Park into a plinth for free, open-all-hours, mobile-first, co-creational, digital visual art programmes curated and created by, for, and with the local community.
To do this we will invite local people to set the curatorial remit for the People’s Park Plinth as a public art project that starts with them and the natural habitat of Finsbury Park.
Every year we will:
In 2021 we ran our pilot year for the People’s Park Plinth and tripled our local engagement.
We will shortly unveil the park’s pick for 2022: Based On A Tree Story which allows everyone to explore the park looking for tree sprites which tell the histories of Finsbury Park trees and encourage you to dance with them.
In 2023/24 the People’s Park Plinth will take on the theme of local biodiversity. Working with local groups we have developed a project called the Interspecies Festival of Finsbury Park which imagines a a not too distant future where there has been unrest among all the species inhabiting Finsbury Park. After much protest it has been agreed that a treaty of cooperation will be drawn up. But first there will be an Interspecies Festival to ensure all the species understand each other’s cultures and needs. Therefore proposals for the plinth will take the form of video presentations by a range of Finsbury Park species each pitching for which park habitat and activities should feature in the forthcoming Interspecies Festival. We will facilitate voting and then support the artist(s) in producing a series of workshops to prepare for the Festival, before hosting the Festival itself in August 2023 and presenting a virtual exhibition of Festival activities and footage.
The voting period ends on August 31st, 2021 at midnight (BST). Register to vote here.
Come to Finsbury Park on 14th & 15th August and discover 3 digital artworks then decide which one you think belongs in the heart of Finsbury Park and we’ll work with the artist to make it bigger for Autumn 2021.
In 2019, we celebrated 150 years of Finsbury Park being the ‘People’s Park’ – a place where we can all do things together. In 2020, protests across the UK saw public artworks toppled from plinths, while the pandemic left us separated and isolated. Now we believe it’s time to re-explore our public spaces as vast platforms not just for shared experiences but shared choices we make together. That’s why we created the People’s Park Plinth, a project turning the whole of Finsbury Park into a platform for public digital artworks and asks you to decide which one you want to experience more of!
The People’s Park Plinth features 3 artworks:
Breath Mark x Lisa Hall & Hannah Kemp-Welch
HERVISIONS x Ayesha Tan Jones
Desree x Drumming School with Alex Dayo x Studio Hyte
All artworks are free to access and each will take you on an imaginative journey through different aspects of Finsbury Park’s life and history. On the 14th and 15th, you can meet with other community members, as well as the artists and curators, and talk together about the works and the ideas behind them. Tell us what you like and don’t like, tell us why having a say in the local culture is important to you.
Public art is often chosen by faceless committees behind closed doors. The People’s Park Plinth is about changing all that and giving everyone a say in what cultural experiences we want to have together. It’s part of Furtherfield’s commitment to ensuring art in the park is for the people. It’s your park, so it’s your pick!
We created an app called CultureStake which allows communities to make decisions together – while learning more about what is most important to us all in the places we care about. The app uses a special way of voting that asks you to express not just your opinion but how strongly you feel. Click here for more about CultureStake.
Enjoy exploring the artworks in your own time or if you’d like more help accessing them just ask us. When you are ready to vote, you can go ahead using your smartphone or our team will help you vote on one of our laptops. Voting is quick and easy – takes less than 5 minutes – and will allow us all to learn more about the types of experiences we want to have together in the park.
Come to the McKenzie Pavillion in the centre of Finsbury Park between 12.00 -17.00 h on Sat. 14th or Sun. 15th of August. Our team will be on hand to meet you and help you access both the artworks and the voting process.
These in-person and social-distanced events will take place outdoors, outside of Furtherfield Gallery, and under the current Covid-19 UK government advice.
Light snacks and refreshments will be provided. If you have any accessibility needs you’d like to discuss, please email: pita@furtherfield.org
For more details on the project, visit: peoplesparkplinth.org
Follow all the updates via @peoplesparkplinth
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