Kensal Rise Has A Story – video

At the beginning of 2020 I was commissioned to create a project by Brent 2020 London Borough of Culture in collaboration with Kensal Rise Community Library. The resulting project, Kensal Rise Has A Story, launched in September 2020 as part of the inaugural Brent Biennial. This is how I described the project in an interview with Art Review:
“It’s a geographic sound map or trail of Kensal Rise. The form the project takes has partly been informed by the COVID-19 restrictions. I had planned this beautiful archive inside the library and some of the sound works were going to be burnt onto vinyl which could be listened to within a listening booth. We’ve not got those, but its ok, those were outcomes, they weren’t really the work itself which is a portrait of the community in their own words. By ‘community’ I mean the community of the library. Where it becomes geographic is that the emphasis is on the subjective responses to the environment and the changes within that environment rather than looking for some objective, dry, historical overview of the area, or even contemporary commentary on the area.
The ethos of the Kensal Rise Library is at the heart of the project. About 60 percent of the contributors are connected to the library, as users or in some other way. You can’t listen to any of the clips without feeling the presence of the library.”
You can read the rest of the interview here

It gave me enormous pleasure putting this video together with snippets of footage captured on some of the walks with local residents and some of the 51 audio clips that made up the audio trail.

You can listen to the full list of audio clips here

Massive thanks to everyone who contributed interviews, Brent 2020, Kensal Rise Community Library, curator Henry Coleman, designer Joe Hales, Willesden Local History Society, Winkball (James, Tom, Gideon), and Brent Borough Archives.

Kensal Rise Has A Story – Brent Biennial Zoom talk

Last month I did a Zoom talk with the wonderful Kensal Rise Library about the project we’ve been working on for Brent 2020 London Borough of Culture as part of the inaugral Brent Biennial.

I started work on Kensal Rise Has A Story in January 2020 with research in the Brent Archives based in Willesden Green Library, looking at the old Ordnance Survey Maps of the area noting the phases of change that came with the railways. I also looked at resonant news stories from the past and the maps and listings published in the Borough of Willesden Guides of the 1920’s and 30’s.

After scoping out the area on foot, I met with Willesden Local History Society and embarked on walks with some of their members and also recorded some sit down interviews, using old OS maps and archive images to navigate the conversation.

I then interviewed members of the broader community, some who took me on walks, some I interviewed in their homes, others in gardens and allotments, even at work. During lockdown I conducted two of the interviews remotely.

Margaret and Stephanie from Kensal Rise Library provided memorable contributions with their recollections of the campaigns to save this essential hub of the community. They also delved into the deeper history of the area and the connections with All Souls College, Oxford which stretch back to the Middle Ages.

It’s been such a fantastic experience to be able to record the voices of Kensal Rise and embed them in the streets.

Brent Biennial runs until the end of January 2021.

Here’s a playlist of the audio recordings on the sound trail:

And here’s an interview I did with Art Review about the project.

John Rogers Kensal Rise

photo by Roy Mehta (c)

Kensal Rise Has A Story – psychogeographic sound trail

Kensal Rise map

My project for Brent 2020 London Borough of Culture in collaboration with the wonderful Kensal Rise Library went live in September. Kensal Rise Has A Story tells the story the streets around Kensal Rise Library through the voices of local people and is part of the inaugral Brent Biennal.

 

I explained the project in an interview with Art Review

“It’s a geographic sound map or trail of Kensal Rise. The form the project takes has partly been informed by the COVID-19 restrictions. I had planned this beautiful archive inside the library and some of the sound works were going to be burnt onto vinyl which could be listened to within a listening booth. We’ve not got those, but its ok, those were outcomes, they weren’t really the work itself which is a portrait of the community in their own words. By ‘community’ I mean the community of the library. Where it becomes geographic is that the emphasis is on the subjective responses to the environment and the changes within that environment rather than looking for some objective, dry, historical overview of the area, or even contemporary commentary on the area.

The ethos of the Kensal Rise Library is at the heart of the project. About 60 percent of the contributors are connected to the library, as users or in some other way. You can’t listen to any of the clips without feeling the presence of the library.”

You can read the rest of the interview here

Kensal Rise sound trail

photo by Thierry Bal

You can explore the trail by following the map found outside Kensal Rise Library and scanning the QR Codes with the camera on a smart phone (or listening to the playlist above).

 

Kensal Rise map

photo by Thierry Bal

 

Kensal Rise

photo by Thierry Bal

YouTuber, Sean James Cameron made this great video of a walk around the trail

Longer form versions of the interviews and additional research materials will be added to the project blog here.

John Rogers Brent Biennial

John Rogers Brent Biennial

 

John Rogers Brent Biennial

Map at Kensal Rise Library

John Rogers Brent Biennial

John Rogers Brent Biennial

You can watch a Zoom talk I gave about the project for Kensal Rise Library here

A walk from Kensal Rise to Primrose Hill

A walk through the streets of northwest London starting at Wrentham Avenue in Kensal Rise and ending at Primrose Hill

In this video I also introduce my project in collaboration with Kensal Rise Library for Brent 2020 London Borough of Culture in the Brent Biennal

If you scroll back through the archives of this blog (stretching through the ether to 2004) you’ll see that much of my ‘study’ of London came from random spontaneous drifts through the city being guided by my feet and finding whatever I found. This is still my primary method of mapping out the city even though much of my ‘work’ is produced from more focused expeditions. This walk was partly a return to the practice of drift or dérive, where I dispensed with my everyday concerns and allowed myself to be “drawn by the attractions of the terrain” (Guy Debord). However I was unable to completely dispense with the reality of the 34 degree heat of the afternoon.

Heading out of Kensal Rise via Wrentham Avenue, I was keen to pay a visit to Tiverton Green, a location that several people I’d interviewed in the area had mentioned. It’s said that on a clear day you can see the North Downs.  I then followed Brondesbury Park to Salusbury Road, Queens Park , then turned along Lonsdale Road to Brondesbury Road.

Kensal Rise

where the River Westbourne crosses West End Lane

We cross Kilburn High Road which forms part of the Roman Road of Watling Street, believed to be a much older trackway. In West End Lane I could sense the contours of a river valley and discovered once at home that the buried ‘lost’ river of the Westbourne or the Kilburn (Kilbourne) that rises in Hampstead, flows beneath Watling Street near this point on its way to make its confluence with the Thames at Chelsea. “In the lush meadows of Westbourne, near the highway to Harrow, the citizen of London could once see dragonflies and loosestrife, or, lying face down in the buttercups, tickle a brace of trout against the coming Friday” (Alan Ivimey, Wonderful London).

Kensal Rise walk

Passing Abbey Road and Priory Road, with its resonances of Kilburn Priory, we work our way to Finchley Road and Swiss Cottage before turning off Adelaide Road down Harley Road to Primrose Hill. This venerated spot was once the meeting place of Bards and Druids (the modern version) and is one of the protected views of London. For all of those more celebrated resonances, it was a white stone on the side of Barrow Hill that drew me in. Did it mark the possible burial site of fallen warriors in some epic battle of the distant past, or was it more prosaically a boundary marker?

Railway Walk Odyssey with World War 2 Bomb Gospel Oak to Perivale

To celebrate the re-opening of the Barking to Gospel Oak line (albeit with the original two carriage trains that were running on the line before its temporary closure last year for conversion to 4 carriage trains) I decided to hop on a train at Leyton Midland Road Station to Gospel Oak. The plan from there was to walk a section of the railway from Hampstead Heath to Willesden Junction that we somehow missed from the London Overground film I made with Iain Sinclair.

The nightwalk I filmed with Iain and Andrew Kotting ended for me at Hampstead Heath, having walked up from Haggerston. Iain and Andrew continued round the 33-mile circuit through the night finishing at 10 the next morning. The station is closed today. A 500lb World War Two German bomb had been discovered on a building site near the tracks and had closed the line from Camden Road to Willesden Junction.

Billy Fury Way Finchley

Between Hampstead Heath and Finchley Road and Frognal Stations the Overground runs through a tunnel bored through the heart of the hill. I pass the site of the great composer Edward Elgar’s house and at Finchley Road progress along Billy Fury Way – although unlike Elgar, the 1950’s Rock’n’Roller seems to have a tenuous connection to the area, from what I can find it amounts to occasionally recording at the nearby Decca Studios.

WW2 Bomb Brondesbury Willesden Lane

People mill around at West Hampstead and Brondesbury Stations, trying to plot alternative transport routes with the line still closed. Then at Willesden Lane and Winchester Avenue I come to the police tape closing off the road. The bomb is about 100 yards away beneath a crane of a building site. Everybody has been evacuated from a large area spanning from Brondesbury to Queens Park. Several schools have been closed. There are a group of around 5 or 6 people speaking to the solitary policeman asking when they might be able to go back to their homes. One old man stands stock still on the wrong side of the tape telling the police officer that he doesn’t have anywhere else to go and no family or friends to call. A lady from the Council arrives shortly and takes him off to a refuge Brent Council have set up for residents from the evacuated area. Cars pull up to the road block then turn round and head back down Willesden Lane. It is a surreal scene.

Willesden Junction

I move on through Paddington Old Cemetery and Queens Park, past Kensal Rise Station and arrive tired at Willesden Junction where the London Overground filming resumed with a walk around the area in the company of Iain Sinclair and Chris Petit.

P1040823

I could end the walk here, neatly filling in a gap of my Overground circuit a year too late but can feel an extra couple of miles in my feet. I head up Harlesden High Street and then turn west into the Park Royal Industrial Estate – the largest in London. Picking up the A40, a pang of childhood nostalgia that is associated with this road wells up. I grew up within its acoustic footprint some 20+ miles away in Buckinghamshire and this western edge of London was our idea of the big city.

Hoover Building Perivale

The Hoover Building is getting another make-over, from a Tesco megastore to luxury flats. The light fades to black. Tail lights on the incessant thrum of passing cars sparkle like Christmas lights. Time to head up to Perivale station and head home.