THE BOHEMIAN LONDON
By Felix Petrelli
Inner-city areas are not always known for their community spirit, but every midsummer Stoke Newington Festival manages to bring 40,000 people on the street - a serious problem for the police. The formula - art galleries in shops, theatre stages on the street and dramas on the cemetery.
What's generally associated with the word "Bohemian"? Maybe a young artist, an attic in Paris Montmarte, dirty dishes in the sink, bills to pay and no money for the milk. But what if the same scenario is in a basement flat in London Stoke Newington?
Then the artist is not called bohemian, but freelancer.
In "Stokey" lives a graeat percentage of all sort of art and media folk who call studio or office their one-bedroom flat.
Here it's not unusual to find people sitting with their sketchpad along the street. And it's here that during the days of the June Festival - 13-27th - local poets, sculptors, painters, photographers, musicians and street performers give their artistic touch to this London N16 quarter. Then Church Street, the main street of Stoke Newington, turns into a London Montmarte.
"It could only happen in here" - says Festival director Kay Trainor - "because it relays totally in the local artists. There is not a lot of money involved, so if this people do it, it's just for their strong sense of community - WE are doing this for us."
Stoke Newington Festival N16 happens each year through the help of its volunteers. The main idea is to bring art in the street and to give the young local artists the chance to show their works.
Moreover the local
shops, cafes and restaurants agree to exhibit artistic works in their windows
- this brings customers inside.
Some of these artists are at the beginner of their career, but most of them
are unknown. Often their art does not pay their life and they have to do an
un-gratifying job. Like Christelle for example, a young photographer from
Lyon who wait on tables to pay her passion - photography.
"Compare to my Lyon, London is very expensive" - says Christelle. "To survive I've to work in an Australian Restaurant in Angel. But I'm always broke. Last month I've spent £1,000 for a fisheye lens to better frame 180-degree views from double-decker buses."
She came in London to try a career as photographer three years ago. She moved to Stoke Newington only this year and now finally she can show her first work in England.
"I moved to London because I wanted to do a photographic 'reportage' of a everyday life in this bizarre city. I have some images of faces and places in London that are strongly fixed in my mind since the first time I visit it. Maybe here my fridge is often empty, but my mind is always full of ideas."
"What we are trying to do is to encourage new art" - says organiser Fiona Fieber - "like Graffiti, for example, a modern pop art considered subversive and outlawed if is done without commission. So we have given £1,000 to Michael Ballard - a 13-year experience graffiti painter known in cities like Los Angeles, New York and Amsterdam - to cover a shop wall of his art. This will take three days and he is going to do it in front of everybody."
This year programme will also focus on live literature, opera and new music. There will be dance, theatre and film - all taking place in unusual venues such as a cemetery, the roof of a building or the 73 bus.
One of the star performers last year amazed passers-by as he hung on to a Church Street shop wall 38 feet up, height hours a day, for height days. People wondered if he was trying to kill himself or if he was crazy. Not everybody knew he was commissioned to do it - someone even called the Police.
"We
can't promote the street festival outside," says Fiona. "We
can't have too many people here because we have promised the Council and
the police not to - otherwise it's going to be a public order issue."
For this reason the main events - and parties - of the festival will take place in the local Clissold Park between Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th.
People can also camp there and experience something unusual and forbidden - camping in a London park. And on Sunday morning they will share a huge breakfast party with their neighbours.
"It's a street festival which take a year to organise" - adds Fiona. But at the question - "Do we need festivals?" - raised in a festival gig, the organiser do not have doubts: "No we don't, but we want them."
felice petrelli