PA1103 Public Project 1 – Project Proposal Form

2 Please submit this form through Turnitin in UEL+, and in hard-copy at the Student Enquiry Desk, East Building, Docklands Campus by 4pm, Friday 24th February 2012.

Name: Laura Louise Cantegreil, Jade Eldridge, Jessica Henderson, Kayleigh Marsh Davis and Abbie Willis

Contact Email: lauracantegreil@hotmail.co.uk, jade.eldridge@hotmail.co.uk, jessica22@blueyonder.co.uk, kayleighmarshdavis@me.com, abbie_willis@hotmail.co.uk

Contact Phone Number: 07837970605, 07767049246, 07826409702, 07543839015, 07807219111

Title of your project: Royal Docks Fayre

Please describe your work in 50 words (this will be used in promotional material about the festival):

The Royal Docks Fayre provides a unique experience to rediscover a sense of community that has been lost. The Fayre will educate and entertain audiences about aspects of the Docks through a series of Stalls. Our project will build bridges across generations and help people become informed about areas surrounding the University, allowing people to interact through games, talk over food and experience a social atmosphere that has been lost for many years.

Please tell us about what you would like to do including the ideas behind the work and how it works with an audience. (500 words max):

Inspired by Lucy Lippard’s Notes From a Recent Arrival, we wanted the Royal Docks to be the foreground of our performance, allowing its history to play the dominant role. We liked the idea of looking back in time, highlighting the contrast between the new landscape of today’s dockside and their past use. We would like to create an environment along Royal Albert Dockside at University of East London Campus so people can interact and learn about the area. We want to get people not only talking again but have the everyday public talking as a community about the docks much in the same way that a project named ‘Take Me to the River’ did, where a group of children spent time looking for artifacts along the Dockside, talking about their history. While creating that project, they did not only learn about the Dockside but they created their own community.

The idea to comment on community came from The North Woolwich audio-trail which our tutor Mark Hunter made as part of the ‘Ports of Call’ project, where the group discovered the Royal Victoria Gardens. The gardens were created during the Victorian-Eera; people would take daytrips for enjoyment, Fayres and other events were also hosted there. It was once an active social environment. We definitively decided that we wanted to explore the idea of the community or lack of it in this day and age and create a sociopolitical comment on the situation. This was inspired by Darren O’Donnell’s book Social Acupuncture he acknowledges the limitations of Art to impact social and political situations but does not diminish their responsibility to comment on it.

We are setting up a variety of stalls for the public to interact with, each of them representing elements of the docks, and looking at community within the docks. We wanted to show different elements and thought a Fayre was the best way of doing that. We chose to spell Fayre in this way as it is the Old-English spelling which fits more with the project. By having each stall themed with a historical aspect, we hope to present an eclectic event that offers something for everyone, giving the audience a chance to be ‘Active spectators’, a term used by Allan Kaprow, by interacting with us and each other creating their own community in the time they spend with us.

The Stalls One stall will have a Victorian-esque social atmosphere that would have once been

a daily occurrence. This theme came from the Audio Trail when we entered the Royal Victoria Gardens. We will be looking at the idea of the beano so deckchairs and themed games will be dotted around to recreate the common social activity. There will also be a game of bowls for the audience to participate in, as this was a common activity in the Royal Victoria Gardens.

Another stall will be an interactive section in which people can watch interviews of the various people who have used the Dockside. This will give the audience a personal view by those who lived through the Docks working years.

Finally there will be an area in which you can talk to us about the history of the Docks as well as collecting booklets that contain information so people can refer

PA1103 Public Project 1 – Project Proposal Form