Robin Hood Gardens Estate – Comment

Blueprint Magazine

Recent controversy surrounding the demolition of Robin Hood Gardens estate in Poplar, east London, has exposed an array of prejudices among politicians, architects, and critics.

Playground Podcast

For two months, Ruth Hedges worked alongside Eastside Educational Trust in Woolmore School, Robin Hood Gardens Estate, east London, to document the lives of residents past and present – from the elderly who survived the war, to parents who emigrated from Bangladesh, and the local children whose school and homes will be demolished in the forthcoming regeneration.

Anri Sala – A Second Look

Map Magazine

Anri Sala – A Second Look
9 Nov – 22 Dec 2007, Hauser & Wirth, London

Outside it’s teeming. Shoppers in Christmas frenzy hoover up Piccadilly, and all its old-style excesses. Inside it’s dark. Pushing a heavy door of the discreetly labelled Hauser and Wirth gallery, the cold blackness is a relief.

Breaking the Rules

Blueprint Magazine

Breaking the Rules: The Printed Face of the European Avant Garde 1900-1937
The British Library, until 30 March 2008

It was a time of bold declarations and ideology. Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Dadaism and Constructivism all came out of this period, breaking moulds and ways of thinking. It is ironic, then, that within such mental and cultural freedom, artists took such pains to define their actions – as if breaking the rules created a hunger for new ones.

Emerging – Ruth Ewan

Map Magazine

Did you stand there in the traces and let them feed you lies?
Did you trail along behind them wearing blinkers on your eyes?
Did you kiss the foot that kicked you?
Did you thank them for their scorn?
Did you ask for their forgiveness for the act of being born?

Ewan MacColl’s ‘Ballad of Accounting’ is a rallying cry against submission. While critically referencing those who ‘skim the cream’, it is equally a challenge to the masses who ‘accept the shoddy’.

Julian Perry – Olympic Sheds

Blueprint magazine

It is summer in the London borough of Hackney and the recent heavy rain has made the Manor Garden allotments more fecund than usual. Poppies run riot, jasmine scents the air and fig trees are budding with fruit. Sheds flake, rust and crumble. The make-shift constructions are painter Julian Perry’s subject and obsession.

Phantom Shanghai

8 magazine

Greg Girard
Magenta Publishing

Time is the essence in Canadian photographer Greg Girard’s images of a fading Shanghai. Girard’s intensely rich, and yet ghostly still lives capture a moment that will soon be over.

Teaching Design and Technology

Blueprint magazine

Design and Technology at secondary level is in a state of flux. The subject is no longer compulsory and it’s harder than ever to justify trips to see D&T applied in the real world. Ruth Hedges asks D&T teachers how they foster creativity and what they need to make the subject flourish.

Teenage wasteland

New Statesman online

Following another London gang killing, Ruth Hedges – who worked with youngsters on the estate where the shooting occurred – describes the frustrations and alienation behind the headlines.

The news headline came through: fatal shooting of young boy in Stockwell. My heart sank and I quickly looked at the TV.

Charlie Boy

Edinburgh Festival Guide 2007 THE LIST

Hounded by the press and bullied by his own party, it’s no surprise to discover that Charles Kennedy is enjoying his political sabbatical. Ruth Hedges catches up with him and finds a man at ease with the world again