The Red Room - Text Only - Projects

The Red Room - Text Only - Projects - Animal

Navigation Links

Hoxton Story

Written and Directed by Lisa Goldman

An interactive archive, a booklet and a limited series of intimate walkabout performances, written and directed by Lisa Goldman, the Red Room’s Artistic Director.

Hoxton Story is a unique journey through a "regenerated" London community - a visual and aural living montage of facts, fictions and verbatim testimony. The project has multiple manifestations and is designed to explore the process of, and feelings around, the now mythical “regeneration” of Hoxton. Juxtaposing the perspectives of tenants, squatters, residents, council workers, community activists, artists, architects and developers, it explores their dreams, disappointments and achievements in relation to the land/environment of Hoxton - as home, work and recreation; as public space & as capital waiting to be realised.

The Red Room has collaborated with web artist Elvina Flower of Safetycat to develop the Hoxton Story Interactive Archive. The Archive offers the opportunity to browse a selection of images, to hear extracts of testimony from local residents, and to play online games which relate to the Hoxton Story’s themes and concerns.

You can access the Hoxton Story Audio from a simple list, by theme and person HERE

Or to use the Hoxton Story Archive you will need the Flash Player version 7 installed on your browser. If you do not have it already, you can download it for free from: Macromedia Flash Player

Click on the icons to see what they contain. WARNING some audio files contain strong language.
The Archive will open in a new window.

START

All portrait's are by Leo Asemota, map and other photography by Jenny Kagan, graphics by NEW, programming by Safetycat.

Hoxton was put on the cultural and media map in the 1990’s, famed as a groovy district du jour, playground to Tracey Emin and a new young British art crowd, home to the Hoxton Fin and spawning a new life style crowd and rash of loft apartments. The area was also identified as in severe need of urban regeneration and the government promised an influx of funding to improve housing and social amenities.

Over the last year the Red Room has been interviewing residents of Hoxton housing estates to ask what has changed for them. Their perspectives form the basis of the project, which includes the performances.

Hoxton Story explores new working models which exist between and beyond traditional participatory community arts and oral archiving. It creatively engages residents over a sustained period; it celebrates resilience and supports grass-roots creativity, and gives local volunteers valuable experience of collaborating with a professional artistic team. At the same time, Hoxton Story is led by a clear vision articulated by artists; it creates work which explores a wide spectrum of social concerns; it aims to provoke debate about how the ‘host community’ might move forward, and in doing so supports positive social change. The performances blend verbatim testimony with fictional narratives and characters, as a means to transcend the limitations of supposedly ‘objective’ reportage and to draw audiences into an intimate, emotional realm that gives real issues lasting impact. The Hoxton Story Archive will be available through the London Borough of Hackney’s Archives Department (http://www.hackney.gov.uk/index/hackney/archives.htm) from October 2005.

The Red Room can offer Hoxton Story as a model for creative, theatre led inter-community dialogue, which can be offered to communities in the throes of rapid regeneration, both nationally and internationally. Our work uses creative approaches to promote positive, equal dialogue between sectors and agencies and to foster critical engagement with urban regeneration and the needs of communities directly affected by it. If you are an organisation interested in discussing the possibility of a Red Room residency to support positive community development in a regeneration context, please contact info@theredroom.org.uk to request more information.

The Red Room wishes to thank the National Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England, London for their support for Hoxton Story.

Hoxton Story's partner project is 'The Harmony Suite' by Collective Encounters (www.collective-encounters.org.uk). Performances scheduled for 14-17 September 2005 in Liverpool. For more information contact info@collective-encounters.org.uk or 0151 298 9744.