983 - Suburban Anarchy

There are some great anarchist projects in Newcastle. I'm not pushing the anarchist programme in a heavily politicised way, but I do find the resonances between anarchy and the hunter-gatherer worldview exciting and stimulating. I'd describe myself as a soft anarchist: institutions work, but there are other ways of doing things.

The Star and Shadow cinema is the bees knees. Entirely run by volunteers, it demonstrates that for imagination and spirit, leaderless organisations can knock the horsebrass off their corporate stable-mates.

It's not just a cinema, it's also used for gigs and art exhibitions, discussion forums and the burgeoning Newcastle green movement. E and I attend the monthly Storytelling, offered by A Bit Crack, whenever we can. E pulls the beers, fulfilling a lifetime's ambition to work in a pub. If you find a place that fulfills your lifetime ambitions, you stick with it, don't you?

So the Star and Shadow is brilliant, brilliant, and it blazes a light. But it is urban, and has surely been given a chance to thrive, in part, because its core resources, people, are plentiful. My other favourite project (I've lots of 'other favourite projects'), a community called The Simple Way, throbs at the heart of downtown Philly.

My question is, what happens when soft anarchy goes suburban? Does it require a critical mass of people to succeed? In small towns, dormitory towns, where identity dissolves, and architecture does not aspire to any form of greatness, towns which point elsewhere to see their values defined, and do not make room for revolution, is 'leaderlessness' disarmed of its power to change?

I say, in hope, no. It has the added strength of unexpectedness. Soft anarchy is powerful in suburbia. A post in a day or so to explain more.

984 - Knowing Whitley

Following on from yesterday's post, I read this in Hugh Brody's book, 'The Other Side of Eden', which is about hunter-gatherers and farmers.

Material well-being depends on knowing, rather than changing, the environment.

I think what I am trying to do is to know Whitley. Which is a community in transition. Know the culture of it, but also its roots as a small fishing village on a bleak coast, between the great monasteries at Lindisfarne and Jarrow, and up from the priory at Tynemouth; bearing the infrastructure of its late nineteenth, mid twentieth century kiss-me-quick blossoming; fighting shy of the anonymity that a future as a dormitory town would bring.

When the blossom falls, the fruit swells.
When the fruit falls, the seed takes root.
When the tree falls, its daughter rises.

985 - Face Value

Sylvester's Ballroom, one of the derelict buildings along Whitley's seafront. I've been thinking about my second post, no. 999. I said in it:

Whitley Bay is for the living. Whitley Bay is, as it always has been, alive.

But Sylvester's doesn't look very alive.

So I'm thinking about how you look at things. What I'm thinking is this. You can look at something face on, and it is what it is, right now. Sylvester's is a boarded-up shell.

Or you can look at it sideways. From a vantage point in the past, say, Sylvester's is an Ozymandias, warning of future collapse, whilst from the future, it points back to an Eden. But these are scarcely more alive.

There's another way to look. It's not really looking: it's more not looking. The life flows out through the cracks, as you shift your viewpoint back, face on and forward, but as soon as you stop moving, you cease to see it. In other words, as long as you are alive and moving, it is alive. When you die, it dies.

Sylvester's is each viewpoint: a swing-band panoramic swirl-room; shell-suited chav-suite; far-from-sweet hereafter. But also a tea-dance when you wanted a Time Warp; a Millenium, not a millstone round the neck.

And face value? Now? Whatever you want. It's whatever it is, and whatever you want it to be.

986 - Transition Town?

Not so idly thinking, could Whitley Bay become a Transition Town?

What would it take? In the words of transitiontown.org:

It all starts off when a small collection of motivated individuals within a community come together with a shared concern: how can our community respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil and Climate Change?

They begin by forming an initiating group and then adopt the Transition Model (explained here at length, and in bits here and here) with the intention of engaging a significant proportion of the people in their community to kick off a Transition Initiative.

A Transition Initiative is a community (lots of examples here) working together to look Peak Oil and Climate Change squarely in the eye and address this BIG question:

"for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?"

Some facts and figures about the towns that have already committed to this project:

• There are 101 already - 65 in England, 5 in Scotland, 6 in Wales, 1 in Northern Ireland, 1 in Ireland.
• Other countries where you'll find transition towns include Australia, Italy, Japan, New Zealand and the USA.
• UK towns include: Totnes, Brighton and Hove, Nottingham, West Kirby, York, Chepstow, Dunbar and Tynedale. All sizes, locations and local backgrounds. Loads more information on their websites.
• These are bottom-up initiatives - they don't happen unless local people, like you and me, start them.

Anyone out there want to join me? I'm going to start asking questions...

987 - Dave

I was taking the photos of the Dome when a bike pulled up beside me. It took me a moment to recognise Dave - I hadn't seen him for several months. Dave's bike has a bell on it with a worn sticker - "I love bikes". He was wearing a beat-up jacket and cap against the cold. He'd also been eyeing up the Dome.

For a year, 2005-06, I attended Whitley Bay's Baptist Church, where I felt happiest on the edge, near the back. Dave regularly sat near the back. In protestant churches, especially, this seems to be the creative norm - one reason why I find the conversations around emerging church forms, where creativity is often more actively celebrated, so interesting.

Dave is an artist, teacher and long-term Tyneside Coaster. He also has two blogs, one a great mix of commentary on his painting and photography - artist and teacher in dialogue; the other a collection of pictures alone.

He's far too self-critical! There are many fine, fine pictures of North Tyneside and Newcastle. He teaches locally. Some of the most interesting posts are about his collaborations with class-members.

988 - On the Five-Legged Space Rabbit

...who leapt down to Earth like a splash of luminous paint just beyond the Boardwalk Cafe on the promenade, and is preserved as a jpeg here.

The point being that His Five-Leggedness is starting to leap about in my head. I reckon there are a few adventures to be had. I reckon Whitley Bay has not heard the last of him. At the very least, he's wonderfully scrawlable.

There are one or two other characters hanging around the more imaginal corners of Whitley. Sloth Man hangs under the occasional Security Camera, waiting for crimes to occur beneath his shaggy bulk, whereupon he'll slip his grip and thwart, with the help of gravity, the muggings and Attempts at World Domination underneath.

And Wind Boy, a blast of innocence from a golden age, Ariel to Sloth Man's Caliban, with a touch of Fotherington-Thomas threatening to break through.

Maybe I'm being unkind to Wind Boy. I made up Wind Boy when I was seven or eight. At the foot of the track past our old allotment there was a tip, bound up with brambles, mattress frames, and bicycle wheels. The kind of place you can walk across without touching solid ground, and only minimal scratches. I climbed a tree there which swayed in the wind, and pretended I was Wind Boy. I suspect he has the kind of Teflon naivety that adult cruelty cannot touch.

If they've started to turn up now, and I suspect, in my sketchbook, they'll take some shape, perhaps Whitley's in for a Gotham City makeover.

989 - "You're a twonk, son!"

Witnessed an arrest last night: the man increasingly erratic; hands on a policeman; tripped and flung; arms and legs folded backwards like a cheap shirt packed in cellophane. Then subdued by what I hope was a carefully moderated blast of insults in one ear.

Afterwards:
"We're a democracy -"
"Too late for that, son!"

Too late? Too soon?