Chosen Places

For this part of the project we were blindfolded and told to point at a random part on a map of London. This place, on the map, would be where we're headed off to to study the area and record features of it's atmosphere and the people in it. My place was in Bermondsey, by the very corner of a crossroads. On y way there I stopped off to buy food and by the time I got there, I was tired from walking so much that it was a relief to find that my place was a little green area with benches and pathways. The sign on the fence by the green's entrance said St Mary Magdalen's Graveyard but when I walked in and sat down on a bench with my lunch, I looked around and there were only a few tombstones and basically no graves in sight.
What I did like was that the place wasn't cluttered with gravestones. It was clear of too much going, the complete opposite of the busy city outside the fence.

I realised that I had no sketchbook pages left so I went on a long trek across London to find the nearest stationary shop. Believe it or not I had to take a few trains to find one. It was extremely tiring and all I wanted to do was get back to that bench, away from all the loud bustling activities of the city. On my way back I decided the best thing to do would be to record the contrast in sound from the inner city to inside that bubble of peace. I decided to take pictures of the area as well as sketching the passers by. The few characters I took interest in was a young quite shaggy haired, bearded man and his dog playing very actively around the tombstones and benches, a man on his phone in deep conversation, a mother and her daughter walking by (the mother on the phone and her daughter eating a bag of chips), a couple walking beside a woman walking her dog but who turned out to be on her own as I later saw her without them. Later on I came across a young man with a group of primary school or perhaps very young high school kids. He looked very busy, handing them food from a Greggs bag and their school bags and hockey sticks seemed to hint to them coming from or going off to a hockey club with the young man as their coach.

A bundle of other people went through the green and it was hard to keep up with all of them but I think y favourite character was seemed to be a very smartly dressed, cut off and uptight young man with a cap and shades on,walking by the old house. As he turned around, however, you could see this little baby between the folds of his coat. It was a lovely sight to see quite a soft side to this strict looking man.

After I took a few more photos, I grabbed the bus back to the station before taking the train back to college. It was a very interesting day and I found that the time to sit and think and take in a certain place was great in creating a story for different characters. I wish that I perhaps looked in to the area itself more than the people though. Perhaps by walking around a bit more and looking at the tombstones.