My base in London was Lewisham – as far as it is in London as the Sydney suburb is from the CBD and it and nearby Deptford were the ends of journeys into the centre. Once a distinct village in its own right Lewisham is now subsumed into greater London. It’s a gritty bustling suburb, which might have had a bit of a heyday in the 1960s but feels on the tipping point of a new era of renewal. Suttons Radio became a welcome local, just around the corner from the AirBNB where I was staying. It’s the kind of relaxed friendly place I like, complete with a scrabble set and weekly trivia pub quiz. If all of Lewisham redevelops like this it will be alright.
Deptford, a former dockyard area, had the same vibe but feels a few years ahead on the curve with the station precinct subject of a simple but tightly resolved upgrade which incorporates the heritage ramps up to the platforms and terminates the high street in a new public space, diagonally reflecting a similar upgrade around the community centre known as the ‘Deptford Lounge’. As good as these upgraded spaces were, it was interesting to note that the older, more established parts of the high street were more busy and active, as the newer areas were yet to attract new patterns of custom and use.
Lewisham is connected to the centre of London by suburban rail and the Docklands Light Rail. The DLR is a strange beast, an assembly of previously underused or abandoned rail lines tied together in the late 1980s to provide the Docklands renewal area with public transport. It’s a sort of metro-lite with frequent small trains running on two main branches providing rapid transit between an otherwise under-served eastern segment of the city and a number of tube stations, from there making the rest of the broader London area very accessible. Had Sydney had kept the monorail, could ithave been the nucleus of a great new similar system serving all the up and coming uber-new suburbs feeding into the CBD’s maw.
There’s been a big reinvestment in heavy rail recently with London Bridge newly opened after a multi-year, highly complex upgrade culminating in a fabulously efficient, spacious station seemingly well able to serve the masses of people which use it. An upgraded thoroughfare connects the station to the river Thames. Nearby, the upgrade at Blackfriars is highly visible and prominent with the glass facade and louvred roof sitting over the bridge on the Thames where the station sits.
I started my stay by checking out the area that was used for the 2012 Olympics. I’d been led to believe that it was going to be a more mixed use site but it really is similar to Sydney – a parkland with venues in it but butting up against its surrounds rather than being more integrated. But it did look like a popular, valuable piece of open space, in an interesting location next to the River Lee, still a working canal area. From here, the weather spoiled quite badly so spent a bit of time indoors on the Museum/Gallery circuit.
There are three famous creches museums near Kensington area in the city’s west. All famously important collections, but there’s a lot to be said for curation. The Science Museum really struggles to present what should be a fabulous collection in a coherent and accessible manner. It’s so spread out and randomly organised and the wayfinding and orientation is poor. It seems to rely on high impact entertainment as a way of drawing the punters in – VR Moon landing; Flight simulators etc. But these are flash-in-the-pan fast-food exhibits designed for quick thrills. Conversely the Natural History Museum is fantastic and perhaps benefits from being established earlier and having a clearer purpose from the days when collecting meant going out and scavenging the colonies for anything valuable to thieve. As rapacious as that practice was, it sure meant they _had_ to be ruthlessly methodical in preserving the material and making it accessible. * I gotta say though, as beautiful the building in which it’s housed is, all those hard surfaces sure do amplify the noise of scores and scores of schoolkids all hyped up by dinosaur bones, a high-calorie lunch and all the excitement of a day off school. There were hordes of the buggers roaming through the place like a strange form of dark energy, and hopefully I didn’t trample any as I made my way through the place. The Victoria and Albert sure takes it self far more seriously. Screaming primary schoolkids would not be tolerated for a second in its hallowed halls. This place seems to know it’s always going to win the popularity stakes above the other two, and has broad collection of objects and fine arts from the middle ages to present day, stuffily presented and rightly so, old chap. A chink in there otherwise aloof armour was the ‘Rapid Response’ section which shows a number of recent objects on fast rotation showing the ultra-fast nature of contemporary product development – think 3d printed handgun, vape, iPhone 6…etc.
The Tate Modern is in a different area to these galleries and is a different entity altogether, famously set in a former power station on the bank of the Thames. It’s a monumental space and feels like it competes somewhat with the works within it. That sounds like a bad thing but I think maybe like the Sydney Opera House, there’s something to be said about having that relationship between a building’s design and its purpose.
The Thames is a big part of London’s identity and orientation. My itinerary took me across it multiple times. As there wasn’t much sun around the overall impression I had was, in a word, grey. The whole area might brighten up in sunshine but the water buildings and roads seemed to suck any colour out of anything which seemed to be a bit flashy and swathe it in neutrality. But the convenience and contribution to the character and identity of its multiple bridges for combinations of pedestrians, bikes, car and rail is so vital. Continuous frontages on the embankments, with many areas having large building setbacks creating well used spaces on the river’s edge. These spaces seemed well appreciated by locals as places to meet and socialise. I gotta say I was disappointed by the Millennium Bridge which joins the Tate Modern and St Paul’s Cathedral – the structure seems so complex and overwrought, and appropriately was half closed for repairs. Gee it was rubbish. For an equally complex a structure, the Golden Jubilee twin bridges were comparably fabulous with what could have been a disastrous spaghetti jumble of cable-stayed spans on either side of an existing rail bridge, but somehow the composition comes together despite these challenges and just works.
Exploring the city more broadly, it’s clear there are as many versions of the city as there are tube stations, each with their own approach to expressing themselves. Covent Garden wouldn’t have a bar of Shoreditch’s street art. But that’s what makes it such a great place to explore. You could stay a year and not have covered it all.
Borough Market is another individual location and it’s amazing. It’s been going in one form or another since 1014 and is full of very tempting options, in a cramped but convivial jumble of stalls beneath some railway viaducts. I’m sure it is possible to eat healthily from the stalls, but a Sausage Roll (upper case deliberate!) from the Ginger Pig seemed a far more authentic and culturally appropriate choice, and this is a study tour, right?
Speaking of culturally appropriate, there’s the beer in Belgium. Exchanging a packet of Tim-tams and some Archie Rose gin with my family for multiple variations of their fine dubbels, trippels and witbiers seemed like a fair trade. Rather spending all out time in Brussels we ended up taking a day trip to Bruges. Bruges is the kind of postcard perfect city that a lot of European cities wish they were but through a quirk of planning or natural disaster that opportunity was erased. It was hard to tell if the centre was for residents or tourists though – It certainly felt like a stage set and if not artificial at least a bit of a contrived experience for the selfie-stick brigade and exclusive of the rest of the city which seemed to encrust the ring-fenced historic quarter.
Back in Brussels for a day before hitting the study tour proper, it was great to get some local insight into the community art scene, with an exhibition of something which seemed to sit between a community college short course and dedicated art school degree. Wow, what an array of sophisticated, high quality work in multiple disciplines. A couple of highlights below. Now onto the study tour proper in Utrecht..
