We Go Round in a Circle and End up Writing a Book Residency

2019         This collaborative DIY writing residency that took place across two laps of the circle line, starting at Edgeware Road station. Using this circle of time and space, we collected language and observed our collective experience of the journey. We looked at the recycling of language – re-ing language, and the differences that emerge when language is re-enacted-peated-constructed.

Using writing as an experimental making tool we modelled and moulded language we encountered in the site, turning an every day act into a writers residency. Viewing writing not only as word on paper, but as enactment, as performance, as movement, as communication. Writing as freezing a moment in time – committing it to memory.

This was an exercise in producing together, rapidly and inclusively.

The participants were each given a loop of paper to write on, blurring the line between beginnings and ends. These loops were passed around through various collaborative writing exercises; during the first lap, we gathered found language and built dictionaries, and used each others dictionaries to start writing stories and poetry together. During the second lap we wrote freely, passing writing between us at will, responding to each other and what we were encountering as we travelled.

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Facilitated & designed alongside Lily McCraith
Participants: Michelle O’higgins, Peter Willis, Marina Elges, Theo Bronstein, Max Norton, Maria Georgiou, Edward Green