TRADEPTFORDWHAT ROLE DO WE PLAY IN LOCAL IDENTITY
Tradeptford questioned the orthodoxy of the regenerative city, sought to understand the underlying forces of the development profit motive, and looked to re-address the balance of the planning system on a local and national scale.
By radically critiquing the the current values and modes by which we live: through practising solidarity, self organising and shared learning, people are already starting to ingrain a different set of rules to the 'Rights of the City'. Tradeptford was a chance for a specific locale, a collectively defined 'identity', a shared sense of place, a boundary defined as Deptford, to look at the cause and effect of 'regeneration' and try to plot a different course.
Neighbourhood planning, counter-mapping, citizen science, commoning, peer-to-peer learning, open source networks and militant investigation, are all tools to be harnessed to take back the city.
This helps us redefine our values, turns the profit driven model on its head and looks at ways individuals, families, neighbours and communities, regain their strength, their 'identity', their society, their 'demos', so that our atomised existence ceases to cause our collective destruction.
The project sought the help of artists, activists, community members and local councillors to deliver workshops, bring together a forum for debate and navigate the changing face of Deptford over 6 months. The project ran from Old Tidemill Garden and utilised market stands previously made by Public Works for a project the previous year.
Using the opensource Enzo Mari autoprogettazione (diy furniture) blueprints, the basic structure also came to represent the identity of the project. Something given for free and functional use, that aimed to counter the commercialisation we see within the field of graphic design at present in the city. A custom typeface was created using metaflop further strengthening the notion that the design speaks through nobody’s, and therefore everybody's, voice.
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