A Space of Care (16 minutes)
Location: The Woolwich Centre Library
Transcript
[music]
This is the Woolwich Wandering podcast, a series of sensory sketches inviting listeners into the vibrant and complex world of Woolwich, a place in South-East London that I call home.
I am Lizzie Fort, community dance artist and researcher, and a resident of Woolwich since 2016.
In each episode, listeners join me on foot as I move, dwell and feel my way through built and natural environments.
These are dispatches from a community in flux. Where public land and privately owned public space ambiguously merge.
A battleground where efforts to protect the soul and character of a place rub alongside agendas for the future.
OK, let’s get into this episode.
[music fades out]
—
In this sensory sketch I wander round the local public library, which is part of the Woolwich Centre, the civic hub for the Royal Borough of Greenwich.
I have to confess I have a big soft spot for the library since it has been a strong supporter of the Woolwich Wandering project.
It’s a space where I met local people in October 2021 to chat about the journals and maps they had made for the project. The library has also been the starting point for one of the walking and resting workshops in September 2022. And it was the location for the project exhibition in November 2022. I have also spent a fair amount of time writing in the library, browsing the local history section, and sometimes just sitting and observing the world go by.
This sketch is mixture of sounds, observations, memories and reflections.
It positions the library as one of the most cherished and important public spaces in Woolwich.
—
[sounds of the bus pulling away from bus stop]
[Lizzie] I have just got off the bus on Wellington Street outside the job centre, am making my way across a pedestrian crossing to get to the other side.
[sounds of sirens in background]
On this side of the road is The Woolwich Centre, where Greenwich Council is based.
In the reflection of this big glass fronted building I can see the old Town Hall on the other side. It’s a really impressive heritage building where we registered our marriage in 2016, and the birth of our daughter in 2019. I also went to a Women’s Institute meeting there, in the early stages of the research for the Woolwich Wandering project.
Anyway, Back at The Woolwich Centre, I have to walk a little bit further down the road and round the corner onto Love Lane to get into the library entrance. So I am just going to head around there now.
[sounds of the road]
[sounds of a fan heater]
There is a really lovely warm blast of heat that hits you as you walk into the library foyer.
Over to my left is a beautiful atrium with light coming down through it which is lighting up a colourful tapestry on the wall. The tapestry is a homage to Woolwich. It was created by local artist Caroline Hands and the local community. It really captures the relationships that people have with their neighbourhood.
To my right, there are parcel drop lockers, a little exhibition and the ‘Library of Things’, where people can rent household and garden equipment.
[sounds of multiple voices in conversation]
It is here in this foyer space that I hosted my project exhibition in November 2022, where I displayed local people’s journals, walking routes, photographs, their maps and their manifesto statements that they had written during the workshops. And it really felt like this was a fitting location for the exhibition because it was in dynamic conversation with Caroline Hand’s Tapestry just over the way.
[sounds of voices in conversation]
At the exhibition strangers met one another and they encountered the work on display.
There were bodies and hands that had to negotiate the careful choreography of making hot drinks on the small refreshments table that had tea, coffee, biscuits and cake, that kind of thing.
And what was really heart warming is I had lots of project volunteers who gave up their time to help support the exhibition. They greeted people, showed them round and spoke about their involvement in the project, whether it was through the journals, or the walking and resting workshops and they spoke about their relationship to Woolwich. On of my volunteers Patreace brought homemade quiche and apple cake for everyone, and that really contributed to making the space feel comfortable and welcoming.
I was quite overwhelmed with these gestures of kindness that without a doubt contributed to a real sense of openness when people were talking about their experiences of Woolwich. I heard and experienced nostalgia, delight, anger, frustration, sometimes exasperation, but also a lot of care for the neighbourhood.
[sounds of child squealing, people in conversation]
I met the library regulars who dropped in most days.
An elderly man who asked for my number three times, before I explained that I was married about wouldn’t be able to go out with him. But what was interesting is that he told me he travelled from Lewisham to this library really just because he loved it, he loved the space.
I also met homeless people, people who wanted to talk about issues of temporary housing and how they were fed up of being sent to Sidcup and Gravesend, away from this community they know. I met people across the generations from all over the world; Sweden, Nepal, Hong Kong, Romania, Ghana, Nigeria, The Caribbean, and Australia all of whom stopped to chat for a while.
But one of the encounters that has stayed with me was getting to know a Kurdish refugee who had fled the Iraq regime. He was there everyday that I was there and he sat with his duffel bag, charging his phone. Sometimes there were others with him but he was mainly on his own.
I guess we started, you know as these communications do, with some eye contact, a smile and hello, and then we started chatting while making a hot drink at the refreshment table.
Eventually we shared names. I admitted my ignorance about the geography of Kurdistan, and he showed me on google map where his hometown was and told me about his three siblings who were still there and that he was a biology student back home.
And on the third day he brought a friend with him. And they came over to the refreshments table with a bit of a cheeky smile on their face. They brought out these Kurdish tea bags and basically joked that English tea tasted really bad, which made us all laugh. Anyway, I had some of their Kurdish tea which was really delicious. And we chatted more about various things but they also wondered whether I knew about local places to stay. I was able to point them towards local organisations like the Woolwich Services Users Project – which is a warm space with hot food, showers and laundry facilities on Tuesdays and Saturdays. When I went to Tesco next door I offered to buy them a sandwich for lunch but they politely declined. They were really gentle, kind, modest men with a lot of pride, and I was very wary of overstepping.
[sounds of children talking]
Further into main library space are places where people gather for community events such as a meetings, knit and natter, a homework clubs, lego clubs, a coffee morning on Thursdays I believe.
There are also lots of places where people are sit and work just on their own, but side by side with others. So in a way they are alone and together at the same time.
[sounds of conversation murmuring in background]
It’s also a place for, I guess what I would call incidental and spontaneous encounters.
There was one time when I was say down on one of the sofas in the library and I was opposite a young teenage girl and a woman who were both knitting. It looked like the woman was maybe teaching the girl to knit. And anyway we sat opposite each other for a while and then this other woman in the library walked by and she smiled at the scene in front of her. I guess perhaps she was a little intrigue like I was, but I was trying to be discreet about it. Anyway, she walked over and she said to the girl something like “is your mum teaching you to knit?” The girl replied, “this is my mums friend.” And the woman continued by saying that she also liked to do knitting and then got her phone out and shows them a pictures of her knitting. And they shared this connection over their knitting projects and then the woman who had come over just walked away. And the girl carried on knitting and carried on for a while and then stopped and turns and says to the women sat next to her, “Strange!” and women questioned what she meant by that, and the girl thought for a moment and she said “Strange that she came and spoke to us.” And the mums friend just smiled and shrugged, and then they both returned to their knitting.
I just think what was lovely about that encounter was the girl thinks that this whole interaction was a little bit odd and that her grown up friend just kind of shrugged it off. And perhaps its telling of generational attitudes towards strangers that talk to one another in public but I just love how the craft of knitting enabled this brief, spontaneous inter-generational connection.
I think this little story expresses what is beautiful, brilliant, and meaningful about the library. It is a place where strangers meet.
[sounds of tapping on a keyboard, and chatter in the background]
The voices and actions of these strangers create a soundscape that shifts throughout the day. So you have the tapping of computer keyboards, the quiet social chit chat, the after-school homework buzz.
But the one sound that evokes a really strong connection for me is hearing families singing along during morning rhyme time in the children’s book section.
[sounds of families singing along to ‘Wheels on the Bus’]
“the children on the bus go up and down, up and down, up and down. The children on the bus go up and down, all day long. And the driver of the bus says tickets please, tickets please, tickets please. And the driver of the bus says tickets please, all day long… ”
I have happy memories of coming here with my daughter towards to end of 2019 and early 2020 while I was on maternity leave, it was just before the country went into its first Covid pandemic lockdown. And in between songs they were singing I remember hearing languages and accents from all over the world. Parents finding common ground through their babies and toddlers playing and singing together. And these were important moments of social connection for me in the early days of being a parent. Little did I know at the time that they would be my last for a long while, because we were instructed to stay home and be socially distanced through the Covid pandemic.
[sounds of background chatter]
It was a relief to find my way back to the library eventually. It is somewhere I have always feel accepted, safe and welcome. It is a place where I can find solitude or company.
And its a place where difference is normalised. Where people have incidental encounters with others while browsing books, or joining a community coffee morning, knitting and nattering, looking at exhibitions or maybe singing nursery rhymes with the rest of our global community.
During the winter months is a warm space to go to when putting the heating on at home might be too expensive. There are toilets and baby changing facilities, so I can settle in the library for a while if I bring my own lunch and snacks.
I really feel like this library is what public space is all about – access, comfort, safety, pleasure and connection. This, is a space of care.
[sounds of people in conversation fade]
[music fades in]
—
[music fades in]
In the next episode I am in Beresford Square, the home of the historic Woolwich market, immersed in global languages and cuisine, contemplating how it compares to the producers market over the road on the Royal Arsenal Riverside.
For more information on the Woolwich Wandering project or to contact Lizzie directly with comments, responses and suggestions, visit www.woolwichwandering.com,
Resources that have informed the making of the sensory sketches can be found in the show notes.
Thanks for listening.
—
Show notes
This podcast was created, recorded, and produced by Lizzie between August and December 2023.
The Woolwich Centre Library https://www.better.org.uk/library/london/greenwich/woolwich-centre-library
Woolwich Service Users Project https://wsup.com/
Caroline Hands – https://www.carolinehands.art/
Music – ‘In the City’ by Oleksii Kaplunskyi from Pixabay https://pixabay.com/users/lesfm-22579021/
woolwich wandering 