LOCAL SENSES:
Local Senses Collective are Leonie Abrahamson, Nathan Bather, Geoff Clark, Benjamin Jenner, Rikki Jodelko, Natanya Mark, Lizzie Nichols, Colin Palgrave, and Lesley Palgrave.
The Local Senses collective was formed in 2017 from a series of self-initiated creative workshops. Since then the group has acquired new members, meeting regularly to nurture a sense of community through peer-learning, shared experience and collective discovery.
MAPPING IN BLOOMSBURY
In 2019, the group began collaboratively developing strategies for exploring and navigating outdoor space around the Royal National Institute for Blind People. This work was funded by an award from the Mayor of London’s Culture Seeds Fund, and resulted in the publication LOCAL SENSES MAPPING IN BLOOMSBURY, a PDF of which is available to view below:
An audio recording of the book’s content is available here:
MAPPING IN LEWISHAM for LIBERTY FESTIVAL
AUTUMN 2021
In the autumn of 2021 LOCAL SENSES secured funding to develop a new body of work for LIBERTY FESTIVAL 2022, an event that will take place in the London borough of Lewisham as part of London Borough of Culture 2022.
In January 2022, the group presented the development of their research to date at a sharing event hosted by the Albany Theater, Deptford. The following invitation was written by LOCAL SENSES for that event:
Tonight, LOCAL SENSES welcomes you to join them on a psychogeographic journey of Lewisham. Via ulterior sensory phenomena the collective will enter your mind and motivate your body in a bid to inspire you to communicate with the local environment beyond the visual. To succeed in this audacious act, they ask you to join them in a period of meditation where you will be led through the local streets towards the water of Deptford Creek. On returning to the room there will be a chance to compose a collection of Haikus and handle locally inspired talismanic forms before heading out to explore the local terrain for yourself. Here, you will join a short walk with musical accompaniment, navigating the area between the Albany and Deptford station. As we walk, we will stop and reflect on the ways in which the environment is shaped by sounds and smells and how this sited information can be captured in language. We will also speculate on the power of the terrain to lead both mind and body beyond themselves, as we move towards previous experiences held in different places and other times. We look forward to welcoming you on this journey with us.
Examples of some of the Haikus, along with other written work, can be seen below:
An audio recording of some of the poems is available here:
This film documents the research and development stage of LOCAL SENSES’ project MAPPING IN LEWISHAM. This project will be realised for LIBERTY FESTIVAL 2022.
Film by Nathan Bather
The project, MAPPING IN LEWISHAM, will be showcased, along with a lot of other exciting work, on the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th of July 2022 across the London borough of Lewisham for the culmination of LIBERTY FESTIVAL 2022. Anyone wishing to join us on one of the walks can book via the link below: