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SPIRIT HOUSE poster / Nicola Lane 2017
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Preparing the SPIRIT HOUSE space. The bus stop outside the shop provided a constant audience.
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installing the SPIRIT HOUSE shrine: the dolls house as shelter for our dreams of an ideal home.
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The opening party. Photograph by Cornelia Marland / 2017
Geddes Gallery initiates mapping the area around Malden Road. Photograph by Cornelia Marland / 2017
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The estate agent display system is installed, with photographs of Malden Road in 1973, 1900 and 1968 from Holborn Library Archives.
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Memories triggered by photographs in the window display are added to the wall map. Vanished streets, squatters, Ed Berman's InterAction, WAC Arts, the London Film Co-op, the City Farm - the rich cultural legacy of 1970s Kentish Town.
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"There used to be the Rowney Art Materials factory -after it was demolished, we found thousands of pencils in the rubble."
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"Is that me in the photo? It could be me and my friend...I went to St. Richard of Chichester School, round the corner. It's flats now..."
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"My mum had a house - all it needed was a bit of modernising...the houses were Compulsory Purchased and my Dad got £7000. They moved...Then I started courting a girl who lived in one of the new flats - the Denton estate, built where my Dad's house used to be. It's come full circle- I live in her family flat , on the Denton estate."
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"After our house was demolished and we were decanted, I fought for my mother and she was finally offered one of the last houses available nearby- and I am still there! I would never want to move - there is everything on my doorstep. I am never bored, I am out all the time!"
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Memories of a lost garden and of Princess Diana.
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"I feel privileged that I was brought up here, in such a diverse, amazing area. We did call it the 'Bomb debris' - but it was from the demolition of the streets. We played there and we were the first children who took part in InterAction- Ed Berman was great. I helped build the Giant Dinosaur! Later i became one of the first Play Workers..."
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Young visitors.
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" I want a house like this."
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" My family moved from Kilburn to the Belmont estate when it was brand new. in Kilburn we lived in an over-crowded house with one outside toilet. The new flat was like paradise! My Mum is still there, and she still loves her kitchen!"
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Scaffolding goes up, but the SPIRIT HOUSE is still welcoming. A visitor observed: "The gold house signifies our connection with the divine...standing on a red plinth ( which signifies the Base Chakra) which is our connection to the earth. Auspicious!"
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"I am Slovac. I came to live in Camden 1994, and I loved it so much! So when I came back I wanted to live in Camden again. But when I returned I was disappointed - it had lost its unique shops, they are all the same, as in every city in the world. In Brooklyn the same has happened."
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Installing Tinsel Edwards' work in SPIRIT HOUSE.
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Tinsel Edwards' paintings: TO LET: Lovely Period Style New Build Property £560 per week
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“Chook Farm”: memories of Inter-Action, innovative theatre and community arts organisation originally based in Malden Road. Locally its legacy includes Talacre Open Space, Kentish Town City Farm and WAC, the Weekend Art College.
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"I don’t mind blocks of flats- but I don’t like estates. You get lost in them."
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Gordon Cooper / all rights reserved
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SPIRIT HOUSE closed on March 20th 2017. During the closing event, ambulance and police lights dramatically illuminated the memory wall.
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