31/10/2015
Amy Feneck and ruth Beale from Rabbits Road Institute invited me to join them and paint
portraits of community members visiting The Rabbits Road Open Day at Old Manor Park Library.
Over the next two years Create will work with artists Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck to develop a series of projects in Manor Park, Newham.
Responding to the legacy of the free public library and to workers’ education movements over the last three centuries, the ambition of the project is to explore economics creatively, using it as a framework for investigating political, social and cultural issues. Through a partnership with Newham Council and the artist’s collaborative project The Alternative School of Economics, the project will work within the local library network and with local community groups.
As part of the project, the artists will set up Rabbits Road Institute, a new space in the Old Manor Park Library on Romford Road. Part library, part community centre, part museum, Rabbits Road Institute will be a space for study programmes, events, lectures, performances and social gatherings that reflect local knowledge and experience. Rabbits Road Institute will carry on as a centre for self-education and research beyond Ruth and Amy’s project, with local communities invited to develop and build a vision for its future.