PLAY SWAP 3: Installing tyre swings on the Heygate

PLAY SWAP 3: Janet from the Lunch Club and three of the young people from the youth group at Pembroke House, as well as our fantastic assistant Julian, ventured out into the Heygate to install tyre swings this afternoon. 

PLAY SWAP: Installing rope swings on the Heygate!

Rope arrived today ready to make swings from the Heygate! So excited!



Meet at Pembroke House, 80 Tatum Street, SE17 1QR tomorrow at 4.30pm to come and swing from trees and buildings... 












Eleanor Shipman
Pembroke People

Talk at Southwark Arts Forum - today!

Speaking today at Southwark Arts Forum - Annyong! Event. Really looking forward to hearing about the work of other creative practitioners in Southwark.  

Surrey Square School strikes again!

Creating signs to encourage play and continuing game collection...

Eleanor Shipman

Pembroke House

PLAY SWAP 2: Heygate Chalk Walk

Play Swap 2: Heygate Chalk Walk asked members of the Lunch Club to leave signs to encourage play in and around our area, running up into the Heygate where vast concrete walkways, walls and posts sit waiting for some life to be re-injected into them. 

Signs were left encouraging tree climbing and swinging, balancing, post-jumping and running, and our slightly less subversive and removable graffiti led us to some real wall art we saw being painted on the walls surrounding the allotment on the Heygate by artist Julian. We also met a local free-running enthusiast, who was soon chatted up by the ladies... 

The signs we made I am hoping to expand on in a later PLAY SWAP session, by painting and installing our own more permanent marks on our urban environment.

Southwark Arts Forum Annyong! Event

Doing a short talk about Pembroke People and the residency on May 29th at the Southwark Arts Forum. Register here for your free ticket to discuss working around cultural exchange in Southwark.

Eleanor Shipman
Pembroke People

Hide and Seek in the Pembroke Pocket Garden

Every Wednesday I am assisting artist Ali Kaviani with teaching the Arts Award to students at the Pembroke Academy of Music (PAM). Discussing contemporary and conceptual art with the young people is fascinating, and their suggestions to what art means and why people create are enlightening. 


Yesterday after the session I took the children outside to play in the Pembroke Pocket Garden. Having been told off inside they soon let their energy out running around the garden and playing 'Hide and Seek', 'It', 'Sly Fox' and 'Run Outs'. Crouching behind a bush in the garden waiting for the catcher to find me again brought back vivid memories of childhood. After running around for a good 20 minutes the energy was only increasing rather being 'let out', so we got the chalks out for some pavement drawing. 


Now to introduce these new games to PLAY SWAP this afternoon...

Surrey Square School - Playtime!

Today I was given the privilege of attending playtime at the local Surrey Square Primary School. It was the first time I had set foot in a school playground since being a pupil myself,  and the shrieks of enjoyment and excitement echoing across the architecture and flying over the hedges were revealed through the school gates as a scene to behold. 

The infinite inventiveness of children playing was immediately apparent. Despite the abundance of play paraphernalia, milk bottles were kicked across the tarmac, drain pipes were swung on and bike racks climbed. Games criss-crossed and play spaces overlapped, with balls flying over fences and children sprinting across each other, their imagined boundaries continuously recreated and demolished. 

The Year Two pupils from the church visit on Monday recognised me with Father David and immediately held my hands and dragged me into their excitement. We played 'Racing', 'Sly Fox' (similar to 'What's the Time Mr. Wolf'), 'Duck Duck Goose' and 'Champ'. I came last in the race (no different to when I was at school) but was given a firm handshake by one seven year old girl and congratulated for my effort. Some of the girls played with my hair whilst boys used us as a hiding place, each individual in a world of their own, yet strongly connected to their co-players through their chosen game. I gave the children chalk where they were amazed they were allowed to draw on the floor before a chaotic web of attempted hopscotch nets emerged suddenly across the tarmac. They all thoughtfully returned the chalk to me when the bell went for them to go back to class, and I was left knowing I will play at Surrey Square again.

Eleanor Shipman

Pembroke People