View other Projects:
Aide-memoire 2004
City of Dreams
Guided Tour 2005
Ice Harvest 2009
Re-Visit 2000
Sanctuary City 2002

The first time in my life I had seen the city and London Bridge. My first impression? A big city and a big river.

London seen through the eyes and ears of asylum seekers.

I began this project in February 2002. It has progressed very slowly with long quiet periods punctuated by sudden bursts of activity (a bit like a cricket match.)
Meeting once a week, our aim was to explore London from the unique perspective of asylum seekers.

Every week I went to PB House, a hostel in Forest Hill to drum up some interest, gather people and bring them down on the bus to the Copleston Centre. Every week I feared no one would want to come, but someone always did. We played some games, tried to learn each other's names, took polaroid pictures, laughed, drank tea and chatted. Some of the time we spoke in English, sometimes in French.

A pattern emerged. Each week I would go up to the hostel. Some familiar faces were usually there, but often I'd ask after people and be told they'd gone to Doncaster, Sheffield, Nottingham....The dispersal policy hit our project hard.

The centre-piece of this video is a record of a journey a group of us made from London Bridge to Waterloo in the pouring rain. Although some of the people with us had been in the city some time, most had never seen central London.
We swopped the camera around between us as we walked. There's plenty of camera shake, bits where the lens cap is on, bits where we forgot to switch the camera off as we walked. I think it would be a shame to edit it and tidy it up. Like a proper home movie, it records a day that will never be repeated.

Many of the people in this video have been dispersed around the UK, some possibly deported.

For me their absence haunts this video and this event.