Peter Reder

This was part of a programme of work presented by LIFT Festival in Barking, East London.

 

Inspirational theatre director Corinne Micallef and I worked with Barking residents on a series of guided tours exploring the neglected history of their neighbourhood. Each one was unique in content and style.  There was a Quaker tour, a lost pub tour, a fishing history tour, a church and abbey ruins tour. One guide took their group right into their apartment as they talked about housing and development issues.

 

The tours went off in various directions but converged at the end on the Ice House building (where the eponymous harvest of ice used to preserve fish was stored in the 19th century.) There we served a delicious cream tea and continued to chat, comparing notes on our differing tour itineraries, whilst an atmospheric video of a boat trip along Barking Creek looped in the background.