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Social Life

social life

London

What makes a boundary? How we circumnavigate London is often imagined through its hard materiality of bricks and roads, staggered by open, green spaces and meandering waterways. Yet the sensory experience of moving through the city plays a significant role in how we percieve place, define neighbourhoods, and establish routes and routines. In mid June, Social Life hosted a workshop as part of the London Festival of Architecture, which aimed to explore how sight, smell and sound impact our perceptions of boundaries. Our approach drew closely from a toolkit developed by Saffron Woodcraft and Connie Smith at UCL's Insitute for Global Prosperity - the 'Sensory Notation Toolkit' - which was created with the intention for 'researchers to become alert to their different sense and how these are stimulated by particular environments.' Workshop participants walked with us on a short route around Elephand & Castle. At each stop we asked participants to record their sensory stimulation on a scale of 1-5 for each of the six sense: visual, aural, kinetic, thermal and chemical. We used a visual sensory chart to capture the data to understand what the concurrent themes were for each space and overall which space had the highest and lowest level of sensory stimulation. Building on Social Life's earlier work on sensory stimulation and psychgeography in our local area, our 2017 'Feeling of the Place' project, the workshop aimed to look more closely at the relationship between our sense and how this guides our perception of boundaries. The sensory walk was an exercise on connecting sights, smells and sounds as elements of boundary making and unmaking. Two boundaries were chosen for the exercise, Strata Tower by Elephant and Castle roundabout and a pedestrial barrier in the Newington Estate close to Peacock Yard where Social Life is based. Participants were asked to stop on either side of the 'boundary' and record their sensory stimulation. The stops differed dramatically. Whilst one was located in the middle of a blooming community garden others were located right at the foot of Strata Tower, surrounded by the hustle and bustle of urban life. They were however only a short walk apart. The responses were fairly predictable. Participants noted feeling unwelcome and feelings of unpleasantness in areas that were less human scale and contained less greenery. Aural stimualtion - negative or positive - scored highly for many participants with many connecting unpleasant feelings with wind, loud noises and also temperature.

Karen Louise Dance

karen louise dance

Ipswich

Karen is a Suffolk based Dance Artist specialising in contemporary and community dance. She trained at Roehampton University where she gained a BA (hons) in Dance Studies. Karen went on to complete a PGCE at University Campus Suffolk in 2014 and has worked in a range of educational settings in Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. She is currently teaching her own classes Stow Movers and Hadleigh Movers, movement classes for 55+ years, and her youth company Karen Louise Youth Dance which all run weekly. Alongside regular delivery, Karen has taught on many exciting projects including: –Big Dance 2016 (in conjunction with Akram Khan & People Dancing) -Big Dance Workshops 2016 (in conjunction with Anna Rowe Dance) -7 Schools 1 Town 2017 (DanceEast & Gecko Theatre) -The Inkwell 2017 including Arts Award (DanceEast) -KLD & Yodanga Arts Summer School 2018 & 2019 -Hadleigh Hullabaloo 2019 (DanceEast) –Dance From Home 2020 – Present (DanceEast) -Tell Your Story Project 2022 (ICEP & St Pancras Primary School) -Jubilant! 2022 (The Food Museum, Mendlesham Primary School & John Peel Centre) In 2018 Karen worked as Producer for Ipswich Choral Society on a large-scale community project commemorating WW1; Ipswich Remembers. She continues to enjoy these Producer roles and has produced several KLD projects in 2020. Most recently Karen works for Dance Network Association in Essex as their Dance Development Officer. She runs and delivers on programmes such as their Youth Company, Dancing with Dementia, RE:Generation Colchester and their Dancing with Parkinson’s classes. Karen was part of the 17/18 cohort for Overture, a professional development opportunity with ReBourne. She was 1 of 16 UK Dance Artists that took part in four residential weekends. She has also recently completed a Dementia Care Mapping course through Bradford Universirty supported by DanceEast, and also was a part of the Emerging Leaders programme with National Centre for Writing. Karen is also a keen performer, and has been a member of Kinetica Dance Collective (formerly Dance Unlimited), a performance group in Suffolk, for seven years now, and performs regularly in East Anglia.