I was just about to do something which I've done occasionally for several years now, which is send a friend a link to this film, when I realised I'd never actually posted the film on this blog. So here it is, 'Talking Granby 4 Streets.' An essential part of telling the story of Granby that’s as essential as any of the other stories of Granby on here. This story being told solely by the people of the place.
Here's how it happened.
It's late summer 2012 and I'd been involved with the people of what we'd begun to call Granby 4 Streets for a couple of years. Beginning to pull ideas and dreams together for building on what had already been achieved, which you'll hear about in the film. At which point the powers that were made what proved to be their final attempt to hand the area over to an external developer. Making us think we might be about to lose all the guerrilla gardening which the women of Granby, mostly the women, had been carefully tending for several years by then.
So one sunny September day, at the gardener's request, Sarah and I set up our filming equipment on one side of largely empty Cairns Street, while they all sat round one of their garden tables and told the story up 'til then.
We filmed for a couple of hours with a break for lunch in the middle as you’ll see. Eleanor then transcribed the whole conversation and I made this edit of it all over a quiet Christmas a couple of years later.
These are precious moment in time. In them you can clearly see where the energy for everything else that was done came from.