BLOOMBERG SUMMER AT THE ROUNDHOUSE
PENNY WOOLCOCK & BLOCK9’S UTOPIA
Bloomberg Summer at the Roundhouse, the annual festival dedicated to introducing new audiences to innovative culture has returned for a fourth year with UTOPIA, a ground-breaking installation by Penny Woolcock in collaboration with Block9. Taking over the entire Main Space, Utopia is a huge multi-sensory world focusing in on inequality, consumerism, housing, gentrification, education, crime and social media through real life stories.
The piece has been imagined by award-winning Director and Filmmaker Penny Woolcock. Woolcock’s curiosity and craft for storytelling underpins all her work and for Utopia, she spent many months uncovering the stories of Londoners from the most wildly diverse of backgrounds to reveal the hidden narratives of the city. Her work has regularly focused on social cohesion, leading her to collaborate with young inner-city gang members and street hustlers (1 Day, One Mile Away).
Designers Block9 (Stephen Gallagher and Gideon Berger), revered for their visually arresting, post-apocalyptic spectacles, worked closely with Woolcock to design a symbolic representation of her vision. Block9 are best known for creating extravagant fantasy worlds for Glastonbury Festival, often comprising of grand scale tower blocks, tenements and tube trains.
Named after Thomas More’s 16th century imagining of a self-contained world in which communities shared a common culture and way of life, Woolcock’s Utopia is based on a walk through the neighbourhood of the Roundhouse and the differing perspectives on reality that can offer. Utopia is peppered with narrative soundscapes that will reverberate with stories that are personal, political and pertinent to the parallel lives being lived in the world’s biggest cities. The stories have all been collected by Woolcock in interviews with residents across the social spectrum – from drug dealers, gang members, former offenders and sex workers to the homeless, the elderly, housewives and university graduates.
Utopia also involves contributions and close collaboration with participants from the Roundhouse’s creative programme for 11-25 year-olds. In 2014 Woolcock worked with young people to find and interview local Camden residents for Utopia and one of the participants has become a paid assistant on this project. Others have become some of the voices heard in the installation. Young people from across the programme will also perform at the installation’s evening events which are still to be announced.
Alongside the installation, the Roundhouse will become a daily destination where members of the public can enjoy the sunshine at North London’s very own ‘seaside’ resort, Camden Beach, presented by Stoli Vodka. On the terrace, Camden’s biggest outdoor space, there will be 150 tonnes of the finest sand, deckchairs, beach huts, ping-pong, live music, some of the best food pop-ups in the city and the chance to enjoy Stoli’s drink of the summer, the Stoli Lemonade.
A programme of late night events during which the installation remains open run alongside. More information here.
Bloomberg’s long term partnership with the Roundhouse builds on a shared commitment to support artistic innovation, ground breaking technologies and access for new audiences in the arts. For the third year running, Bloomberg Summer will have a weekly ‘pay what you like’ event to ensure that as many people as possible have the opportunity to enjoy it.
#RHUtopia
LISTINGS INFORMATION
Utopia: Until Sunday 23 August
Venue: Roundhouse, Chalk Farm Road, London, NW1 8EH
Box office: 0300 6789 222
Tickets: £10 (£5 GET IN for 16-25s) – ‘Pay What you Like’ every Tuesday
Website: roundhouse.org.uk
Age guidance: The installation includes stories and themes of an adult nature and is recommended for ages 14+
OPENING TIMES
Tuesday – Thursday Midday – 7pm
Friday Midday – 10pm
Saturday – Monday Midday – 9pm
Last entry 1 hour before closing time