The final Companion walk focused on six sites, travelling from Cyberia, the UK’s first internet café (originally intended as a women’s only space), past the Fitzrovia Mural and Procter Memorial, through Heals, stopping at the BT Tower, and ending at the Indian YMCA canteen for lunch.
Along the walk Alexei and Katie Schwab discussed communication both as a subject and as a tool, sharing their current research and interests in the relationships between post-war design, online communication, public space and the socialisation of military. The tour included a number of readings of texts by women writers who use forms of concrete poetry, prose poetry, fiction, memoir and critical writing to explore spaces around them, such as Elizabeth Hardwick, Dodie Smith, Lisa Robertson and Mary Ellen Scott.
Alexei Schwab is Head of Programme at Future of London - an independent policy network connecting London’s regeneration and housing sectors.
Katie Schwab is an artist whose practice interweaves personal, social, and craft-based histories, often drawing from marginalised and overlooked traditions of making and working collectively. Her artworks take the form of installations of embroidered, woven and printed textiles, ceramic tableware, furniture and videos, drawing on the bright colours, bold shapes and abstract forms of twentieth-century modern design.
You can read a response to walk 2 written by Jessie Bond below.
