2014–2015

How to Live Together – A Blackboard is a site-specific artwork at Church Street Library - produced by artist Christian Nyampeta and The Showroom in collaboration with a wide range of local groups and residents through a series of art and design workshops.

Exploring the question of ‘how to live together’, the workshops generated and collected the knowledge, histories and stories of Church Street, from in and around the local area and further afield.

The content produced – including artworks, photographs and personal reflections by workshop participants – is interspersed amongst archival material, historical references and local anecdotes.

These multiple layers make up an image that evokes the library and the market place as sites of exchange, where people, stories and objects come together and interact.

Nyampeta arranged this fertile and diverse material upon an expanding ‘tree of knowledge’ that grows from the heart of the library, reaching across each room to connect the many lives, histories and images that constitute the Church Street neighbourhood.

How to Live Together – A Blackboard was launched at Church Street Library on 14 January 2015 and is available to see during the library’s opening hours.

Index and translations:

1. Drawing of tree adapted from the epic poem The Birth of the Universe by Alexis Kagame, 1959
2. Careful Common Sense: Introduction to Community Building and Learning Technical Skills, Majani Marefu, 1970, revised in 1982
3. Drawings adapted from various Swahili learning books
4. Workshop drawings by Church Street Library Homework Group, 2014
5. Drawing taken from the book making workshop with King Solomon Academy made at The Showroom, 2014
6. Images and photographs from the workshop with Church Street Library Homework Group, 2014
7. Various archival material from the Westminster Archives
8. Figure drawing workshop with The Marylebone Project Women’s Day Centre
9. Windows drawn from architecture in the neighbourhood of Church street
10. Mosaic making workshop with The Mosaic Community Trust at The Showroom
11. Workshop with Seymour Art Collective at the West London Day Centre
12. Local and natural dyeing workshop with Church Street Library English Speaking Club at Church Street Library, 2014
13. Edible wild plants, adapted from a Field Manual to Survival, 1957 
14. Ceramics making workshop with Penfold Community Hub at 60 Penfold Street
15. Selections from the lessons on Food and Utopia, from How To Live Together by Roland Barthes, 1977
16. Workshops with Church Street Library Homework Group at Church Street Library, 2014
17. Market and cattle drawings adapted from illustrations accompanying Boccacio’s Decameron, 1351
18. The map of Roman Britain, Westminster Archives, accessed October 2014
19. Various views of Church Street Market, 2014
20. The mobile Reading Room visiting Church Street Library from The Grand Domestic Revolution GOES ON at The Showroom, 2012
21. Subjective history of libraries assembled from various sources
22. History of Theatre Royal, Marylebone, from various sources
23. Roman history of Edgware Road
24. Partial history of Lisson Grove, compiled from various sources
25. Book making workshop with King Solomon Academy made at The Showroom, 2014
26. Partial history of public houses around Church Street
27. Partial history of Lisson Grove, compiled from various sources
28. Market Stall at Church Street Market, 2014
29. Diagrams of walking sandals
30. Partial history of writing
31. Architectural landmarks of Church Street area, from various sources
32. Selective timeline of writing, assembled from various sources
33. Notable former residents of Lisson Grove, compiled from various sources
34. Selective history of youth clubs in London
35. Selective timeline of the history of books, from various sources
36. Selective timeline of history of writing, from various sources
37. Brief overview of schools around Church Street

A Garden Among the Flames
By Ibn al-Arab (1165-1240)
From the book Al Futuhat Al Makkiyah
Translation by Ma’n Abutaleb

Once before today I would deny my fellow

If his religion to mine not near

Now my heart accepts every image

A pasture for gazelles, a monastery for monks

A home for idols and a Kaaba of Taa’ef and

Scrolls of the Torah and scripts of the Quran

I follow a god of love wherever I turn

For love is my faith and my religion

—

The writings in Swahili say:

watoto wale wanacheza mchezo gani?
What game are these children playing?

Watoto hawa wanasikia njaa
Unafikiri wanagojea nini?

These children are hungry
What do you think they are waiting for?

Tusome
Let us read

Barua ni nusu ya kuonana
Writing a letter amounts to half a meeting

Wanawake hawa wanauza nini?
What are these women selling?