Gentrification: The Game!: British Expansion Pack!

Ande the Art Critic and Adrian the Local Billionaire

About a month ago, we here at the Atmosphere Industries Top Secret Underground Lair received a very exciting email: an invitation to do Gentrification: The Game! ! in London as part of the Hide and Seek Weekender on the Southbank, home of many iconic London landmarks – the London Eye, and right across the river, the Parliament buildings and Big Ben.

Would it work? Could we do a game designed for Brooklyn’s streets full of small shops in the fancy-pants streets of the Southbank? After a few frantic days of virtual touring via Google Maps and recon on foot by one of the organizers on the other side of the pond, we found two streets that fit the bill. So we booked our flights.

We ran the game on the Cut and Lower Marsh. It didn’t rain one bit (even though it was London). We think everyone had a blast – London players are even more hardcore than the New Yorkers!

We left feeling inspired and excited. London is a hotbed of street games and interactive art, theatre and dance. Even the festival itself was hosted by the National Theatre and was part of a larger festival – LIFT – which included a giant living room set covered in astroturf for spectators to take in outdoor skits and plays. My favourite of which was a dance set atop a glass table, where the audience sat underneath and watched from below. It reaffirmed out conviction to get the same sort of movement happening in our hometown of Toronto.

Congrats to the winning team: 'When I were a lad, all this were fields'

So, a big congrats to the winning team: ‘When I were a lad, all this were fields’!

And, an equally big thank you to our Local Billionaire, Adrian Hon (Six To Start) and our Art Critic, Ande Gregson (media140). And our dear, dear friends Margaret Maitland and Simone Van Hattem (who came all the way from Australia!) for being our photographers, videographers and general sanity maintainers.

And last but not least, a big thanks to to Holly Tracky and everyone else from Hide and Seek for bringing us over and helping us run an awesome game. Hope to see you again next year!