Inspired by Exyzt’s The Feasting Mouth, a communal oven and dining table, writer Sarah Butler from Urban Words will be collecting stories about birthday dinners, forest picnics, afternoon teas and lunches on the fly. Inspired by the Bankside Urban Forest she will also be considering what sharing looks like in Bankside, weaving in narratives from businesses owners, workers and local residents. Join her for a cup of tea, a sandwich and a chat during July and August.
A specially illustrated book with Sarah's stories will be available from mid September onwards via Better Bankside and Tate Modern's community programmes exploring:
Food in the city, its production and consumption, and people’s experience of both lone lunches and communal dining. Broadening this out to include concepts of sharing, the social, exchange and conversation.
The skirt of the black mouth in the Bankside Urban Forest. The forest offers a strong metaphor – a place of magic and transformation, danger and subversion. From the burnt wood ‘fence’ and wooden cobbles of the Skirt, to the concrete/ metal/glass expansion of the Tate, Sarah will explore ideas of transformation and the green within the urban environment.
The new Tate extension is visible and tangible, something created by a vast team of engineers, architects and construction workers, which will change the landscape of the city. At the same time, other local workers construct equally complex structures that are invisible within the urban fabric – finance and business: work done on computer screens and over phone lines. I will explore ideas of work and visibility with workers in local businesses and on site.
Biography
Sarah Butler writes novels and short fiction, and has a particular interest in the relationship between writing and place. She has been writer-in-residence on the Central line and at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Her debut novel, Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love, is published by Picador in the UK and in fifteen languages around the world.