I have read a book by Richard Florida: Who's Your City (2008)which is his second book after The Rise of the Creative Class. The first I swallowed with some difficulty, but the second one made me really angry. The book has become a huge hit in the States and Florida has become a star of all morning talk shows. The point of the book is that today one has to first think about a part of the city to live as an investment for live. I know it is not a new thing in the UK were location, location, location and the role of the postcode has been widely recognised. yet the 'creative city@ by Florida pushes people straight to segregation as part of culture and cultural upbeat lifestyle. Choosing a place to live is in that book compared to choosing school for a child: all our contacts, future friends, and people we come across are determined by a place, if we don't choose rightly, we are doomed. Florida divides cities into creative and non-creative, the first ones are all located in the most strategic economically points on the globe. By providing maps of the biggest usage of electricity in those points, he is showing how creative and cultural they are. He says nothing about the ratio of crime in that same areas. What makes me really disappointed is that he does not say a word about the cost of having "a creative life". He does not provide any explanation to the economic and class divide in the first place. He argues that we are undergoing the mass relocation to hot spots (which leave those which are underdeveloped regressing even more - he does not say it). This is his comment:
"demographic realignment is currently at work: the mass relocation of highly skilled, highly educated, and highly paid people to a relatively small number of metropolitan regions, and a corresponding exodus of traditional lower and middle classes from those same places. Such geographic sorting of people by economic potential, on this scale, is unprecedented. I call it the means of migration, and refer to the regions capturing this demographic group as means metros" (page 93).
Yeah, now, if someone cannot afford joining this migration movement............what do they do? What do metros think about them? London is one the few creative cities to which metros want to move, but Florida is not speaking about anything outside the city............His book is telling me that there is no culture , no creativity, no upbeat anywhere else outside the West End................and it makes non-metros feel like losers. There is another side to it. Apparently only in the creative centres people are really tolerant, intellectual and innovative, and truly artistic, the rest of the world if the province of the creative centre..........I am going to invite Florida to Plumatead for a talk.

Yesterday we had a meeting (PIP) in one of the local pubs in Plumstead, a lovely and friendly place where we have been before many times. The meeting for the Spring day attracted interesting people and new members, we are still looking for artists who would like to perform on the 16th May. Antonia brought a friend who was to film a small focus group among us to document our views on what this community needs and how are going to respond as individuals and as a group. Unfortunately, our meeting was disrupted by a fight in the pub, very typical thing on a Friday night, but left us quite numb for some time. I was really afraid that people felt discouraged by that scene against any further voluntary work for the community, but it was not the case.........Everyone was really supportive and we started discussing what other problems and obstacles we have to be prepared for while volunteering in Plumstead. It is life, bit a fictional story about the place and people can get hurt....does it mean that we should sit safely at home and wait until things change into better on their own? Those idiots who started a fight were drunk and looking for trouble, this is not representative of Plumstead as a whole, it is more representative of contemporary city life all over the world....At the end I felt sick but also uplifted by friends and local people, we are not going to give up because of a stupid fight. In fact I feel even more motivated, even if it to be one sunny day bringing some fun to the local people, it is worth our trying...One of my friends said to me later: ok, one sunny event and you are moving this charity elsewhere...........but I am not..............we should not be threatened and I know there are many cool people in Plumstead who want to change something. Camden, Brixton, Brick Lane were desserts in the past and they are hot spots now, and it has happened against all odds and to surprise of many. Plumstead can be better than that....one day...

The PIP is trying to put together some creative activities and have a family creative day in May. It made me think about creativity more on a political level. It is quite obvious that creativity will not unite all people of Plumstead in one great happy family: not everyone likes belly dancing, poetry, circus, RAP music, or jazz. And this is what we plan. Different tastes and different origins produce diverse expectations. Creativity is not an innocent platform where differences disappear and people start loving each other. Today we know too acutely that people in big cities groups in sub-groups and 'tribes' which share lifestyles, religion, hobbies, or something else. But not everything at the same time. Trying to unite people under one heading is pointless....and if fact, can be offending to many. Logically, it can be concluded that a transparent and united community of people who live happily together in one place is a myth. There have been a few authors that have said it openly. Communities are imaginary projects, similarly to ethnicities: it is not possible to be a pure this or that...........and why is it important? When someone lives in London they call them Londoners, but they come from all over the world. It is this place here and now which makes those people one group but they are more diverse than one can imagine. Are all people living in Plumstead Plumsteadiands? or Plumsteaders? And what about who spent here all their lives and now live abroad? Are they Plumstead-ers as well? And what if someone is a devoted teacher from, say, Nigeria or Pakistan, working in the local school, who influenced positively many generations of people living here, are they also Plumstead-ers? There is a list of notable people from Plumstead on wikipedia, I wonder what they felt for Plumstead? Mick Jagger apparently hated Dartford and was expelled from the local school, but there is a great centre of his name there which supports young talents in the area. Is Mick Jagger a Dartfordian? My mum always asks me at the end of each telephone conversation: where are you going to come back home? I wonder if Jagger thinks about Dartford in this way?

There are new shops in the High Street. I always wonder what happened, and why the old ones had to close...but the Street looks more colourful...I think it also means that new people are moving into the area. I think it is fascinating how quickly the landscape changes these days. I remember between 2004 and 2006, there were fewer changes in the High Street. This whole metamorphosis must be even more surprising to people who remember Plumstead 30 or 50 years ago. Considering that Plumstead was set up as a village in 11 century, it must have changed a lot:) I like seeking the old artifacts from the past, may of them are held in the Woolwich Museum, I would like to involve in some form of co-operation in the process of collecting and preserving Plumstead history. There is lots of research done by Plumstead lovers who have their own websites (in my links) with pictures and stories from the past. Each place has a different story but when we start looking into it, we find out that people have very similar problems in this area, or Erith, or Thamestead,or York, or Ormskirk, Fugasowka. Yes, even Fugasowka, where I come from originally. I was interviewing a migrant from Poland living in Plumstead who said to me: it sounded so great when I was saying "London", "England", "Paris" to myself, while still living in Poland, it sounded so different and so detached, but now when I live here I just have the same life, the same problems at work, the same problems with my family, sometimes I forget it is a different country....Once we have our family and friends with us, the place becomes home, although no everyone is so lucky to have them. I remember it took me about 3 years to make friends with people in London. At the beginning I felt like on a dessert, but I was lucky to have my children with me. Now I don't have many friends left in Poland and most of my friends are based in London...it takes time though. If I move again, will the whole journey start again? We are also lucky in this part of the world that war does not make us move and seek safety all the time. How do those people feel who cannot secure safety to their children and they cannot afford moving out or their country cannot help in any way? Yet to think that we are lucky does not make me feel better.....enjoying that I am better off than people experiencing war and hunger really makes me feel worse....but what do I do about it? How am I trying to change something? Peace and political solutions are always temporary and contingent and they should never be taken for granted. The fall of the Iron Wall has proved it with no doubt. Christianity moving to Africa, capitalism falling apart in front of us.....how can a small community survive without changes?

I missed some jazz events in the Rugby Club in January, some strange viruses attacked my family and they are still running around. The PIP group has 22 members by now and it is very good news. We are going to meet in February to talk about any possibilities how to connect people in Plumstead. What is creativity and how we are going to put it into practice? During the last meeting we asked each other about our interests and passions. It was very interesting to observe how we were reserved at first, saying that we do not have creative talents, and later it appeared through a free discussion that we all have something: reading, painting, decorating, landscape shaping, singing, and many more. Why do we always believe that to be creative we need a certificate from college or some kind of established view of our creative practice from a critic or an institution. Is, for example, reading for others, a creative activity? If it is performed and stressed it reminds of theatre, I think. Or graffiti, where is the border between bad graffiti and artistic graffiti? Plumstead suffers from graffiti and there is a very smooth team from the Local Council which comes for free and removes everything from your property, if there was something painted on it. Most of writings on private walls are rather abusive and they are a sore to the eyes and soul. But there are some graffiti paintings, like those around around the station, which could be more focused on some theme and compete with art. I wonder if Plumstead could possibly discover some graffiti talents, it has already been seen in Newham and Tower Hamlets. Yet it needs some place where such local artists could come and talk about it and someone who would show them how to develop graffiti to art. We should also talk about it on Tuesday, this Tuesday 10th February. We (PIP) are having a meeting at 7pm in the Social Club by St Patrick Church in Plumstead (Hector Street). Ania, who is a psychologist, will be coming with her workshop on communicating creative ideas, it will be our first group training! Everyone is welcome!

When I looked through the window today, there were so many people at the Sainsbury's car park that it looked like one huge packed surface, the same happened just before the Christmas day when everybody was running like crazy, including myself, and buying and buying and buying....And then suddenly in the evening on the 24th December it went quiet..........no more cars, only people seeking entertainment. They were looking for pubs open and places to drink, they had parties booked, after midnight there was was some noise outside from the drunk teenagers who, as always, were playing with cones in the streets and were trying to smash the bust stop, but altogether something changed - it felt like the whole area had more air and there was some forgetfulness about order and duties which normally make us move around in a certain way. Festive season - it is called, isn't it? Escaping the rules. For me the 24th was the most important day of Christmas and we had our dinner/supper in the evening when people outside were having fun in the pubs. Quite impossible for Poles - going to a pub on a Christmas Eve, almost unimaginable, I must say. We opened our presents after dinner and that was the best part, much better than fried carp with cabbage, which nobody really liked, but I have to cook it anyway every year. When were were done with dinner and presents, and the peak of our festive mood had just dropped, some of our neighbours were getting ready to find their presents under the tree, it was just after midnight on the 25th. In the morning I looked through the window on the Sainsbury's carpark, it looked like a gray ice rink echoing silence...........yes, there were no cars in the streets, and no people..........the whole street just frozen in silence, this beautiful phase of peace lasted till 10am, I could not believe how soothing such silence can be. I would like the 25th to happen at least once a month as the day of silence from noise, traffic, shops, and people...........But on the other hand, when I realised that we did not buy enough bread for Christmas I started panicking: where we can find an open shop on a Christmas day? not in Crayford, not in Bexleyheath, not in Bexley, not even in Sidcup............of course........Plumstead was there with its own culture of Indian shops, Pakistani news agents, Bangladeshi video stores with sweets and fruit cans...........everything was there, even fresh Polish bread in Chandra Cash & Carry. I love Plumstead, it never closes down, when walking along Plusmtead High Street one cannot forget that there are so many different festive seasons and ways of celebrating. I know that Muslim, Hindu and Sikh people love Christmas and they celebrate it too, but if they are business owners it is not a reason for them to close the shop down at the time when English people sit down to their turkey. And this is how one can appreciate cultural differences and one can get one's Polish bread on a Christmas day! It would not be possible in Poland where everyone has to be a Catholic, especially at Christmas:)) This kind of mix we have in Plumstead should be a reason for celebration every day, even at the price of giving up the day of silence. So I take it back and I have to admit I favour noise, pollution, and traffic over tranquility and monotony. Oh my, I just remembered that we did not buy any champagne for today and the shops are closed already! Another trip to Plumstead then, no rush though they never sleep there. Isn't it great?

Yesterday we had a Christmas meeting in Volunteer's. and there were more of us than the last time! Debbie, the owner of Volunteer found for us a cozy table by the Christmas tree and she served us, as usual, great coffee in those enormous and beautiful cups which look like pieces of art.........and we also got home made cookies shaped as Christmas trees! That was a great creative start to our hot debate. Yesterday we moved on dramatically, it looks we are becoming formal, with action points, minutes, email gropup, and even agenda for the next meeting! As the Chair I feel responsible for checking the proportion of formality and homeade cookies, always in favour of the latter. It is a relief that we all agree that formality cannot surpass creativity, which we all want to inject across Plumstead, yet starting from ourselves. Yesterday we shared our creative ideas which we would like to see happening in Plumstead and to do so we had to admit what are creative passions and talents are. I believe personally that every single person is creative in some way, it can be even the way of seeing the world or sorting Christmas cards on the window. We are the walking evidence of this approach: a bunch of people who have passions for different activities, like singing, reading, writing, dancing, performing, playing instruments, designing gardens, designing websites, and cooking. The way we want to share our interests will be through offering our time to those who have similar passions or try to expolre some new area which they have never tried before. We are not going to be teachers, but we want to be out there and attract others to what we think can be empowering and educational. Creative activities can give us confidence and skills and one can try again and again even if things don't go too well at the beginning. I can't sing, for example, but I imagine I can, and I would like to try a bit without feeling embarrassed and far from my daughter who would "die if I do it in public". I can write stories though visualise them, so if someone wants to exchange I woudl first to be there! If there are some groups who want to do certain activies together, we can think how to find money to develop in a more specialised way. There are so many things happening in the Greenwich borough, but the thing is that many of us in the community have never though about joining classes and it sometimes it is too much pressure (and money) to take a class, isn't it? It can be too difficult to commute, or simply we feel too stressed to face new situations. Perhaps if we could meet just somewhere close to home, in an informal place, where people speak different langauges, and come from different countries, represent different cultures and different accents, and where we can connect despite those differences, would it help to find inspiration and do something together for ourselves and for this place? Plumstead is its own planet where everyone is 'different', most of London is like that, as my friend Peter said the other day: "there is space for every freak in London", but does it mean that everyone is accepted? It is so hard to feel like at home here, isn't it? I know from my own experience that one has to be very stuborn and committed to make home in London. I have tried in Plumstead for a couple of years too and I think I have succeeded. That experience gave me confidence and I know now I make home for myself and my family in every community, but it needs resistance and stuborness. Home does not fall on us from heaven, we have to make it, sometimes against all odds. Producing a sculpture or an installation together for the local park, as was suggested yesterday, could be a good start. Or watching films or photographs about Plumstead together produced by our ourselves, local children, our neighbours or visitors? Boring? Maybe, but what if the theme is "My first date in Plumstead: how did I feel" or "If Plumstead was an animal: what would it be?" or "What song presents Plumstead worst side". I don't know, what themes would you like to do? Can we make Plumstead a creative planet where different talents and non-talents meet? We are looking for a place in Plumstead now where we could do all these things, not only talk about them. Our next "formal" meeting is on the 10th of February at 7pm, EVERYONE is invited, and I will guarantee there will be the right ratio of homemade cookies, teas, and coffees, and I promise - I will not sing, not yet:)

On the 18th November 12 people turned up for a first official meeting in the Volunteer Pub in PLumstead High Street where besides great coffee they had a long discussion on how to change Plumstead into a creative place. At the end of that discussion we were all dehydrated from too much tea and coffee (both great)and very proud to welcome the birth of the Plumstead Integration Project, shortly PIP which is a volunteer group committed to generating creativity for empowerment and integration of the local people. I came back home so tired and so happy on that day. It is hard to believe but it took about three years to get to that point, gather those fantastic people who want to work for free for the community, and crystalise a common vision for the future. We parted feeling connected, i hope, and we moved on immediately to formalising our structure. In the next week we produced a constitution and we applied for a grant to the Local Council for development of PIP. We realise too well how much we have to leran as a group and I hope the grant woudl help us to become a more effective body. If we want to find monemy foe generation and realisation of creative ideas, we have to become a 'body', it is tough but necessary.
Now we are trying to tell the woruld about PIP and invite as many people as possible from plusmtead and all over the world. I am happy to say that this group does not believe that one needs to originate from a community or a place to become its devoted member. What great news for migrants and refugees! And we want to invite other groups too who are doing a similar thing for their community. We can meet online, although we cannot have a tea together then, but we can learn from each otehr anyway.

Finally a message came from the local library in Plumstead: we are interested in the film club! I am so happy we can start some practical work towards it. The idea behind it is to let the local people express themselves creatively and enable us all to learn from each other - people from different countries, ethnic groups, and religions. Our aim is to have enough money to buy equipment and computers, so they would put their hands on some real stuff and produce movies! But now we have to start from theoretical talks about films, we want to do film screenings every week and a short talk and a discussion. We want to have night with different themes depending what people want. Perhaps different groups can have their own nights with films of their choice. Yet for now we have a big problem: copyrights. How can I screen big movies without paying? Does anyone know? There must be some solution for charities, if not we are stuck and we will be able to screen only films by friends and participants. Not the worst solution in the world, but there is so much indi stuff on the internet, who would like to come and discuss them in the library? I am applying for a small grant for communities' development in December, I hope we will have some cash to but a couple of cameras and one editing suite. Am I a dreamer?