I went to the April 1st protests on Wednesday, mostly because something was happening in my home town and I couldn't just sit at home and ignore it, than because I am anti-capitalism. I'd be a hypocrite if it was for that reason, with my clothes from high street shops, and my camera and mobile phone (never mind that I bought my coat in 1999 and my phone is falling apart).

That's not to say I am completely anti-socialism, either. There are good points to be said on both sides, and there's a lot to be said for the fuzzy grey area in between. People at protests can be quite didactic and only see things in black-and-white. Such didacticism doesn't allow any room for the grey areas, and heaven forbid you might actually be able to see things from the enemy's point of view…

That being said, I was quite happy to avoid the ruckus taking place outside the Bank of England, although beyond the police barrier people were milling around with little direction, seeming unsure about what they should be doing or where they should be going. It seemed as though the police weren't really sure what they were doing, either. Outside the Bank on Prince's Street, there was just a row of regular bobbies in their silly helmets, having a laugh with the people nearby. Meanwhile, on Lothbury at the parallel side of the building, not more than a few metres away, the police were all dressed in riot gear, looking very surly. It was as though the Met were trying some sort of controlled experiment to see which approach would be more successful. Over on Wormwood Street, there was a line of them, wearing different clothes all together.

Down on Bishopsgate, the Climate Camp had a nice atmosphere, more like a festival, although of course lacking any sound systems or music besides the usual drums. As we passed by all the little groups of people, I noticed quite a few earnest discussion groups, and pockets of people with instruments although nobody was playing them at the moments we went past.

It was great to see all the tents in the middle of a road which is usually heaving with traffic, although we did laugh at it, because they were all dome tents. Dome tents in themselves are not funny, and everyone has them these days, but it was funny to think that 10-15 years ago they wouldn't have been able to pitch any tents in the street, because no one could afford dome tents back then, and ridgepole tents don't work on concrete, since there's nothing to drive the pegs into. Mind you, 15 years ago there would have been sound systems. (Actually, 15 years ago we were protesting against the Criminal Justice Bill and its anti-rave provisions. Anyone else remember the day all the ravers from across the country ended up dancing in the fountains at Trafalgar Square? Good times…)

I bumped into a couple of pals at the Climate Camp, and we went for a wander around but there was nothing happening. I don't mean that we were looking for riots, there really was nothing happening, anywhere. The protest outside the Bank of England was so well contained that nobody outside seemed to know what to do, except for the people watching avidly from their office windows. It would have been nice if more people had just taken advantage of the sunny weather and traffic-free streets, in a kind of Reclaim The Streets thing, but, other than milling aimlessly around, no one was, so the boys decided to look for a pub.

We ended up at Ye Olde Watling on Bow Lane, quite a nice pub, with an intriguing line in sausages (pork + rhubarb or beef + damson, anyone?) and some good guest beers — although the stairs to the toilets are scarily some of the steepest I've ever scaled. The pub telly was showing the news, so we could see what the mess inside the police blockade was like, which was, er, messy. Typically, the news kept banging on and on about the riots, but didn't mention that outside of that tiny area there was no trouble at all, everyone was very peaceful and even most of the police were quite smiley. We would have been happy to stay in the pub, but they decided to close, as did most of the other pubs we passed. I don't really blame them, though, considering the way the media was scaremongering so much.

We walked up to St Paul's and thought we'd try the pub in Paternoster Square, because it looked open as we walked past the windows. The only problem was getting in to Paternoster Square, as all of the entrances were being guarded by riot police with those giant tank-like vans that looked utterly incongruous in such a quiet peaceful area (see photo above). We thought it was a bit of overkill — what were they expecting to happen here? It looked weird as there were so few people there, mostly workers and the occasional bemused tourist. There was about one police officer for every civilian, and it was the only place any of us had any police hassle.

Most of them, even in their riot gear, were still being smiley, and waved us through when we said we wanted to go to the pub, but one regular bobby with his silly helmet appeared determined to have his day, probably because they'd all been standing around with bugger all to do all day and he was desperate for some kind of action. He was convinced that Rooney's monopod was about to be deployed as a weapon at any moment, even though all of the riot police had seen it and not had a problem with it. He was being a real jobsworth about it, too, and it took three constables to question Rooney for about 15 minutes. The funny thing was that the other constables nearby were all rolling their eyes at him and trying to distance themselves from him by saying things like, "he's not from my unit." One of them in particular was very avuncular and moaning about the fact that he had to work late and wouldn't get to see his wife, and wishing he could come to the pub with us. Even though he was quite obviously asking leading questions about our plans for later, he did so with a friendly attitude that didn't get our backs up. I know it's just a tactic, but it's a much better one than being an aggressive jobsworth. Despite his avuncular tones, I still made sure I was on the other side of the square when I was breaking the law by taking photos of the police, since that would be such a stupid thing to get arrested for. (Of course, when I got home I remembered that Paternoster Square is now home to the Stock Exchange — which I keep forgetting has moved there — which explains the heavy police presence.)

As it happened, by the time they finished questioning Rooney, and confiscated his monopod (to be collected 48 hours later), the pub there was closed, too, so we ended up at the Viaduct Tavern, where there appeared to be a heavy dude in a smart waistcoat on the door. Imagine my surprise when I heard him asking the bartender if they served scrumpy! Just goes to show, one shouldn't be too prejudiced.

The rest of my photos are here

Not sure I'll make the Giant Monopoly Game in the City on Wednesday. 7:00am is too early for me!

I am working on the connection between the senses and memory – currently sound (music in particular) in my art practice. [...] I shall be playing the music along with selected pieces and the viewer is then invited to gauge their own reactions to the songs against those memories of the contributors. (like i said early days – will keep you posted)

Please send in any memories that spring to mind and the song that you feel relates to it.

Be nice if there was one for London. Anyone want to start one?

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There's a PaperCamp heading to a city near you. If that city happens to be New York, anyway. One in San Francisco is being mooted, with maybe more to come elsewhere. You could always set one up yourself… Yes, you.

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Further to the questions I asked at the end of this post on creating new readers, I found Pete's suggestions on local blogs helping local business full of useful ideas and information, and a possible approach to getting started that we hadn't considered, especially his last point:

"Above all, start small. Don’t try and run a local media outlet from the outset. Gradually build to being a local media outlet as you add more people to the team. If you just have 5 or 10 posts a week that’ll be fine. Once people know there’s a venue for their news they’ll bring it to you."

Maybe that's the best way to start a UK version of the 826 National; find a community centre or something with an attached cafe and begin small, rather than trying to find ways to set up a shop with no capital. Another interesting model is the one that the LUC guys used last year, using a market stall for outreach, and getting beyond the usual market of people who would buy and read comics. Might be something to look into (though maybe later in the year when there's no need to stand around all day in the freezing cold). It could be a good place to start selling crazily-themed toys and stuff to make money for the project, though, rather than trying to rent a shop. Once the things have been designed and made, of course.

One thing I've been learning is that it's better to start small and have something to show, than to wait for someone to bring you something big. It's the same attitude Pete mentions in point 9 that made me ask "what next?" immediately during the session on Saturday. Lots of people at these things say, "wouldn't it be great if…?" or, "someone should do something like…" and everyone says, "oh yeah, great idea!" but half the time you know they're all thinking, "as long as I don't have to do it."

One really simple place to start could be to set up a blog, with all the people who attended the session invited to have posting permission if they wanted to continue the discussion/brainstorming — that way, no one person is entirely responsible for trying to get the thing off the ground all on their own (I don't want to wrest control away from Kevin, since it was his idea, but I'm pretty sure he would be keen to have the collaborative input, as it's a pretty daunting idea to have to undertake all on your own). Plus, other people who want to get involved with the discussion have a place where they can take their own comments and ideas, and somewhere to link back to in order to spread the information. It might even give an idea of how much interest there would actually be in a project like this, outside of a small group of book geeks. (Probably quite a lot, but I suspect most of it will take the attitude mentioned above, that they'll be interested as long as someone else is doing the work.)

As I said after Amplified last year, all the really interesting conversations were going to take place outside of the realm of the main event(s). The only trouble with that, even though I expected it, is that it's all too easy to lose track of where the conversations are and what action is being taken. I guess Kevin's idea was the first one that got me excited enough to want to do something (or at least suggest something) proactive myself, instead of doing the usual thing of waiting for someone else to do something (or suggest something).

So: a dedicated blog might be a useful place to dump ideas and get discussion flowing. What do you think? I think one of the first things is to find a good, catchy name for the project rather than just "826 wannabe" — any suggestions? (And apologies to Kevin for posting this here without discussing it with him first, but hopefully it's at least an idea he'll think worth considering.)

First up was a session suggested by Kevin O'Neill (not that one) to discuss the creation of a UK project along the lines of the McSweeney's-affiliated 826 National in America, which has created a series of themed shops run by volunteers, that host writing workshops and education sessions, often run by professional writers. These workshops have produced collaborative books inspired by local observations, professionally illustrated by cool artists and designers. The interesting thing about the 826 National is that it is the shops and the design of them (e.g. the Chris Ware mural in San Francisco) and their products which initially brings people in. They are exciting, unusual and playful, full of fun objects and entertaining ideas to catch peoples' imaginations.

Everyone agreed that starting a project like this in the UK was a great idea, it was just a matter of hashing out essential issues like logistics and cost. We also thought i was a good idea to extend the remit to literacy for all, the same way that Roddy Doyle's Fighting Words project has done in Ireland. This was a really great, inspiring session, which caused me to get so excited that I may have dominated the discussion a little (although later someone came up and thanked me for all the things I said, so it might not necessarily have been a bad thing). One of the things I suggested, and felt needed reinforcing, is that it was focussed on the written word at the expense of visual storytelling, which still has a place in books. This is especially true in the case of books for young children, which are almost always illustrated, or in the case of art and photography books.

This way of ignoring visual media was something that I found myself having to reiterate several times at BookCamp, actually, and it became something of a bugbear with me. I'm a very visual person, so obviously I'm a bit biased, but lots of people are visual, and we do not live life in non-visual terms¹. Images have always been used to illustrate wordy ideas all over the place, from advertising to newspaper stories to book-jackets to comics etc. and it's long past time people stopped thinking about books in terms of text only (it was an attitude prevalent at Amp08, as well) and started to remember the illustrated aspect. Literacy is not just about words, there's a visual literacy of symbolism and ideas that is just as important, especially as more communities are filled with people who don't all speak the same language.

Actually, there are a couple of good stories which, ahem, illustrate my point, linked to at The Beat: one story about a "reluctant reader" who discovered Diary of a Wimpy Kid (a sleeper hit that's been racing up the best-seller lists), and was so hooked that he polished off nearly 450 pages in two days; and another about the similarities between medieval illuminated books, and contemporary graphic novels ("both genres were designed to make the written word accessible to everyone, and both combine words and art". This is not an original idea, and they seem to have mistaken genre (stylistic content) with platform (typically the medium used to present the genre), but it's a timely link anyway).

Right, getting off my high horse, now, and back to the session in hand. As I said, everyone was enthusiastic, as only a bunch of book geeks can be, and we came away with a list of things to consider if the project is to get off the ground:

* finding out about getting available shop space for low rent
* registering as a charity
* recruiting volunteers. This includes
– people to work in the shop(s)
– designers to create fun artefacts
– authors to run workshops, or at least promote the project in interviews etc.
* what "theme" a shop could take (e.g. in America they have a pirate shop, a superhero shop, a robot shop etc.)

Kevin's posted his own list here.

So, one last question on this subject before I finish the post and start writing up the next session: is anyone reading this interested in this project? Can you help? Do you know someone who can secure it funding, or how to cheaply rent a shop? Do you know how to run a shop? Do you want to volunteer to run workshops? Do you just want to big it up to everyone you know because you like the idea too? Please let me know in the comments.

¹Except for blind people, obv. And that brings up something I hadn't thought about on Saturday: braille. Maybe someone who's more of an expert than me can do a session on that at the next BookCamp?