House of Annetta is a social centre in Spitalfields supporting land reform and spatial justice. From summer to winter 2022 I was a writer-in-residence as part of their experimental programme for hyper-local writers and artists to develop their practice, which aimed to increase connections and shared knowledges between those working in Annetta’s general areas and across other residents, users, and projects within the space. Linked below is the work I produced during my time here.
As a writer and researcher my areas are: public libraries; shared public spaces; healing spaces; gardening; city farms; the body, how it navigates, and where it belongs; belonging and loneliness; walking for recovery, as resistance, and as land reclamation; map-hacking/countermapping; and psychogeography. As a worker my areas are: community outreach and engagement through creative writing projects, and wellbeing projects on local city farmland.
I focussed on themes of edgelands, uninhabitable spaces, shared spaces, walking, map-hacking, psychogeography, which bodies belong where, land reclamation, and underrepresented stories. My Substack publication, The Edgelands, explored many of these themes already.
Trespassing Time with Friends: Growth, Land, Harvest, and the Darkroom of the Self
In 2023 I will be running a series of events for writers responding to Annetta’s Archives – watch this space.
Click below for the whole Edgelands archive, or for the HoA website.
sam dodd 