The Garden is Our Wall

Featuring collaborations with Stefanie Cheong, James Harding, Tess Vaughan and Jake Watts.

A series of four events inviting collaboration from creative practitioners. The programme draws on authority within designed urban image, and the inherent civic responsibility of communal habitation.

The Garden is Our Wall is a series of four events inviting collaboration from creative practitioners: Stefanie Cheong, James Harding, Tess Vaughan, and Jake Watts. The conversations each originated from a discussion about the history of ‘Planty Park’, a 4km circular band of greenery which replaced Krakow’s historic city wall in the early 19th Century. The change is a very early example of the ‘garden city’ phenomenon, and can be seen as a shift towards the image-as-defence - one which acts as protection from cultural and international criticism. As well as interrogating the ideas of urban design, authority and civic duty, the conversations have also questioned what it means to use collective image as ‘defence’, and where responsibility might lie in curatorial and collaborative practices.