This week we attended Salon No. 9: London Futures organized by Antique Beat at the Westminster Arts Reference Library. Matt Brown, editor of the wonderful Londonist shared with us some very interesting archive articles, photographs and drawings with Victorian visions of future London. Daily (balloon) flights to America and India, smoking forbidden (go figure!) and even a joke about women wearing trousers. Some current predictions were shown at the end, showing an increasingly green and sky-scrapped London.
Andrew Collinge, Assistant Director, Intelligence and Analysis at Greater London Authority, and second lecturer of the night, believes that some of these modern visions might become truth as soon as in 2020. GLA recently published its new vision for the capital London 2020 (you can read it here), a very humble plan to make London "The Greatest City on Earth". Collinge paraphrased Shakespeare's famous quote: "What is the city but the people?" and pointed out that he believes that this "greatest city" is basically the "world class infrastructure" needed to host amazing people doing amazing things.
He shared with us some very interesting figures that represent challenges for the GLA, like the 3.4 million Tube journeys everyday, the 450.000 new jobs needed by 2020 and London's amazing 2012 GDP: £ 455b.
As usual, the Library contributed with a display of books related with the Salon's topic for people to have a look before and after the lectures. It was a very fun, very interesting evening, and we left the Westminster Arts Library already wanting for the Salon No. 10 to come because it sounds amazing: A Night in Old London. Read more about this wonderful event and book your tickets here.
Image: Annie Hall's screenshot via YouTube.
Annie Hall's Late Saturday Evening Procrastination (non topical cinematographic news)
by Marie James
If like mines, you friends cry foul when you say that you've never seen Woody Allen's Annie Hall and
yes we are in 2013, it's because they know about the extreme pleasure
of watching, comfortably settled in the red chair of your local cinema
on a late Saturday
evening, a beer on your left hand and pop-corns on your right, a movie
released 36 years before; the joy of the time travel and relevance of
the stories in the new millennium. You'll still have the magic of the
first time. And they are jealous.
No current
screening confirmed. Just buy yourself a subscription to your local
independent cinema and let the non-topical time call you!
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