Project Description
Skills Exchange Poster. Image credit: The People’s Bureau.
The People’s Bureau is a space for exchange of skills and needs. It is based in a dedicated shopping cart at the Elephant&Castle shopping centre.
The project’s aim is to create a pool of collective local knowledge through exchange, a supporting network of different skills and to draw attention to diversity and existence of different economies in the Elephant and Castle. The project is based on gift economy, working with the social fabric of the place through exchange of skills facilitated by the people. …By working from a mobile cart the project will travel within the area and beyond to celebrate the cultures of E&C past and present and to connect with communities from further afield.
The ambition is that the cart will eventually return to the newly built Elephant & Castle shopping centre, thus creating the link connecting the old and the new Elephant and becoming a museum of local culture.
– People’s Bureau, 2015
Rebecca Davies and Eva Sajovic have been working in Elephant and Castle since 2007. There first collaborative project together was Studio At The Elephant, which ran from 2011 – 2013. They have pursued an ongoing participative space-based practice hosting public events, workshops and talks in the area in collaboration with different communities and individuals.
