Contributors gathered to hear stories from the streets of NW5

WHEN a Brazilian anthropologist who had helped indigenous populations document their stories moved to London, he decided to use the same techniques to hear what the people felt about his new neighbourhood.

Gustavo Dias-Vallejo has used theatre and performance to give voice to communities – and to mark the 40th anniversary of the cultural centre The Torriano Meeting House, he has formed an exhibition based on what Kentish Town means to the people who live there.

Called It Happened Here, the exhibition draws on a walking tour of NW5 that saw participants tell a story at places they considered to be personal landmarks.

“Every neighbourhood is filled with stories that we can’t see: the corner where someone had their first kiss, the wall where you left your bike before it was stolen, or the place you were standing when you saw someone for the last time,” he says. “I set out to chronicle that.”

Gustavo has used a mix of photography, the written word and spoken testimony for participants to bring the NW5 tour into the Meeting House.

The stories are set where the plots unfolded – and were prompted by a vivid memory of the teller.

“As an anthropologist and social scientist, I spent a lot of time with people, asking questions and then putting their responses into essay form.

“I then moved into more visual documentary forms of ethnography.

“I began to work with theatre in indigenous communities as a way of telling their stories. A lot of my performance work has political or social meaning as a way of communicating these topics.”

Working as an academic at the Visual Anthropology Centre at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Brazil, Gustavo turned a camera’s lens on a range of communities: traditional fishermen on Brazil’s southern coast, homeless people in the city of Florianópolis, indigenous groups from the province of Santa Catarina and members of social campaigns such as the Landless Workers Movement (MST).

In 2014, he took his work away from the lecture hall and to the stage. This included a spell with a street theatre in Buenos Aires and further projects in Madrid before settling in the UK in 2017.

“I became interested in using performances as a way of having a conversation – and not just in a theatre-style venue but in communal places, shared spaces,” he adds.

“I put on different types of theatre and performance and creative projects. I like to focus particularly on projects that involve different media and combine different arts.”

And exploring Kentish Town prompted his latest work.

“I moved to London in 2018 because my partner was given a job at a UK university,” he recalls.

“We had friends in Kentish Town so we came to the area. It was the first piece of London we explored and got to know – and we love it.

Gustavo Dias-Vallejo

“We feel it has this wonderful, diverse, creative and engaged community. We felt the area was inspiring. There are lots of different people here – it is half gentrified but still very connected to an older and well established community.”

As he began to understand how the neighbourhood has a range of voices, he began to consider what shared experiences people had.

“I realised there were these different communities living together , co-existing but perhaps with different perspectives of the same place,” he says.

A walk along any shopping parade illustrates how people have different wants.

“You see that by the range of different shops along Kentish Town  Road, Fortess Road, Brecknock Road – all set up to serve different people who want different things. There are different social classes, different cultures on display.”

This anthropologist’s eye on the everyday prompted Gustavo to create the project.

“I wanted to do a project within the community to mark the Meeting House’s 40th anniversary – and I thought, let’s bring together these different perspectives.

“I wanted to see the area from different lenses – I wanted to ask: how do people experience the neighbourhood?”

Stories range from the reason a tree was planted in Montpelier to a pair of friends who were hit by a bus in Kentish Town Road (neither were badly hurt).

“We heard many different takes on the same place – for example, this pavement is where I helped my son ride his bicycle for the first time, or this is a stretch of pavement where my grandfather walked me to school. My focus was on how people create a place, how people with different backgrounds and interests and stories have connections to the same area,” he adds.

“And I wanted to help people see these shared spaces from someone else’s perspective.”

Living far away from the place he grew up, Gustavo brought a fresh pair of eyes to NW5.

“When I return to my family neighbourhood, I always reminisce,” he adds. “I feel nostalgia caused by a sense of place. I wanted to find that sense of a community you recall from where you grew up.

“And I wanted stories that were not private but took place in a shared communal space – parks, gardens, streets, shops.”

Once people had responded to his call, he hosted a walk taking in spots mentioned – and helped them write passages to recite at each location.

“One spoke of where they had buried a pet dog, while Susan Johns, the founder of the Meeting House, recalled how they had fought being evicted many years ago after the council put the rent up by 10 shillings.

“Another recalled the planting of three trees on Montpelier in memory of three children who died on Hampstead Heath.”

As well as recording and imagery, Gustavo has created a map to illustrate the places that have impacted on the contributors – and have in turn impacted on Gustavo.

“The neighbourhood changed for me after the walk,” he adds. “It is impossible not to go past those places and connect them to the stories told there. The tree, for example, in Montpelier Gardens meant nothing to me before – but they do now. And I cannot cross the road without thinking of the two people who were knocked down by the bus.”

And the work has given him an insight into why we form memories at certain places.

“It is hard to say whether the neighbourhood triggers the memories but the places are connected in a story-telling way,” he adds. “What makes a memory? Perhaps it is linked to a moment when the person gains knowledge or an experience. Perhaps a place condenses that thought, galvanises it for you?”

• It Happened Here in maps, photographs & voices is on from April 26 to May 24 at Torriano Meeting House, Torriano Avenue, NW5. Opening event: April 25, 6-9pm