Action Research

The horses in Tilbury are not only horses but also represent a particular set of relationships to the landscape.

Tilbury is part of the Thames Gateway Initiative for future economic and housing development, the initiative rhetoric is for 'sustainable communities' and assumes the cohesive co-existence of a community and place that is, or rather that ought to be: "culturally diverse, one that enjoys high levels of cultural participation" a place where there is: "a high quality public realm enjoyable for all".

What is being championed by this rhetoric is a model of inclusion without references. If the concept of inclusion is the ideal model, then that which is not included does not exist, the rhetoric calls events into being according to its own model. The model exists not as the representation of an external order, but as a sphere of action where the world is willed and will in turn makes the world.

Tilbury is neither culturally inclusive nor included, located on low-lying land on a bend in the Thames close to the estuary; it is both geographically and culturally marginal. The town was created to service the docks in the early C19th; at that time, due to the low agricultural value of the estuarine marshland and the relative proximity to London, occupation was predominantly peripatetic, itinerant squatting for short periods. However the increase in growth of the docks required a stable workforce and housing provision in the town was gradually formalized, although the housing estate on which we were originally commissioned to work was erected as a temporary measure in the 1970's and is still in use today.

The infrastructure of the docks and railway create a highly controlled barrier between the town and its reason to be there. The contemporary dock trade in the passage of luxury cruise liners so rarely penetrates the town as to make conspicuous the soft leather shoes of the wealthy itinerant at the station.

The habit of itinerant occupation brings its own values. Whereas the nomadic tendencies of the wealthy are formalized through the infrastructure of tourism, (the wealthy traveller is rarely the other because they reproduce their context and proximity to power) elsewhere the culture of travelling falls outside the accepted concepts of public and private occupation and ownership.

The horses in Tilbury signify a relation to place, both historic and current that falls outside the accepted order. The provision of the horse arena legitimises the presence of the horse and recognises the culture of travelling and so brings into the debate of the ordering of the public realm specific cultural values. The procession of the children as horses is a reframing of the familiar landscape through an unexpected occupation.

On being commissioned to create a community garden in the void spaces between housing on the Broadway Estate, we noticed on first visit, horse dung in the playground. The presence of ponies as a possible intrinsic condition of the site was not acknowledged by the design brief.

Just as the play of children without appropriate space is considered misbehaviour, so the presence of the ponies without appropriate accommodation was also considered illegitimate.

To investigate whether the ponies are an anomaly or a cultural condition of the local environment we initiated a research project.