Hand-Over the Gaumont
Handover the Gaumont presents a strategy to give the Gaumont State building on back to the community. The proposed idea connects the history of a building to the current energy of the street through the facilitated handover activity of music sharing/listening.
There is a need to blur the qualities of private home and public space: public space can offer size compared to our humble abodes, but large indoor public spaces are mostly used formally. To be able to generously give casual yet large/atmospheric space to people, for the sake of itself rather than ensuring optimum efficiency, will mean people can give spacious time to being, in protected space away from home.
Music-listening in this space connects back to its history and is a useful way-in to sharing. Listening to music is often multi-tasked, but this focused activity, put into dramatic space, is deeply intimate and collaborative, yet not daunting. It is a potential way to unite different networks of people in the geographically proximate community – both visible hubs on the street and invisible general residents – with a sense of Kilburn locality then and now, allowing people to engage creatively in ways they wouldn’t formally.
Flexibility is built into the design by being an open-ended handover. Building from the participatory energy of the fixed theme sessions, brief fortnightly meetings will invite discussion on future facilitating and designing the un-designed, along with reviewing the rules: events must remain inclusive, the space must adhere to the building’s regulations and must remain accessible (at least 10 hours drop-in/15 hours pre-booked, both to remain free of charge).
Funding would be used to restore the building, electricity bills, light/sound equipment, flyers and a full-time site manager salary. Legally owned by Brent council.
