Every year in Walthamstow a very disparate group of people get their acts together long enough to hold the E17 Art Trail.
The 6th to the 14th September is when this year's will be officially held. The council, in its publicity, likes to use the code word 'diversity' to tell everyone that the eclectic mix is somehow all part of its grand vision for a harmonious ethnically mixed urban civilization. In fact, the council is really just jumping onto the coat tails of a load of other people's efforts, because those of us who live here don't need to council's subtly divisive ideological labels to tell us how great the place is when we are all rubbing along having fun. All that is needed is that they sometimes begrudgingly cough up some of the cash they haven't squandered elsewhere and let the public use the public's facilities. Left to themselves the council generally kills off artistic endeavour and creativity locally, like they did with our festival this summer, all in the name of the Olympics. As a result, even without the fatal killing that destroyed the council's attempt at an Olympic party, there is always lots of back-stabbing as a result of the anger at their approach to artistic celebration of the human spirit. This year will be no different.
Nevertheless, those of us who notice these kinds of things (which may be less than 10% of the local population) are looking forward to a few hundred local artists treating us with performances, films and videos, painting, printmaking, sculpture (maybe someone is recycling the missing Coppermill Lane bronzes), puppetry, installations, photography, drawing, craft, textiles, architecture and poetry. The thing about the art trail is a lot of the work is actually on show in the studios, homes and gardens of the artists themselves, who should be around when those who are interested drop in.
Other pieces will be in the windows of shops (such as at Oxfam) or scattered about in our scanty public spaces still given over to cultural pursuits. Any film, sadly, will not be on show in our cinema, because we haven't got one.
People who want to just wander around looking at things that aren't there as exhibits might also find this list of curious sights inspiring.