Press Release: MoNopoly - June 2013

from, romfordarts.com, re. 'moNOpoly', part of mini markets, in Romford

 

MoNOpoly: No, MORE Romford encounters!

 

The performance piece MoNOpoly was lead into Romford Market in an early morning frenzy of excitement and expectation with the challenge of outreach, engagement with the added fear of reject.

 

This was the most PUBLIC place where NO has performed up to date, and the great range of people and cultures that passed by our modest stall can surely not be mirrored in many British towns. We got laughs and moans and questions and groans and damn right told off by some ladies who thought that we had misarranged the board- because their “mate down the road in Emerson Park has a MASSIVE house and their Road should definitely have been in place of Mayfair!” – all in good jest.

 

We gained participation from a range of ages; 3 generations on one board at one time during one game! The participants enjoyed dressing as a boy racer, the St Osyth Lion and counting their plastic pennies to see if they could afford to buy their neighbour a £2 bunch of Tesco flowers. It was shown statistically that the younger the player, the more money was earned and also, that if you threw a two on the first go you were unlikely to get to your third roll without becoming bankrupt. Our most long term players were those that squatted in others houses, and those who took loans did not last long. I think I can say that this is a comfortable reproduction of the stereotyped Romfordilian lifestyle.

 

The aspect that NO draws most from this opportunity was the engagement with the shoppers, shoppers for us are the identifiable general public. The inquisitive consumers that could be of any social standing or class, everyone is a shopper at some point in their lives; of course not many dropped their bags and ran to be directly involved with the board-  however  the hundreds that walked passed and commented– who shared a synonym about the unfair local taxes or unemployment. The anger of the middle aged men and the pitty of the grandmothers, those interested in politics stopping to debate the amount we were giving as ‘JSA’ when someone passed go, and those not so much, laughing at the idea of getting a ‘Wonga’ pay day loan.

 

This is how we know our contextual  ideas have rippled into the environment.



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