Today, the Bus moved from Bernie Grant Arts Centre in Tottenham where it has been for three years, round the corner to Hale Village where it will be throughout 2014. The Living Memorial to Ken Saro-Wiwa, aka The Bus, is a spectacular steel sculpture by artist Sokari Douglas Camp. Platform commissioned it in 2005, the 10th anniversary of the execution of the acclaimed Nigerian writer and campaigner and his eight colleagues who were all from Ogoniland. See more here about the sculpture’s history. Come and hear Sokari speak about the Bus alongside campaigners from the Niger Delta on Tues 25th March, London.
In 2015, we will mark 20 years since the executions by campaigning alongside social movements and organisations in the Niger Delta, such as Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) and Social Action, as well as organisations from the UK and internationally such as War on Want and Friends of the Earth. The United Nations Environmental Programme’s report ‘Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland‘ from 2011 demands that the clean-up of the delta takes place and details how it should be done by the oil companies and governmental agencies. To achieve this would be to honour Ken and his colleagues’ lives and deaths and to begin to rebuild a future for the people of Ogoniland.
We are delighted that Hale Village is hosting the Bus – a new mixed housing development by the River Lee with a wide range of community and arts resources, student accommodation, and part of Lee Valley Estates. Two minutes from Tottenham Hale tube station, Victoria Line, in a fantastic amphitheatre-like location.
There will be arts and community events to launch the Bus at Hale Village in May 2014.
Email [email protected] and get involved.
See Sokari Douglas Camp’s current major work ‘All The World is Now Richer’, opening in St Paul’s Cathedral this weekend, after a long national tour.
