Shhh… you’ll have to listen even harder at the moment to hear the artwork whispering to you outside King’s Strand campus because it disappeared yesterday.

I know. I know. It’s infuriating when that happens. In fact, I thought I probably should never post this, too late again, but then I remembered that things in gardens change all the time. Those snowdrops I dragged my partner to see this morning are already nearly over, and besides, this is more than a one-chance to see art project. It’s an idea that I love to have on here, not least so I can think about it often.

The Quiet Enchanting is created by the design studio Superflux and works in collaboration with King’s Culture. Apparently it was devised from conversation with King’s climate and sustainability researchers. The series of digital screens and printed artworks – communicating aptly on the external facade of the old Bush House – is like a fairy tale of what might happen if London transformed with mass disillusionment with the status quo to a collective rewilding of the soul, and the city.

Because isn’t that a fabulous question – just what might happen?

It’s a question that my soul felt richer just considering. And let’s pause a moment to think what a shock it was to find myself being asked about my ‘soul’ in the middle of a busy day in London. It felt almost indecent!

These aren’t questions that ever go past their sell-by date, are they? Which is why I thought it was worth writing this post even if the actual artwork isn’t up any more. At the opening apparently, Beatrice Pembroke, Executive Director of King’s Culture said the commission was meant to ‘create a space for possibility, hope and action.’ The pedestrianised area at Strand Aldwych is now a new ‘craetive thinking quarter’ for King’s students and the public. I love that particularly because some years ago, I led a walk on the Lost Gardens of the Strand for the Chelsea Fringe. I think I might try to share that on here one day because I uncovered so many stories in the research – not least that there was once an elephant who lived at the top, near Exeter Exchange. Sadly Chunee came to a sad end, but for a while he used to take sixpences from visitors with his trunk. Anyway, it felt that the Quiet Enchanting was whispering some of this in my ear.

Yes, it was raining the day I visited but let’s be honest, when hasn’t it recently? Still, what a place to sit and reflect, imagine and renew. It even made me laugh when this van went by because for a moment it looked like it was part of the project too…

Here’s a poem I wrote while sitting there. I wish you could see my notebook and how the raindrops blurred some of the words.

The Quiet Enchanting

Listening out for a lion’s roar

or the sound of elephant footsteps,

I come across a question instead:

         how would we act

         if we loved

                  the earth

                  as much as

         the earth loves us?

Is it the present I’m forced into?

A gift of a moment

when my feet follow my mind

too often into the past.

         What stories

         can we tell

                  to re-enchant

         our world?

Perhaps I’ve been relying on other people

to plant forests among the grey,

to let loose the wild in themselves,

even now I’m tempted to sit on

each empty seat in turn, wait

for strangers to tell me their rainbow of dreams.

         What if

                  we had

                  more time

                           to be?

It’s less a re-wilding

than a dormant seed.

I sit, put down my phone

and even, for a moment, my pen.

I swear I hear oars on the river,

a simpler’s song. I’m hungry

for speculation, naïve

in my belief that the world needs

more storytellers than sellers.

And suddenly next to me, a stag

stares me down, dares me to say

it’s just a myth, whispers

how the earth loves me, bids me

to imagine the possibilities

if only I loved it back.