A Picture of London

One of the projects that I have pencilled in for the summer is some major writing for IB Geography, including a unit on Urban Environments. As a result I've been collecting a whole range of resources to provide inspiration for some creative tasks...

Last night I had an hour out in the middle of Eurovision to catch this wonderful programme on BBC2.
It was A Picture of London told through the eyes of taxi drivers, crane operators, Big Issue sellers, street cleaners etc. Some wonderful stories and archive films, and the odd John Martin painting...
Also great visualisations of how London might have looked if some of the architects' plans had actually been built...

You should try to catch the programme on iPlayer before it disappears.

From its early years until the present day, London has provided powerful, emotional inspiration to artists.

This documentary evokes the city as seen by painters, photographers, film-makers and writers through the ages; the perspectives of Dickens, Hogarth, Turner, Virginia Wolfe, Monet and Alfred Hitchcock alongside those of contemporary Londoners who tread the streets of the city every day.

All these people have found beauty and inspiration in London's dirt and grime.

Architects and social engineers have strived to organise London, but painters, writers and many more have revelled in its labyrinthine unruliness.

This is the story of a city that tried to impose order on its streets, but actually discovered time after time that its true character lay in an unplanned, chaotic nature.