Street Piano Liberation Front

Street Piano 2
How does social networking in digital space become civic participation? Maybe the story of the Sharrow street piano can illustrate this. It begins like this. Ruth, on her way back here from meeting with friends spots the street piano and thinks that I may be interested in it. She forgets to tell me about it, but emails me when she’s back in London. I go down and photograph it and post it on my blog here. A few days later Merrony’s Moll leaves a message on my Flickr stream saying how she’d been to photograph the piano only to find that the messages have been removed. I visit Moll’s blog, find out some more and follow the link to www.streetpianos.org. Here I read the full story and also the connection with Indymedia here and here and find out that the Council is threatening to remove the piano, there’s an online petition, and so on. Mainstream media get the story and then Jackie hears it on BBC Radio 4 – a reporter rings up a local councilor who is now quite sympathetic to the whole street piano thing!!! The Street Piano Liberation Front has brought about a minor coup. The local independent production company, VeryMuchSo Productions, are making a documentary about the piano and its place in the local community. It looks like it may remain (bloggers may chain themselves to the piano, if necessary) who knows….watch this space!