Taking 10×10 to Colchester was a really positive experience for me. There was a great turnout with over seventy exchanges made in all and I had a lot of animated conversations with people who seemed genuinely interested in 10×10 and its history. In fact, I hardly stopped talking throughout the entire 5 hour exchange!
I was in very good hands from the outset, of course – the Hunt & Darton Cafe having been such a positive force in the town before I arrived. I was lucky to be invited into the midst of this upbeat atmosphere, where there was a real sense that something fun & exciting was happening. This positivity spilled over into the people who interacted with the 10×10 cabinet.
There was a real buzz when I arrived last Saturday morning to remove the perspex from the cabinet and I’m grateful to the generous Hunt & Darton team who had encouraged a good crowd to come along and take part in the exchange. An article about 10×10 in the local paper, together with the ever-helpful Anthony Roberts (Director of Colchester Arts Centre)’s mailing list and some much appreciated retweets on Twitter, all contributed to getting people along to participate.
People, after all, are what make the project happen. And people from all walks of life came along – from young children and teenagers, through to the elderly.
And if so much of what happens around 10×10 – the conversations and the exchanges – can be considered ‘a comment on humanity’ then I think the event in Colchester showed humanity as pretty colourful and diverse. A whole manner of objects were brought along to be exchanged and the way that people interacted varied greatly. Some people really wanted to communicate and were keen to tell the story attached to their object, others chose to say nothing, and on the surface at least, simply made straightforward swaps.
One person on arrival told me of her decision to leave something ‘nice’ in the cabinet and only to take something that she considered to be throwaway. In the event, she left an amazing hotdog brooch and took away a business card – a sweet gesture which echoed another act of generosity, when someone left an onyx vase that he had bought in China as a memento of proposing to his girlfriend while on holiday there. In exchange, all he took was a cheap pen. I was really pleased to see one of the (to my mind!) surplus supply of pens taken away – quite a number have been left in the cabinet over a period of time and, whilst one or two have been well thought-out exchanges with stories attached, I can’t help but feel pleased to see them go.
One of the most interesting moments for me was when someone decided to Google to find out the monetary value of two South Korean coins which had been exchanged and left in the cabinet earlier in the day. On discovering that they were only worth 36p, they decided to take something else instead. It was a classic example to me of the issue of value and worth, a theme that is at the heart of the 10×10 project.
There were some lovely moments during Saturday’s exchange, some interesting objects left, and there are plenty of stories and photos still to share. The cabinet changed a lot in its appearance as the day progressed and I will add the photos and document the changes in due course. Huge thanks must go to my partner Pete for his patient and thorough documentation of the exchanges. I really couldn’t keep such an accurate record of the day’s exchanges without him and this project certainly wouldn’t be alive without his amazing generosity and enthusiasm for helping.
Many thanks again to the fantastic people of Colchester who came along to participate so positively – Jude, Rose, Ally, Dolly, Rosie & Alice, Amy, Gina, Jak, Alan, David to name but a few – and also to Jenny, Holly, Jess, Gemma and the rest of the Hunt & Darton Cafe team, as well as Anthony at Colchester Arts Centre and Charlotte and the other staff at Firstsite – for inviting the 10×10 project in and making me feel so welcome.
