LINKED – an audio trail
Commissioned by the Museum of London and launched in 2003, LINKED is a radio installation by Graeme Miller installed on lampposts across 3 miles of East London. It is an artistic response to the creation of the M11 Link Road in East London in the 1990s which involved the demolition of over 400 buildings, including Graeme’s own home, amid dramatic and passionate protest. In this its 20th anniversary year, LINKED is being fully technically restored and made available again to the public as an audio trail.
LINKED has endured as perhaps the largest sonic installation and sculptural entity in London for 20 years. Since 2003 its transmitters have broadcast over a million times the voices of people who lived or worked in the area impacted by the road.
Along a route between Hackney Marshes and Redbridge Roundabout, analogue radio transmitters reveal the voices and stories of 60+ people who once lived and worked in the area – families, road protestors, railway-workers, teachers, disco-goers, and artists from the substantial community living in houses destroyed by the road, among them Cornelia Parker, John Smith, Christine Binnie and Ian Bourn. Together the assembly of voices evokes a fascinating and moving cross-section of ordinary East London life.
To join the audio trail, you can borrow a small radio receiver, headphones & map from our base at Wanstead Library. Please note that the walk is unaccompanied. We can offer guidance on short and longer routes at the pick-up point, which is hosted throughout the open days.