Community and neighbourhoods
TWS sets out the aim on its website of making cities feel more like neighbourhoods. If we take Benedict Anderson’s argument that national communities are “imagined as limited” (Anderson, 2006, p. 7), and slightly reformulate it within this context, we can argue that the borders we place around London and its neighbourhoods are imagined in the sense that they are our interpretations of cartography and community. There is no physical boundary preventing one from indeed imagining London as one large neighbourhood, yet of course the feeling remains that the city is indeed divided into various areas, and the question this raises in relation to TWS is to what extent do teatimes abide by or restructure London’s neighbourhoods and communities.
My informants all stated that the location of a TWS teatime would affect their attendance. I mapped the routes from the informants’ neighbourhoods and my own home to our first TWS teatime at Picturehouse Central and found that we arrived from areas separated by quite some distance – apart from Chi and I, who live reasonably close together. On the left is a map showing our routes and below an estimation of travel time through the google maps app.
|
|
However, does this constitute breaking down barriers between neighbourhoods? Jen sent me a map of the favoured or recommended locations of the cafes from which hosts often pick their teatime locations and what is immediately noticeable is the thick cluster of cafes around East London. This preference for East London and specifically the areas around Shoreditch and Hoxton was corroborated by the fact the first ever TWS facebook event also took place here, at The Canvas Café, near Brick Lane. Samar in her Vlog and at our first meeting pointed to TWS’ apparent preference for these types of “hipster” establishments. In this sense, what TWS perhaps achieves is pulling people together from other neighbourhoods or building a specific community of people at these East London venues.
|
I utilised NVivo to analyse the words which spring up most often on the TWS “home” and “about” pages. Among the most prominent were “people”, “neighbourhoods”, “together”, “conversation” and “community”. Rather than making the city feel more like a large neighbourhood, TWS has crafted its own shifting digital neighbourhood, it has successfully formed its own community, anchored at locations around the city and most prominently in East London. As my informants noted and as I observed at the two TWS events which I attended, the primary attendees at TWS teatimes are cosmopolitan-minded and/or internationals.
|
This is reflected in the community of hosts. Of those featured on the TWS London site, 9 out of 10 describe having lived in or originating from countries outside of the UK. The hosts are an extremely diverse community of cultures and nationalities, which is reflected in the attendees. I immediately felt at home in this environment and community, which through its diverse representation of cultures and ideas was very similar to the student body at a London university such as UCL. Of course, London itself is an incredibly diverse and international city, so perhaps it is no surprise that this is reflected within the TWS community.
|