Built from scratch in just sixteen days to coincide with the opening of The Olympics — based on the developers' belief that the gateway to the Olympic borough should not be an unattractive construction site —, The Movement Café is an explosion of colour and type and sits at the centre of an amphitheatre-like space created from the natural level of the site, post-demolition, 2 metres below street level. It's the result of a public art collaboration between Myerscough and Olympic Poet and prolific tweeter Lemn Sissay. Sissay has been commissioned by Cathedral to write a poem about Greenwich, which will eventually be set permanently into the road that cuts through the site when it is completed. In the short term, the poem, Shipping Good, is painted on the hoarding that wraps the site.
The outdoor amphitheatre seating area provides a contemplative, sheltered place of respite for commuters and visitors to Greenwich and several times a week plays host to storytelling, poetry reading and acoustic performances. All furniture is made by Morag Myerscough and Luke Morgan from reclaimed laboratory tops.
The Movement Café is run by the Greenwich Co-Operative Development Agency, a local not-forprofit organisation that works with disadvantaged communities across London promoting food growing projects, and sells a range of organic, fair-trade, sustainable, locally-sourced food. The Café also has a Pashley ice cream bicycle customised by artist Luke Morgan, selling homemade ice cream.
Morag Myerscough: The Movement Café
Address: Waller Way, Greenwich, London
