Townley and Bradby

The Bowthorpe Experiment was a mobile think-tank, a free-wheeling utopia, a bike ride to the future. A collaboration between Townley and Bradby, Magnificent Revolution, and Jonathan P Watts, it took place on the evenings of Friday 13th, Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th May 2011 and was part of The Norfolk and Norwich Festival.

The tour travelled from the city centre out to Bowthorpe, a development on the western edge of Norwich. In Bowthorpe there are safe cycle routes separate from the motor traffic and going straight to where you need to go, while traffic is sent the long way round. In Bowthorpe there is Council housing built next to private housing built next to housing association properties. In Bowthorpe the parks are plentiful. En route to Bowthorpe, the tour used music and stirring speeches to imagine the future as it might be if the benefits enjoyed in Bowthorpe were rolled out across the rest of the city.

Arriving in Bowthorpe itself, the members of Magnificent Revolution who’d accompanied the tour unpacked and set up their bike-powered cinema system from two bike trailers. The final act of visioning was to project a short prophetic film onto the gable end of a supermarket.