Mmm, local Bow news:
• The Olympic Marathon's still not coming to Bow, despite much protest. On a similar theme, but much smaller scale, one of London 2012's directors took his team for a jog around Bow last week. Past the Bromley-by-Bow Centre, along Roman Road and around Vicky Park, before returning down the Greenway to Three Mills. And he enjoyed running around Bow so much that he blogged about it, at length. Brilliant local stuff. And yet, in praising the wonderfulness of the area for running, simultaneously incredibly bloody tactless.
• Keen-eyed viewers of Thursday's EastEnders will have spotted the platforms at Walford East making their very first on-screen appearance as Charlie Slater made his farewell from the series. Keen-eared viewers will have heard "The next station is Bow Road", which seemed finally to confirm the long-held understanding that fictional Walford East takes the place of Bromley-by-Bow on the District line. However, even keener-eyed viewers will have been disappointed to spot a Northern line train rolling into the platform. Alas it seems that all the scenes were filmed at East Finchley, umpteen miles away from E3.
• TfL have finally got round to publishing the implementation programme for the installation of Cycle Superhighway 2 between Aldgate and Bow. Worryingly it appears they think they've finished the stretch between Mile End and Bow Road stations (apart from a replacement toucan crossing to be installed next month). Sorry, but if that intermittent unsafe blue strip is supposed to be be finished, then the project's a complete joke. Work from Campbell Road to the Bow Roundabout starts on March 10th (sheesh, for 66 days), and at the roundabout itself on March 29th (for 25). No details of these final two construction packages are yet available, but I hope they're a damned sight more practical than the last attempt.
• DLR users between Bow Church and Stratford should be aware the railway will be shut next weekend, and the Sunday after, and the first two Sundays in March, and the following weekend, and the first Sunday in April, and the following weekend, and the whole of the Easter weekend, and the long May Day bank holiday weekend [full dates]. All of this is "due to Crossrail engineering works", more specifically construction of the Pudding Mill Lane Portal, so expect further regular closures between now and September 2013. In better news, Crossrail works will no longer require the diversion of two sewers in Wick Lane, meaning that Grove Hall Park will no longer need to be hijacked as as a construction site.

The Balfron project

West London's Trellick Tower has a less famous older brother on the other side of the capital. That's the Balfron Tower - a Brutalist 27-storey apartment block, located just north of the Blackwall Tunnel. Both have a similar silhouette, both were designed by Erno Goldfinger, and both are admired from the outside by people who'd probably never dream of living on the inside. The architect himself was an exception. Goldfinger and his wife moved into the Balfron Tower soon after it was built, and spent a couple of months living in flat 130 on the top floor to find out what living here was like.

The latest creative type to move in is Australian artist Simon Terrill. He spends his time visiting communities, gaining their trust and then taking a giant photograph. He's been able to do that here in Poplar courtesy of the Bow Arts Trust, who moved him in as artist in residence and enabled the realisation of his project. The Balfron Project.

The key date: Thursday 18th November 2010. Simon encouraged residents at the tower to be at home around 6pm, then to come out on their balconies (or wherever) for an hour while the event took place. He set up cameras and catering outside, and illuminated the entire front of the building with bright spotlights. Then he stood on a nearby rooftop taking photographs approximately five minutes apart - ten separate images in total. And from these he eventually picked one picture that best represented the people of Balfron and their beguiling building. This single image has now been printed out, on the rather-large side, and forms the culmination of the entire undertaking.

That photograph is currently on view at the Nunnery Studios on Bow Road. This is the public face of the project, for the next three weekends, so that residents (and the rest of us) can drop in and see what they looked like.

The Balfron Project
Gallery Event
06 Jan 2011 - 23 Jan 2011
Opening times: Friday - Sunday: 1 - 5 pm

It's not the most inviting gallery, the Nunnery, from the outside. Hidden up a side alley near Bow Church, rarely signposted to catch passing footfall, and requiring a ring on the doorbell to gain entry. But things are more welcoming within. Three rooms in total, the first with a language-mangled Tower of Babel theme. Someone's had fun jumbling up various literary forms, from email to poetry, although the impenetrability wears a little thin after the first couple of sheets. Other than that, the entire exhibit's text free. If you don't ask the curator, or if you haven't read up in advance, you won't have a clue what's going on.

Next up, rather wonderfully, a timelapse film of the entire recording session viewed from afar. It starts in daylight, with late afternoon rain splotching against the camera until eventually (thankfully) it dries up. Clouds rush past as dusk falls, and the traffic on the A12 transforms into a stream of headlamps. At this scale the residents look really tiny, but some are visible as they wave to the camera, and there's definitely a disco underway in one of the flats on a halfway floor. The hour of official illumination speeds by, then the lightshow fades and the Balfron returns to peaceful night. Throw in a slideshow at the other end of the gallery showing the residents out and about and dressed up on the day, and you get a real flavour of what fun the photoshoot must have been.

Finally, with the third gallery to itself, Simon's photograph. The tower's six foot tall at this scale, easily large enough to pick out what's going on in some of the flats and balconies (yes, definitely a disco). A family group peers out from one of the windows in the liftblock walkways. There's a premature Christmas decoration top left, and three great lights blaring out from the roof. Some of the residents didn't play ball, and their flats are dim, or maybe they belong to the people standing out front at ground level in warm winter woolies. The mural invites close examination, maybe even to reveal "ooh look, that's me!"

Don't come specially from the other side of town - you may take longer walking from Bow Road station than you'll spend inside the gallery. But what a great idea to take a snapshot of a building and its community and to exhibit it with pride. The most unusual fraction of a second in the life of the Balfron, forever captured.