‘I wanted a group dance we could do, and everybody knows the Macarena’

Banner Road, Bristol

Jesse Meadows organised the Banner Road disco with her housemates. Photograph: Joel Redman/The Guardian

Some put out bunting, others brought out a mirrorball, many dressed up. Banner Road’s second street disco, held on a sunny weekend in Bristol, brought people out to dance and chat (all spaced by social distance markers painted on the road) and eventually join in the Macarena together.

“I was thinking of a group dance we could do and everyone knows the Macarena,” says Jesse Meadows, one of the organisers, along with her three housemates. An actor, Meadows has lived on the street for six years and has been a driving force behind its community feel. A few years ago, keen to meet more neighbours, she organised a street drink. Last month, she helped set up a support group; one neighbour printed flyers, another delivered them, and their WhatsApp group now has more than 70 members who can ask for help with anything from shopping to collecting prescriptions. Meadows currently shops for a woman she has never met, leaving her groceries outside her front door. Neighbours have been sharing seeds; one resident left Easter eggs on doorsteps for the children. Before the one-hour street disco, residents from the whole street took part in a clean-up.

Nola and Ava watching the disco, above left; Jen Law painting social distancing markers on the road. Photographs: Joel Redman/The Guardian

Above: residents at the Banner Road disco. Below: Lily Griffiths, who left her house for the first time in 30 days. Photographs: Joel Redman/The Guardian

Nurse Maya Vaitilingam has lived on Banner Road for 21 years, and the Easter weekend disco was a godsend. She is currently unable to work, while she looks after her disabled daughter. “She has not been at school or had any respite for nearly a month now, so for me to feel I have support from the local community is great,” Vaitilingam says. “The ability to get together and have a chat at a distance… everyone is really conscious of protecting the vulnerable.” The street disco has become something for her daughter to look forward to. “She is non-verbal, but she really enjoys music. So for her to be outside and have a bit of a dance is lovely.”

Lily Griffiths is in her mid-60s and has left her house for the first time in 30 days, to stand outside her front door and join the party. “Lots of people on the street are young, maybe 80%,” she says, adding that it has been rewarding getting to know them. There have been other street events since lockdown; one recent Saturday, people came out of their houses to sing Happy Birthday to a neighbour.

Most of the terrace houses on Banner Road have steps leading up to the front door and people have taken to sitting on them and chatting to neighbours passing by. “Hopefully, when this is all over, this sense of community will remain,” Meadows says. “And this time, we can do things in close proximity.”

‘Everybody used to mind their own business. Now we all say hello’

Evering Road, Hackney, London

Hasam, who has lived on Evering Road for 35 years. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian

“Our worlds have shrunk and our street has become our world,” says photographer Christian Sinibaldi, who works regularly for the Guardian, and shot Pope Francis for Weekend magazine. Last month he started taking portraits of the people who live on his road, having found the idea of lockdown difficult at first; he was used to travelling and meeting people for work. But if he couldn’t go anywhere, he could at least turn his attention to what was happening outside his front door.

For the past eight years Sinibaldi has lived on Evering Road in Hackney, east London, a long residential street which links the rapidly-gentrifying Clapton at one end and the more affluent Stoke Newington at the other. An attractive, leafy stretch with a mix of Victorian houses, mostly converted, and small blocks of flats, it also has a notorious past: Reggie Kray murdered Jack McVitie here in 1967.

Sinibaldi says he stopped to talk to anybody who was outside their house. “One morning I walked out and started seeing all these people at home. You can see the traces of people’s lives [through their] windows.” Some tended to their front gardens, like Hasam, who is originally from Cyprus but has lived on the road for 35 years; his lush garden features the street’s biggest fig tree. “I photographed everybody where I met them and how I met them,” Sinibaldi says, explaining why people are casually dressed, some still in their pyjamas. He photographed Mohammed, who cleans the street, and Zeynep, who delivers the post. She knows the street well, of course, and introduced Sinibaldi to Helena, who has lived here for 25 years (she always gives Zeynep a mint when she sees her).

Above left: Karen and Vicky decided to join forces, swapping keys, removing their fence and cooking together. Above right: Joyce, who has lived on Evering road for 50 years. Photographs: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian

Kelly, above left, is staying positive, while her daughter Aaliya is finding lockdown ‘boring, just boring’. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian

Above left: Helena is originally from Antigua and has been living on Evering Road for 25 years. Above right: Rebecca is due to give birth during lockdown. Photographs: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian

So far Sinibaldi has photographed around 35 households, with plans to shoot many more, posting them on Instagram (@everingroad). Before lockdown, he knew four or five people on Evering Road; now, he’s met around 100. While there has been a large influx of younger people, he was interested in the residents who were here long before the coffee shops and pop-up art galleries. Joyce has lived on the road for 50 years and is close to her neighbour, Helena. Desmond has lived in the area for 63 years, and told Sinibaldi he is “simply missing the freedom to walk around. We don’t think about freedom, in the same way we don’t think about our feet until we are unable to walk.”

Taking these photographs has changed his relationship with his street, Sinibaldi says. It’s one thing to walk down it on the way to somewhere else, “it’s another to ‘observe’ it. I’ve made a lot of new friends, and been promised lots of barbecues and beers when we’re all allowed to meet up in the future. London, generally, is a fairly individualistic place and everybody minds their own business. Now, when I walk up and down, people say hello all the time.”

‘We can hear people singing in other streets, every Friday, 6.30pm’

Northumberland Street, Cardiff

Singer-songwriter Al Lewis leads a rendition of All You Need Is Love. Photograph: Francesca Jones/The Guardian

It was Al Lewis’s turn to lead the Friday-night singalong, and the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love was the song that got sung the loudest. “Because of the sentiment,” he says. “And that was the last one, so everyone had loosened up and their inhibitions had gone.”

Organised by Eoghan Walsh, a primary school teacher who has lived on this pretty row of bay-fronted terrace houses for three years, it was Northumberland Street’s third singalong. Walsh is a member of a Facebook group set up for the wider Canton area in west Cardiff, where someone had suggested communal singing as a way to lift the spirits during lockdown. They asked Walsh to take care of it, “because they know I’m not shy. We saw song being used in Italy in the bad times, and I know that this whole thing has really brought us together. People aren’t getting out. But they know that on a Friday at 6.30pm, they’re going to come out and see smiling faces.”

Above left: Hannah and Eoghan Walsh, who organised the singalongs. Above right: Manon Evans, Eva Trier and Greg Caine. Below: Lynne Williams and Gryff Rhys Bones. Photograph: Francesca Jones/The Guardian

The Canton Community Singers Facebook group has since grown, and Walsh hopes other streets will join them. This week, Lewis, a singer-songwriter, chose Valerie by the Zutons, Delilah by Tom Jones, and the Beatles’ classic. “You try and choose songs that everyone will know,” he says. “We had lots of people come out of their front doors, or at their windows. The sound bounces off the houses.” One resident joined him on a kazoo.

Adrienne Earls, who runs a charity matching volunteers with different projects, has lived on the street for nine years. Until last month, she knew only her next-door neighbours and a couple of other people; now she is part of the street’s WhatsApp group, set up since the lockdown to offer support to anyone who needs it. (There are other street-based initiatives, including one woman who collects weekly donations for the local food bank.)

Earls’ two-year-old son has chronic lung issues, which means she and her husband decided to self-isolate early. The WhatsApp group has brought them a joyful sense of community, “and the security of knowing, because we’re both non-drivers, that if anything was to happen to our son, there are lots of people on the street who could help”. Another resident, Lynne Williams, who is in her 70s and self-isolating with her dog Gryff Rhys Bones, hasn’t needed help yet. “But I know that if I was ill, Gryff would get his walk. It’s a security blanket.” She also loves the weekly singalong. “Delilah was a brilliant choice, it’s just so outrageous. It’s a bit of much-needed fun right now.”

Friday night, Earls says, “is the highlight of my week. Singing with people connects you – the smile you can see on everyone’s faces. People really look forward to it and the numbers grow every week. We can hear people in other streets singing as well. It just makes you feel a bit more united.”

‘We should remind ourselves to keep this going in normal times’

Kingsmead Road, Streatham, London

Rob, left, and Barny, two of the DJs at Kingsmead Road’s Sunday morning disco. Photograph: Orlando Gili/The Guardian

There is bunting strung between the houses of the two men who take it in turns to DJ at the street disco held every Sunday morning on Kingsmead Road in south London. It is already a road with an active community spirit: there have been annual street parties since 2012. Once the country went into lockdown, one resident, Sonia, coordinated the delivery of flyers to every house, offering support to people. Those with gardens have been cutting flowers and leaving them on the doorsteps of neighbours who live in flats. Others have been sharing the bread they’ve baked, or swapping plants. People have been decluttering and recycling things to other households. One man, Parin, who lives in a neighbouring street, has been running a popular curry-cooking club on Google hangouts. And now there is the Sunday-morning disco.

“I think there are a lot of good things coming out of what is a very difficult time,” says Rob Cockburn, a lawyer and one of the DJs behind the event. “There’s no reason why we should only have this strength of community in adverse times. We should remind ourselves to keep this going.”

People observe social distancing but come out in the street to dance, or just sway by their front gates. “Rob normally puts on a costume,” says Simon Lycett, who runs an event floristry company. “Some of the kids will get their coloured chalks out and scribble on the pavement, and people will jig around in the street.”

Above: Charlie and Idris enjoy the music. Below: Rob and Barny with their families. Photographs: Orlando Gili/The Guardian

Above left: Parin, who has been running a curry-cooking club, with Sadie and their children Eliza and Amy. Above right: Simon and Nick. Photographs: Orlando Gili/The Guardian

Clare Timmins, a civil servant, has lived on the street for 15 years. She is a single mother to two children, and a rescue bulldog. She lives with several chronic health conditions and recently spent 10 weeks in hospital, before being discharged into the lockdown, so needs to shield herself. Timmins kept in contact with her neighbours through the street WhatsApp group while she was in hospital. “It was wonderful to know that I was coming back to this street with people who cared for each other,” she says. As we talk, a neighbour comes by to drop off a roast chicken.

This week it was the turn of Barny North, who works in digital media and has lived on the street for nine years, to DJ. He says he spent a lot of the week thinking about his playlist. “It’s very eclectic. A bit of pop. Mostly jazz, a bit of RnB, a bit of reggae.” His final track was Nina Simone’s Feeling Good.

North’s neighbour Andrea Mulligan says Barny and Rob have mastered the art of DJing for a motley lockdown crowd. “In this time of not being physically close to people, you are enjoying a moment at the same time. We come to our gates and give people a wave and just enjoy the music. It’s a nice moment of unity.”

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