Linked

18 September 2025

Hidden along the edges of the M11 Link Road is a secret artwork, three miles long and invisible. Over the 22 years it has been there, it has become a secret layer of East London. On Saturday 27 September it will be opened to the public for a day as part of the Wanstead Fringe Festival. Graeme Miller reports

LINKED is a work I opened in 2003. It is a chain of analogue radio transmitters that runs from Hackney Marshes to Redbridge Roundabout broadcasting the voices of the former residents of the 500 or so buildings demolished to make the road. You need a special radio receiver to hear this layer of speech from over 100 people who rebuild these vanished spaces and what happened in them in words.

I lived in one of these houses for a decade where the details of ordinary life met quite extraordinary events and the super-local met the global. Originally the work was commissioned by the Museum of London, and the recordings are now part of their oral history collection, the most visited in the archive I am told, and it has broadcast continuously since it opened. A couple of years ago we began restoring the work as gradually some transmitters failed, or in one case the lamppost it was on was demolished by a lorry. Now, they are nearly all working and you can explore the route at your own pace, following a printed map or Google Maps on a smartphone.

Hearing the voice of lollipop lady Jean Gosling, or tree-resident Green Dave alongside a Tube-driver in his cab, children scrumping and books blowing down the street in a storm, brings past the past to life. It has been a real pleasure to return to the area and put myself between the public and the artwork, hearing stories and connections people have with their locality and its unique resonant history. It is a pleasure to return to the special location of Wanstead Library, and we look forward to meeting new and returning public there.