OK, this was only the Cutty Sark last year, but it could have been the minesweeper!

View towards the Laban over the damaged stern.

The Mindsweeper

From the website, blog.minesweeper.tv:
The Mindsweeper is a project to renovate, equip and maintain a 110 foot wooden vessel moored in Greenwich as a floating and potentially mobile community creative space. The ethos of the project is to provide facilitate and promote cultural, creative and ecological events and projects in the Deptford and Greenwich area with the broadest possible community inclusion.

The Mindsweeper was built in Poole for the Royal Navy after World War II (completed in 1954) and did service on the Suez Canal. It is entirely wooden and is an excellent and rare surviving example of triple-carvel construction shipbuilding. It was subsequently decommissioned, passed around; lost its bridge and upper structure in a storm; was stripped of most of its remaining fittings - wiring, plumbing and copper sheath - and abandoned on the Greenwich Reach of the Thames, where it suffered considerable rain damage (rain in cities is acidic and very bad for wood.)

The vessel was salvaged in 1999 by a group of friends who saw it had possibilities as a venue, and got together to invest their time and money in it. The vessel was renamed The Mindsweeper, and moved to its present location on Deptford Creek The front deck was plied over - to prevent further rain damage - and the main upper-deck/venue-space was constructed of steel and glass and roofed over. The rear deck was temporarily roofed over, but suffered further damage during a fire in September 2007.
In 2008, The Mindsweeper was accepted onto the Registry of Historic Ships as a vessel of historical significance to the nation.

For the past ten years The Mindsweeper has been allowed to moor on the Greenwich side of Deptford Creek on a council wharf leased by Brookmarsh Industrial Estate (workshops, car repair and M.O.T. garages,) and opposite the Laban Dance Centre.


FIRE IN THE HOLD II
* 6pm doors open
* 6.30pm premiere of Deptford.TV docs
* 8pm Ampersand.TV performance
* 9.30pm Openlab performance: livecoding / homebrew software + electronics / video remixing / noise club beats

Ampersand.TV: South London based Ampersand are a fivepiece that use recycled and found objects to produce sonic sculptures from random noise. Their setup features the inside of pianos, shell casings, corrugated iron, scaffold and brass pipes. All sounds mesh together creating multifaceted timbral music. For more information visit http://www.ampersand.tv

Openlab: OpenLab collective builds on what is now an increasingly blurred line between artists and software developers. The broad expansion of the Internet and the democratization of computers have left audiences more than ever confronted with new, hybrid software conceived by a blend of artists and programmers. As intellectual property is a fiercely debated issue, some people cling on to their little bits of territory, while others choose to share knowledge, art and collective work. This event will be a platform for OpenLabs’ digital artists, musicians and programmers, to present their collaborative works.

Deptford.TV is a collaborative video project documenting South/East London see http://deptford.tv These short films are coming out of a Deptford.TV/CUCR collaboration about the eviction of the squatters and businesses on New Cross Road. CUCR is the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths, see http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cucr/

FIRE IN THE HOLD!
Fundraising Spectacular II

Thursday 4th April - 6pm till midnight
The Ivy House
40 Stuart Road
SE15 3BE
entry FREE but of course voluntary donations at the door

Featuring:
premiere of Deptford.TV shorts
Ampersand.TV performance and an openlab headphone concert.
“BRING YOUR OWN HEADPHONES”