Learning

Annetta Pedretti originally intended to use 25 Princelet Street for a self-organised cybernetics conference. Although this never took place, throughout the years the building was a learning project: Annetta rebuilt all the windows, relaid the floors, and made an experimental structure in the back garden. She also learnt through dis-assembling the building: removing the layers which had been added over the years, exposing the structure of the building and the charred timber in the hallway. Annetta sometimes described 25 Princelet Street as “The Re-Making of a Piece of English Heritage”, and the project was a deliberate study of layers of time, as well as construction techniques. 

☯︎ Learning How to Learn

Learning How to Learn is a phrase that Annetta used to describe her practical and philosophical relationship to practicing new skills: reflecting the conditions that are needed for learning to take place. As well as practical skills in building repair, Annetta’s relationship to making fostered reflections on urban regeneration, labour supply chains, the role of drawings, local decision-making. 

☯︎ Systems RIP

We run a yearly participant-lead action research programme, Systems RIP. Systems must end, and be transformed - but also RIP stands for learning through doing, Research In Practice.

2023▸ 75 participants, working across Food, Urban, Energy, Land, and Body systems using dance, listening, film screenings, spinning wool.
2024▸ 40 participants, meeting weekly over the course of 6 weeks. Groups focused on Housing Coops, living in precarious conditions, peer-to-peer care, mental health, decolonial relationships to land, the role of art in activism, and sharing knowledge between campaign and organising groups.
2025▸ We will be focusing on a smaller cohort of 20 participants, exploring our four principles: ecology, time, power and knowledge.

☯︎ Perpetual Stew

Generated by participants from SYSTEMS RIP 2023, Perpetual Stew is a week-long festival of spatial justice and knowledge justice in and around House of Annetta. Each night is accompanied by a big pot of stew, filled with ingredients and ideas brought by guests.

2023▸ Landlocked Exhibition featuring artworks responding to hostile architecture, migration, queer bodies and trespass.
Tuesday 29th: Stew + storytelling - with Saif, Taha and Alanna exploring cockney language, cultural thickness and morris dancing. 
Wednesday 30th: Plural Paths through Spitalfields - neighbourhood walks exploring black histories, alternative community masterplans, and food sovereignty
Thursday 31st: The state of/ the state in London - skill-share and discussion about urban enclosure, with homelessness solidarity group Streets Kitchen and Autonomous Winter Shelter.
Friday 1st: Trespass with right to roam - a collective walk to the Royal Geographical Society Conference, exploring the boundaries around academic knowledge production 
Launch of ab__ solidarity action research network

2024▸ Museum of Enclosure Exhibition: featuring the first collection of works for this itinerant project exploring ways of representing and understanding lived experiences of land privatisation. 
Tuesday 29th October: Something like housing-care-movementbuilding-damp-mould-shelter but better - an evening sharing around homelessness, resident resistance, and research.
Wednesday 30th October: Community Organising and Anti-fascism - neighbourhood walks by Suresh Singh and David Rosenberg, sharing testimonies of local organising across decades
Thursday 31st October: International Solidarities - facilitated by Feminist Assembly of Latin Americans (FALA), a night of sharing knowledge with the Nanny Solidarity Network (NSN). 
Friday 1st November: Launch of the Museum of Enclosure

☯︎ Participatory Action Incubator

This year we are testing out an incubator residency for 4 projects who have an ongoing relationship with House of Annetta. We are offering monthly mentorship, weekly desk-space, and open access to evening programming slots. This is a closed process and the incubator projects will be announced in May 2025. 
Annetta rebuilt the windows of the house


Annetta made marquetry panels using wood veneers 
Floor repairs remove as little original wood as possible

 Exhibition poster
Local mapping with London Community Food Growers Network

Knowledge for the People event - sharing information about processes of urban development

☯︎ Learning Through Making

To test out ways of using the space at 25 Princelet Street, we have commissioned repairs and craft projects around the building. All of the projects have involved some learning: through sharing skills via workshops, training apprenticeships, or testing out new techniques. Annetta’s repair work process was a deliberate combination of theoretical and practical learning. This is the model for the longer term refurbishment of the building as an education programme: a mix of heritage craft skills, practical D-I-Y and building maintenance, as well as learning about material ecology, supply chains, care and spatial justice. 

✿ Land In Our Names (LION): Garden scaffolding 
⏍ Imani Qamar: Garden Planters
☡ Monika Kolarz: Handrail
  • ◘ Emma Leslie: Kitchen
  • ✾ Ella Khafaji and Leila Dear: Lampshades
  • ✲ Daisy Moore: Rooflights
  • ﹆Ash, James and Sofia: Second Floor
Front door knocker by Het Thompson.

Fawziah Rahman practicing welding, mending the door.