AiR stayed for four years in Kings Cross during the construction of the new estate, testing alternatives to contemporary conditions of privatised public space and of neighbouring with the communities of the Cally, Somers Town, and Maiden Lane.

Our Kings Cross interventions included ten Unannounced Acts of Publicness artworks which appeared unannounced over a month in Granary Square, the audience anyone present who encountered the works as part of everyday life; Neighbouring shared local knowledge through walks, screenings, performances, and conversation; Cally Calls paired seven local people with seven artists to explore the Cally concluding through an exhibition in a disused hairdresser; Kings Cross Walking Club walked every Thursday lunchtime for a year, connecting across and through this place, tracking the seasons and neighbourhood change.

These works challenged the emerging dominance of programmed spectacle and were a testing, amongst other things, of the amplitude of trust, invitation, and conversation. They introduced elements of the unexpected, the reflective, the local, the communicative and the fleeting, whilst drawing attention to the invisible, the overlooked, and the ignored. 

Our Kings Cross Field Map contextualised the KX estate as a moment in time within the long trajectory of urban change, and positioned artists at the centre of deepening sense of place.

Repeated return establishes an on-going conversation with Kings Cross, including through The Dazzle Club and teaching projects with Central Saint Martins.

In Kings Cross we were hosted by Central Saint Martins through HEIF funding. Thank you to Team Cally, Somers Town Community Association, Argent, CYP, Copenhagen Primary School, CreativeWorks, KEIR Construction, Kings Cross Estates Services, Skip Garden, and SENSE. AiR artists here were Dean Kenning, Margot Bannerman, Leo Chadburn, Siobhan Davies, Shaun Doyle, Georgia Gendall, Anna Hart, Dean Kenning, Matt Lewis, Ruth Maclennan, Mally Mallinson, Hassen Rasool, Jo Scandrett, Alex Schady, Frances Scott, Matthias Sperling, Kate Owens, Becky Shaw, Giles Bailey, John Costi, Ruth Ewan, Magda Fabianczyk, Lee Milne, Jake Charles Rees, Sam Blunden, Tilly Fowler, Anna Hart.