The concept is essentially meaningless, having been invented by a former geography teacher from South Oxfordshire, indeed no other National Park Cities exist. But the Mayor has been impressed enough to sign up to its principles in an attempt to boost his green credentials, and has decreed this week to be a National Park City Festival. I'm wildly sceptical, but went out to visit a few events anyway.
This one's a joint event between Waltham Forest and the National Park City Festival, indeed it's really a London Borough of Culture event reappropriated because it happens to fall in the right week. It's also located right on the very fringe of the capital, deep in Epping Forest only a few steps from the Essex border, so you won't be dropping in by accident. Head to Chingford and look for the twin flags by the Hunting Lodge, then yomp across Chingford Plain to the edge of the forest, then follow the signs into the trees.
Here I met the project's co-curator eager to explain all. It's important to chat to someone before you go any further else all you're going to hear is some music in the woods. What we did here, said Kirsteen, is analyse the wildlife across the project space and then commission local musicians to write themes for each. See that small weather station in the undergrowth? That's what triggers various sounds to be played as conditions change, so you might hear a high flute for a bird of prey in the rain or a very different sound representing ground-based creatures just before dusk. It was quite spooky here last night. You've come at a good time.
A single clearing has been staked out with hidden speakers, so don't wander too far off because there's nothing behind the hornbeams. Depending on atmospheric conditions you could hear strings playing behind you, pulsing percussion low on the ground or a woodwind theme high in the branches... or at lively times a combination of each. You'll have no idea which animal each theme is meant to represent, but you can have fun wrongly guessing. It's not always as musical as this captured segment suggests...
Because the school holidays are underway my visit was also 'enhanced' by numerous young humans brought to the forest by their arty parents. One child strode around the clearing trying to spot the loudspeakers and shouting "look here!" whenever he found one. Another no older than six repeatedly stomped up and down singing into a plastic microphone as if she were auditioning for The X Factor. Two toddlers shrieked when Bella the labrador arrived off leash, then screamed louder when she bounded onto their picnic tablecloth while her baffled owner looked on. But you won't get any of that. The Living Symphonies experience is always different, and a trip to Epping Forest is always a treat.
Another thing the National Park City Festival let you do last weekend was go up things and stand on top of them. The rationale behind this freedom of access was to enjoy their green roofs, showcasing what can be done to boost wildlife even in the heart of the city. But I was simply happy to have the opportunity to go up things, and the view was invariably more impressive than the handful of flowerbeds.
Number One Poultry is the striking 1990s structure which faces the road junction at Bank, its roof occupied by a restaurant normally the preserve of the financial elite. You could sense they weren't entirely happy at the hoi polloi arriving randomly from the street and making their way round the vine-spangled pergola to the open deck. Its grass was fake, its topiary understated and one of the waiting staff politely barked at me when I unknowingly stepped off limits. The correct target was the 'prow' of the building where two wooden platforms extend out above the street, some of the regulars with champagne flutes, the rest of us with cameras pointed at the jagged skyline. I left impressed and belittled.
The White Collar Building rises beside what used to be the Old Street roundabout. It's barely a year old, with a downstairs lobby that better resembles a timber-clad cafe than an office reception. The lift took Festivallers to the 16th floor, where a 145m running track runs round the outside of the building, but our target was the small cafe-side roof terrace on the 17th. This provided a magnificent vantage point to observe various City clusters, with the Shard rising beyond the greensward of the Honourable Artillery Company Grounds, and St Paul's and the London Eye visible in the gaps between the Barbican's three residential towers. Numerous lenses fixated on the panorama. If there were any National Park City reasons for being up here, they have slipped my mind.
My third and final roof was just off Carnaby Street, through an anonymous entrance between restaurants, nodded through by weekend security and up a few floors in the lift. This roof had some proper planting, including ox-eye daisies, alliums and lavender, and a less dramatic skyline because Westminster council believes in reining in building heights. It'd be great if all employees had somewhere like this to pop up to at lunchtime... but a few planters on a handful of rooftops do not a National Park City make.
