When dominoes dominated the city of Norwich...

Three Goodgymers; Jonathan, Andy and Elizabeth were to join a nearly two hundred strong group of volunteers to help build a line of breeze block dominoes through the City of Norwich in what would be an incredible opening day for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. Prior to this though, volunteers needed to attend one of two training sessions.

This consisted of introductions by the artistic director, production manager, volunteer co-ordinators, and a surprisingly fun Health & Safety briefing.

An early highlight of the training session was to be when a Goodgymer's phone randomly and hilariously started broadcasting a GPS route loudly mid presentation. Despite leaving the building to resolve the phone issue, the strong female GPS voice only seemed to get louder and echo further through the whole room from the main entrance further disrupting the speech and prompting a few mixed reactions from the rest of the volunteers!

An exciting video was then later shared to the volunteers via two flat telvision screens showing an electric domino route through the city of Madrid, showing us a glimpse of the potential energy and excitment awaiting us in three days.

We were then briefed on how to handle the dominoes, which were to be reasonbly light, contruction breeze blocks and how to use wooden chocks of different width to help balance them on the uneven street of Norwich. Following this, and having finished the free tea/coffee provided, volunteers were divided into groups of three to gather outside to practice the carrying and placing of domino blocks in varying sweeping lines and tight bends to anticipate the upcoming difficult routes and ground levels to be faced on the streets of Norwich!

Arriving back three days later for the main day, bringing minimal belongings and wearing comfortable clothing to suit dusty breeze block transportation, volunteers arrived at 10:30am at St Mary's works to pick up t-shirts, lunch and be desigated into the many sections along the route in groups of around 7.

With briefings complete, and havng been designated into section 3 (near the beginning of the route), my group headed off at 12pm to meet with our section manager at the beutiful location of Doughty Hospital ready to start unpacking breeze blocks and place the string (with ready made spacing gaps painted) along the route. Five hot and sunny hours later, and having had two food breaks and a cheeky walk along the whole route through to the finish at the Forum library, things started to heat up and an energy in the air started to be felt. Expert domino builders joined us to help with the cross over loop sections as well as building bridges to cross through a building's window. We then were given a thirty minute window for a road closure to help link our section to the next, section (4). This proved awkward, especially being near a well used footpath and car park and one or two confused people.

With three minutes to go, the wind started to pick up and having placed all dominoes up (some were placed horizontally along the route until last minute to prevent long length knock downs) a whole stretch was knocked down dramatically on the grass loop section. in a great moment of solidarity, members of the public, helped to place the dominoes back up, whilst also trying to keep an eye on the rest still standing to prevent further fall downs!

With seconds to spare, and all blocks standing the fall began at Anglia Square just after 6pm and shortly flowed through our section as floods of people, who had followed from the start engulfed our area and swifly moved onto the next as the route flowed through the whole city.

And just like that it was over! Although now it was time to clean and pack up the broken as well as still intact blocks back on to pallets which in many ways proved to be the much harder part of the day, especially when two 13 stack high, already stacked pallets had to be later re-stacked which added another hour and seemed to take the last bits of energy out that the group had left. This led to many of our section sadly being too tired to attend the after event in Chapelfield Gardens for drinks, pizza and the final video showing the whole route.

This led to only two from our section with enough energy left to attend the after event and share our experiences with the other sections, listen to the thanks from the event staff and revel in the great energy and atmopshere as we watched the whole route shown to us on two big screens as the sun set in the city centre on what was certainly a day to remember.