Scheme: Operation SOS:OK, Bermondsey, south London.

Objective: To bring together residents and employees of the now-closed Peek
Freans Biscuit Factory in Bermondsey to produce an 'emergency biscuit'.
Funding: £5,000 from the Arts Council, £2,500 from the Gulbenkian Foundation
and £4,500 from South-East London Foundation Community Chest scheme.

Staff: Artist Paula Roush, two gallery workers and hundreds of volunteers.
The Peek Freans Biscuit Factory closed in 1970, after producing biscuits
since the 1800s. Lost along with the factory was 'Biscuit Town' - a centre
for community facilities and social activity attached to the employment hub.
In recent years, creative industries have emerged to replace traditional
industry in the area and there are now several artists' studios. The SOS:OK
(Save Our Souls: Zero Killings) project is an attempt by local artist Paula
Roush to explore the history of the building.

The first stage of the project was a week of workshops, designed to bring
together the memories of the people who worked in the factory. "It was the
first occasion they'd had to come together again as a group since the
factory shut," says Roush.

Peek Freans was the first factory to manufacture an emergency biscuit ration
to feed the starving population of Paris during the Franco-German war of
1870-71. So Roush and locals arranged for a bakery to produce a new
'emergency biscuit' and a mock emergency distribution was staged with 400
volunteers pretending to be victims of a terrorist attack.

The former employees also gave the biscuits away to homeless and                   disadvantaged people.
Roush is working to maintain the project by setting up a co-operative to
make and distribute the biscuit. She hopes some could be sold and others
given away to the needy. "The aim is to create a product that could continue
to be manufactured and distributed, and share this project with the former
factory workers," she says.