Ping-pong pops up in East End to help commuters hit by London Underground strike

Ping Pong table at 2014 Lovebox Fest (Image: Sing London PR)

Anyone can have a free slam with the launch of this-year’s ‘Ping! London’ project, the sixth annual street ping-pong project by Sing London arts organisation.

Tables are popping up until July 31 at landmarks including Old Truman’s Brewery in Brick Lane, Poplar’s Chrisp Street Market, Canary Wharf, Cable Street, Mudchute City Farm and the Museum of Childhood.

Shoppers and frustrated Tube passengers can drop whatever they’re doing and just have a pop at table near you—to liven up the day while the Underground has ground to a halt. Just borrow a bat from the side of the table and play ball!

The festival also offers master-classes, tournaments and even “random acts of ping-pong” as well as a ping-pong party at St Hilda’s East Community Centre in Club Row on July 22.

Ping! London is run by Sing London arts organization which previously brought pianos and talkie statues to the streets of London.

“A ping-pong table is a small intervention,” Sing London’s Colette Hiller says. “But it’s amazing how much fun it can generate.”

Whatever the name—ping-pong, whiff-whaff, table-tennis or flim-flam—it began as an English parlour game in the 1890s, played on a dining room table with a book as the original bat!

Tables are being set up from 12 noon to 2pm near Old Truman’s Brewery in Brick Lane, by the ‘Battle of Cable Street’ mural in Shadwell’s St George’s Gardens, in Poplar’s Chrisp Street Market, at Canary Wharf’s Jubilee Place and West Wintergarden, in Mudchute Farm on the Isle of Dogs, at Blackwall’s Trinity Buoy Wharf, in the Bromley-by-Bow Centre and at three spots in Bethnal Green—Museum of Childhood in Cambridge Heath Road, St Hilda’s East centre in Club Row and Weavers Fields in Vallance Road.