Trap Street

Trap Street / 2008-2015

Trap Street is a game designed to be played slowly over the course of an evening, with players adding to a collaborative artwork.

Historically a “trap street” is an invented street placed on a map so that the mapmakers can catch plagiarists. In this game, players slowly add to a map of their locality - with everyone adding one true thing and one invention, trying their best to make the true things sound unlikely and the lies sound like they might be true. Players also place green and red stickers next to other people’s additions to the map - red near the things they think are lies, green by the ones they think are true.

Over the course of the evening, then, the players collaboratively transform an empty map into another something filled with history, local stories, lies and inventions.

Trap Street showed originally at a Hide&Seek Sandpit in 2008, and toured with the Sandpit to ten UK cities, as well as showing at one-off events in London. The version shown in these pictures was built by Gary Campbell.