Bournes Bank - Burslem

Back in February B Arts were commissioned as part of the Place, Space and Identity programme to produce a live performance titled 'Clay'. The action began in the school of art but soon moved down in procession to the 'Bournes bank'. This is - well how would I describe it? - it is a large piece of derelict land, not an unfamiliar sight around here. At the bottom of the hill there are some listed bottle kilns and that night I fell in love with the place! To see why check out Liz and Mishka's blog link on the place, space & identity website for the photos - it was so atmospheric and emotional. Actually just click here!!! So anyway rumour has it that a developer bought the land for houses then found that it was too steep an incline to make it worth the bother(financially!!!!!) - that is rumour so don't quote me on it! The land is sitting there looking ugly at the moment so an online campaign has just started last week to turn it into a wildflower meadow and I have signed up. If you are reading this and are local to Stoke-On-Trent please join us in what would be not only a very worthwhile activity but also a great community builder. There is a campaign link box at the bottom of the page. Read more about it, join, then let others know.

Correspondence

My Gran is amazing! After she heard I was asking for old things that were of no function and yet people hung onto because they were too important to discard - she knew exactly what I meant and donated a massive envelope full of personal correspondence. Brilliantly, the majority of this correspondence relates to her family history research in the Yorkshire Dales. But the most wonderful thing is that handwritten element. Some of the letters are even written in real ink!!!!
So I have been busy working on them to create a hanging.
I have printed over them with various images from my collection and have been dyeing them in coffee, removing a lot of the personal addresses while the paper was still wet.
I have more to do yet. I was going to hang them with mono-filament and then heard on the radio that this stuff takes 600 years to degrade!! So now I am wondering if there is a more earth friendly way of doing it that is strong enough to hold them.

What a find!

Walking home from school yesterday I found these metal panels in the road!(Left) They have circular and square cut outs and remind me of the pair of stitched canvas panels I did for Place, Space & Identity.(Above)

Not sure what I am going to do with them yet(or how I'm going to mount them on the wall for exhibition!) but after a bit of experimenting I'm hoping to use paint, thread and possibly knit to create lace like patterns/timelines/maps??!!!!

Then and now

Recording change in Stoke-on-Trent is a major part of my practice but realistically as one person there is a limit to the amount that I can physically take in and document. Therefore it makes sense that I choose a small specific area to work in. For me this is the Wellington Road area of Hanley. I visit it everyday taking my children to school and being a clearance area it is a constant source of change. At the moment I am looking at the photos I took during the Place, Space & Identity project back in Nov.07 and comparing them to the new photos I have taken this week. Here's a couple of them. Note the spots on the pavement which are my 'viewing points' painted on 25th October 07. More 'then' and 'now's to follow!

Dream Home

Thinking on from my previous post about homes and housing, I was thinking about how my expectations or desires are influenced by finances. (For more info read comments added after the post beginning 'the importance of the replacement')
I thought I'd share with you my dream home! It is an old vicarage which is hidden away behind St.Lukes Primary school in Hanley. The rest of the road is full of small terraces and there is a big 7ft hedge(!) that conceals it with just this little gate, where you can see a lovely big house that goes quite a way back and has a view of the playground from the garden I think! The old windows are rotten and need replacing, the roof needs work too and it's never been up for sale anyway so it remains a dream!

What I've done with the wallpaper

A few weeks back I managed to salvage some wallpaper from a home in Balfour Street(See previous post for a photo of it) I had to find a demolition worker who was round the back of the houses and ask him to go in search of it and remove a chunk for me! He was very, very kind and went in and out of the houses trying to find from the back which house I had seen the paper in the front of. Eventually he returned with a big strip of it and here it is in my latest panel. It's amazing wallpaper, the panel has yet to be titled and as usual it's mixed media.

The importance of the replacement in justifying the loss.

Yesterday I spent most of the day in Solihull, giving a talk to the 'Embroiderers Guild'. Wherever I go and talk about my work, there are always people who can relate to it and it brings home the far reaching consequences of regeneration on post-industrial cities all over the country. The discussions are not always negative and although within my practice I always try to remain neutral and position myself as an observer, it has to be noted that I am also a resident within an area of major intervention within a regeneration programme and as a resident the changes have touched my own life in both negative and positive ways.
One of the things that occurred to me last night after talking to people from the Birmingham and Solihull area was the importance of what replaces demolished homes. It seems clear that if there were a universally agreed solution as to what type of housing replaced the terraces for example, as a community we may well have viewed the necessity of demolition in a different light.
As of this paragraph I speak from personal opinion and with the understanding that I have no real archictectural or strategic knowledge to support my opinion! However, this is how I feel. With my Artist's head on I think this is just beautiful......


....BUT I don't live in one, I have lived in one in the past but when it came to buying a home I chose a functional twenty year old modern box. To me it is the equivalent of what a terraced home was when it was first built but time adds beauty.

So during the last regeneration we got these(above)!!!!! But I actually think I prefer them to these(below)!!!!!! Perhaps that's just because I associate the modern apartment with everything I feel is negative about regeneration. Demolishing communities in order to squeeze in more housing units and make more money for the developer, not benefiting the original community in any way, shape or form.

So if I'm honest what I really want is based on a very subjective opinion of what I like to live in. Which is....something cheap, square, functional, no-frills, a family size, with a garden, low maintenance. Well time will tell but this development between Botteslow Street and Lichfield Street is looking promising to me.....I know, I know, there is nothing architecturally brilliant in them and the front doors look like the doors to my old 'Halls of Residence' but hey, purely with my low income, family resident hat on....they fit the bill.

Whether they'll be affordable(or even available to buy) I've yet to find out.