Common Ground Countdown

We are just 2 weeks away from Common Ground, and things are coming together now. The band has confirmed they can do a 2pm performance - S.A.F.E. have said they would like to get involved and are going to do fishing instruction for kids.Glen and I met up with Rob Worral (the parkkeeper) this week to discuss the installation of the works, and to talk through any health and safety issues, as well as covering taking the work down and returning any temporary changes we make back to normal.

Inside the Parkkeeper's Lodge - Hanley Park

One of the really exciting things to come out of the meeting is that Katie Shipley's memory stepping stones are going to become a permanent feature, and Rob really liked Chris Parkes' square animals - which he would like to make permanent if they could be made vandal proof - which is doubtful.Katie's piece will be located here - this is in the part of the park which has been regenerated thanks to S.A.F.E and Rob Worral's team's creative vision. With little resources and funding they have turned a corner of the park which was once a no-go zone into a wildlife haven. Thomas Mawson would undoubtedly have approved of this - there are very formal areas of the park, but all good landscapers know that a city park of this kind also needs these 'naturally landscaped' areas, where weeded areas and wildflowers are allowed to grow. The birds and insects rely on these areas, and the plants throughout the rest of the park rely on the birds and insects for pollination. The untrained eye might think that this area looks unruly and overgrown, but as Rob explained this is absolutely imperative to the ecology of the park. The other thing that really impressed us about Rob's approach to landscaping the park was that in this area they had set out very clear paths for people to negotiate - but as you can see in the image above the visitors have created what landscapers call a 'Lazy Line' which is where the walker creates their own impromptu path - usually the quickest route through a space. Instead of ignoring this and trying to force people to use the park Rob is keen to respond positiviely to the activity by installing Katie's stepping stones where the path fas formed - thus formalising the landscape in repsonse to the park user. I love this idea of responsive landscaping - Intelligent Design at its finest.
Quite a few of the art works for Common Ground will be situated in this area, which will be lovely. We are also going to develop a Common Ground Geocache - which we are excited about. Watch this space for more on that.
Here is a bit of a preview of some of the projects for Common Ground:
Phil Rawle turns a tree into a giant sundial with his Sand Drawing.
Bernard Charnley’s piece finds politicians up to their necks in it.Andrew Branscombe‘s interactive musical sculpture references the human life of the park.
Kate Lynch asks the public to look out for the elusive and enigmatic character The Green Man.
Monument sees Stuart Porter drawing attention to features of the park that are more usually overlooked.
Katie Shipley explores the physical processes of memory through drawing and sculptural intervention.Anna Francis excavates the Park’s Halcyon days, connecting to the history of a once great city park by repopulating the bandstand.David Bethell will be undertaking durational performance ‘Digging’ between 11.30 am and 4pm on Sunday.Glen Stoker uses the Pavilion to investigate levels of Political commitment to urban regeneration.
Carl Gent aims to consult the public on his campaign to Twin Stoke-on-Trent with a distant cosmic body.
Celine Siani Djiakoua’s participatory piece asks park users to consider poignant questions, and connects to the multi-cultural side of the Park.
Nickie Brown’s signs aim to directly address the public, testing reactions and responses to requests and orders.
Marc Tittensor’s stick men delight and amuse, and reference the Park as a destination for Play.
Chris Parkes has created a series of sculptural objects that reference the furry and feathered inhabitants of the Park.Michael Branthwaite’s sculptural piece provides visual sensation through colour and form.
Ben Faga’s performances and installations bring animals from around the world into the Park.
Brian Holdcroft draws a physical line that denotes the body passing through space and across time, when
moving through this historic site.
Andrew Jackson will negotiate chance meetings with park users, aiming to capture these moments for others to discover later.
My Dear Tom is an anonymous sound piece by Emmie, from a Postcard sent in 1907.

SHOP - Site Visit

Thursday morning a group of artists. writers and other creative/cultural workers met at Stoke train station. The connection between us all being that we are going to be involved in GemmaThomas's SHOP project . This day was the official first day of the project, and Gemma had organised it as a site visit - the main idea being for everyone to meet, to see the SHOP but also to locate the project historically, socially and culturally within the Town. More about SHOP here.We set off from the station for a walk which took us under the Railway bridge - currently in real need of improvement. Considering the space as a possible pedestrian route into the town it is a sorry site. Kevin Bell, regeneration manager for the Town recognises this, and is looking into ways of improving the journey. We had a look around the grounds of Stoke Minster, before walking round to the back of the library and council offices. The indoor market is open days a week - it was a shame that it was closed on our site visit day. The market is next door to the new library/council office development. There is currently a competition which the public can vote on for a mural to be painted on the side of the market building.
One of the things I am interested in exploring for my project with SHOP relates to the ethos of 'There is Beauty in the City' which asks people to look differently at spaces in the city, discovering hidden delights. When walking around Stoke with Gemma last week we had a good look at a lot of the architecture, and found the Sutherland Chambers building very beautiful, if neglected. It has six letter boxes, which act as 6 different views into the building.Here is the view through one of the right hand slots. The hall has beautiful majolica tiles.
The Sutherland Chambers building is across the road from the shop, so we stopped off for a quick look and a much needed cuppa, before heading next door to Spode to meet up with Allen, the site manager, who had promised us a tour of the factory. This is my third visit to the factory since it has been closed, and it is truly amazing (and upsetting) to note how quickly the place is deteriorating. Allen does his best to keep the heart beating in the factory, but it is too big job, and a site like this needs people to keep it going. We talked about the different workers who had been here, some for their whole working lives, and one is even buried here.The factory is a beautiful and magical place, the mould rooms in particular are amazing, and represent years of the city's history.
We then popped into the White Star for lunch.
The White Star represents a rare success story in the Town's recent history. The pub opened a couple of years ago, and sells beer from local brewery 'Titanic'. The place is always busy when I go in, and offers a very nice pint , and a very reasonable lunch.Gemma had organised a buffet lunch for us - which was great except the vegetarian sandwiches, which seemed to be spring onion and butter! Apart from that the refuelling was great - before we headed back to the shop in order to do a Map of Independence.This activity involved each of the artists going out into the town to locate and Independent Shop, go inside and interview the shopkeeper in order to find out what they sell or do, what it is like running a business in Stoke, and ask if they would like to be kept informed about the SHOP project. They would leave an information sheet with the trader telling them about the project. Each artist would then photograph the shopkeeper holding something that represents their business and the shop frontage. Here I am explaining the activity.

Everyone then returned to the shop to add their research to the map and share the information gathered. This worked better than I could have hoped, as 12 shops were mapped from the activity, and we gained a really interesting insight into the sorts of businesses that are operating locally, and how people are feeling about operating in the Town. Out of the 12 shops which the artists approached 10 said they would like to be kept informed, one employee said it wasn't up to them, and one told us they would be closing down at the weekend.The activity has also made some real headway in letting people in the town know what is going on at SHOP - the next stage of Gemma's plans will be to invite the interested traders to an OPEN SHOP event, a tea and cake evening to discuss in further detail what it is like to run a business in the town - how SHOP can feed into that and build stronger connections. Through the Independence Mapping exercise we learned that some of the shops have already formed what they are calling a 'Coalition' to help support each other in the town - this is really interesting, and something that I feel we could really connect with. I think that the 'SHOP INDEPENDENT' branding which I have developed for my project could be used for this group of Shops - and perhaps my Regeneration Tour could look at celebrating Independence in the Town. I find this particularly interesting in the context of the 'Art in Empty Spaces' initiative. I feel it is really important that the artists operating in these deprived areas, taking over empty shops, are very sensitive to what is there already, and work with that. We will only be in these spaces for a short time, and it is important that we recognise this, and try to do something which could somehow improve the situation in some way. It may be an ambitious thought, but perhaps as a project working with the local shopkeepers, we could actually help to promote their businesses, get organised as a 'coalition' and create something lasting (a well branded network of support.) The next thing I will do is to collate the information gathered by the artists into a workable Map of Independence. I will be going along to the Trader's Open Shop events, and hopefully working with them to develop a tour, and a celebration of Independence in Stoke.Marc Wootton from the City's Cultural development team took part in the exercise, he went to the local sweet shop and got some bon bons.

Garden Festival Revisited

The other weekend a group of us met at the same secret location as last year, to go back up to the Garden Festival site here in Stoke-on-Trent and check out the apple tree that we planted there last year - and see if any of the other flowers we planted had survived.Click here for last years post.
We were really pleased to find that the apple tree is doing well, and surprised to find that one of the annuals seemed to have defied its nature and grown back! Celine found a lovely blue egg (hatched) which someone said was a blackbird.
We lit the barbecue and enjoyed some al fresco lunch while some looked at the Garden Festival literature, and maps.
We had brought some seeds and a little purple flower with us to revive the garden.
We got those planted quite quickly.
And had a bit of a tidy up.
Before an impromptu game of 'plastic plate' frisbee.
Some of us were better than others, but we all had fun trying. We used what we think was 'the stone circle' on the Festival site.Then L took charge of the map, and we started our exploratory walk.
We found a new piece of evidence - a stone carving, covered in moss, we were amazed that the piece appeared to be intact under the moss.
We enjoyed wandering about the site, the woodland areas, and the openings.
We decided to try to find the Antony Gormley sculpture site again, so set off over the woodland ravine. Clip clop, clip clop we went over the wooden bridge, but luckily no trolls were met.
And there it was - next to the Trig point. Back in 1986 this hill was completely bare, but today there are large trees surrounding it.
We continued on, and carried out various physical investigations.
And checked out the Wedgwood head which wasn't there last year(spot Wedgwood's house in the background). This piece had been stored in the Museum vaults since the Festival, but has now been returned to the site. Maybe we will go back again next year to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the festival.

SHOP

Gemma Thomas - SHOP

On Thursday I met Gemma Thomas in Stoke Town to talk about the opening of her SHOP.

SHOP is a project which Gemma has instigated in Stoke, which will bring artists and other creative practitioners together to revitalise, revive and set out possible future visions for the empty high street shop. This project has been funded through the art council's unprecedented 'Art in Empty Spaces' project which has seen more than £500,000 awarded to projects like this across the U.K.

View from upstairs in SHOP

Gemma has been given a little shop, right next to the Spode Factory Site in the town. It is a reasonably sized two room space, with a lot of windows. Gemma has lots of ideas and plans for the venue - and is taking an eclectic multi-disciplinary approach. She is offering a number of residencies for artists, as well as opportunities for exhibitions, commissions and other project based activities and events which will be happening. Gemma is keen to involve lots of practitioners and already has artists, musicians, actors and craft makers on board for the programme. This Thursday will be the first 'event' to take place at the shop. The event is a sort of site visit for the practitioners who will be involved in the project, and will consist of a tour of Stoke, some background delivered from the Shop and a facilitated activity (which is where I come in.) Gemma has commissioned me to set up a mapping activity to take place on Thursday. The activity will serve a number of purposes: it will help the practitioners to orientate themselves in the Town, and will also help us to create a first piece of work to be displayed in the shop window, but as well as this it is an important awareness raising activity. The practitioners will be tasked with going into the town to identify 'Independent Shops' in order to record them, they will aim to interview the shop keepers, and photograph their hands holding something which represents them and their business. They will then return to the shop where we will create a 'Map of Independence.' The shopkeepers will be asked if they would like to be kept informed about developments at SHOP, and hopefully will help to embed SHOP within the town, and build relationships.This information will be collated and will become a document of Independent Shops in Stoke today. I will also be working on a more immersive mapping activity during July, which will be developed into a tour and maybe an exhibition in SHOP at the end of August.We also popped over to Spode to have a word with Allen - site manager there, and see if we can include Spode in the site tour on Thursday.
It will be interesting to watch what develops as a result of activity of this kind. I am also really keen to find out what the general public think about empty spaces being used in this way, which is something I hope to tap into within the project.
I carried out a test interview, as an example to show the practitioners on Thursday - my interview took place with the proud 'owner' of Number 116 Church Street.
Shop name: SHOP
How long have you been open?
Today is the first day.
What do you sell/do?
We are animating an empty space - not just this shop, but the whole town, by bringing a mixture of artistic activity to excite local residents.
What's it like - running a business in Stoke?
I imagine it's a challenge, but I'm quite excited about that.
Can you give me or let me photograph an object that sums up your business?
What's this?
The keys to SHOP!

Roll on Thursday...