Hello From Kelly

I'm really happy to have the opportunity to work with the communities of SW Burnley and look forward to starting the project. I think it's a really exciting opportunity.

My father grew up on Melrose Avenue, and raised his family there. I spent the first 20 years of my life there, attending Myrtle Bank then Hargher Clough schools - and attended Ivy Bank when they had the annex at Rosegrove.

My practice involves the creative use of artefacts, census data and forms of commemoration to explore memory, connections and place. In a community context this can become the basis for a process of 'collective remembering' - piecing together the connective tissues which have been severed through economic decline, physical changes in the environment and population movement. 

I'm interested in the metaphor of fabric - the fabric of a community (patterns, threads) which is quite appropriate in a former textile town. I've been thinking about the image of fabric produced through an industrial process, and the way a standard piece of cloth always has unique features, ideosyncracies or flaws depending on how you look at it. A piece of fabric can be durable, change over time as it's put to different uses, altered, embellished, worked upon in different ways. This durability allows it to carry memories, mediate connections and tie generation together: when a wedding dress is re-used to make a Christening gown; when treasured items of baby clothing are passed on. 

In a similar way we pass stories and memories through the generations - stories of family, community and place. Like the piece of fabric, these threads change over time, are put to different uses, altered and embellished. 

In my experience, a story is often the oldest thing we have. As a child I recall my grandmother explaining why a small area of SW Burnley was called 'little Cornwall'. Cornish workers were brought here during a strike and this is where they were housed. As an adult I researched this story, and discovered that the events took place before my grandmother was even born. The story was passed to her by her father, a coal miner involved in the 1873 strike. I never knew my great-grandfather, but this story came to me across the generations and became part of the fabric of my life and my connection to a particular place. 

And the artists selected for the commissions are..........

..........Kelly Loughlin and Caroline Wright.

We are incredibly excited at the prospect of working with them over the coming months. As part of the shortlisting process we created synopses of each of the applications for the community panel and thought you might be interested to read about the selected artists, their ideas and why they were inspired to apply for the commission.

Kelly Loughlin
The focus of my practice revolves around the use of found objects, collage and installation, and strives to create works that embody ‘frozen social relations’. However, as my work is driven by exploration of a specific site or context the process is necessarily fluid and responsive.

Family history is the single, most popular point of engagement with official recording practices. Rich data sets, such as the UK census, can be easily accessed online via a PC, mobile device or through gaming consoles linked to digital televisions.

As a form of engagement, family history appeals at a primary, personal level; beginning with an individual’s name, plotting a kinship network and its relationship over time to a locality. As a practice it speaks to a sense of history as attachment and lived experience; the fundamental process is one of ‘making connections’.

The project will develop through the recruitment of mentors, local residents already interested in family history. I will work alongside these mentors to facilitate access to online records in community settings e.g. The Orchard sheltered housing facility on Stoops Estate. Local residents will be encouraged to attend workshops and begin their ‘family tree’. Workshops will be inclusive i.e. participation is not dependent on set literacy, ICT skills.

Family history necessitates inter-generational discourse; the common starting point is conversation, asking family elders for names, dates, documents, and findings could then find expression across a variety of media: film; collage; installation; text; performance; event.

Running alongside this, my own practice will shape a broader community history; manipulating census data from South West Burnley as a whole to facilitate the creation of stories, artefacts and events, which celebrate the distinctive character of this locality and its people.

Caroline Wright

I believe in taking conversations to people, using existing groups, meetings, gatherings to raise awareness and start to build momentum. To balance this approach I would like to take advantage of being a stranger in the midst of the SW Burnley community. I would like to learn about people’s stories of the place where they live, uncovering information that would not be read in tourist guides/attractions or in the local paper, in order to understand the specifity of the town.

I will do this by partaking in chance encounters: the fortuitous chat over the garden fence; the conversation on the street corner or at the bus stop; by taking part in everyday routines and patterns of life; helping out at the corner shop.

Taking the advice of the Creative Collaborators, I would like to run interactive workshops (based on themes emerging from the locality – maybe cooking, gardening, a market stalls, a community led walk around the town, etc.) and possibly a local newspaper/ radio campaign to generate views and involvement. All these strategies will be based around the idea of ‘sharing’ and ‘giving’ which is central to my approach – a gift of information in exchange for a physical gift from the artist. The latter ‘artist’s gift’ could be a multiple made especially for the project to recognise people’s contribution and the entire collection of gifts might be relevant to the South West Streets Museum.

After the consultation outlined above, I will bring the gathered knowledge together with ideas from my own practice to either make participatory/interactive works and/or co-create works with the public, leading towards a final work if this is an appropriate outcome to the residency. It might be that there is a public vote on the most interesting and popular gift, this could be done through an event – maybe a clapometer might decide the winner! I am reluctant to offer specific suggestions as to what further actual works might result as they are dependent on the wishes and gifts of the community of SW Burnley and so the process by its nature should remain open at this stage.