Bryan Dixon

Film maker Bryan Dixon is working with the community to teach new skills and make a film. Taking Kelly's Butterfly house as inspiration, the group have been meeting in the space at Habergham Mill over the last week.

The group were practising setting all the equipment up the day we joined them, and taking it in turn to conduct interviews. Iain arrived with his trolley, so they interviewed him too, before we left the group to continue their film making whilst we went with Iain and the trolley around Stoops.

The trolley got lots of attention!

- Caroline Huckleberry

Butterfly House

The Butterfly House is here! It's been exciting coming and seeing it being constructed, and finding out more about the reasons behind its construction, and it's great to see it finished and ready for the public to interact with.

As well as the house, old local photographs lined the unit walls. Kelly left notebooks handy for visitors to jot down names and locations if they spotted any familiar places/faces on the photographs. I saw lots of the visitors to the space seeking out old friends and family members, and trying to identify classrooms and schools. There was a photo walk around the mill too, for people to capture modern images of the area.

 

Cath Ford ran a lantern making workshop in the space, and lots of houses and buildings of all shapes were created in the session. The finished ones were filled with battery operated tea light and fairy lights...and placed inside inside Butterfly House.

 

The space inside the Butterfly House acted as a mini cinema, with old film footage projecting onto the inner walls... and it looked really magical in there, especially once the lanterns had been added to the space. 

Kelly held a variety of events over the course of the week which included singing, decorating the house with images, storytelling, performances and even clog dancing! A choir came from the Calico Group to sing in the space, and it was their very first public performance! They sounded fantastic, and received a good welcome from the crowd of residents and mill users. 

Ex Emmerdale actress Ursula Holden-Gill  entertained the crowd with her brilliant storytelling, clog dancing and singing... with funny and engaging local tales.

The space and events were all really enjoyable, and really varied. Kelly did a brilliant job and the audience all seemed to really enjoy themselves too. The house and space feels part of the community, a bringing together of old and new.

And so it begins... The Butterfly House

The pristine white box has begum to transform! Blow-ups of the photos I've been collecting from people in SW Burnley arrived - ready for the collage. I took photos of doors and windows, and scaled them to the size of the house - the photos were taken at an angle to give the illusion of depth - these architectural features are the starting point - images of people and skylines of the area will be added. Then, throughout the coming week, residents are invited to respond to the Butterfly House, add to it - leave notes, images, objects - make it their own!

I was apprehensive - what would the residents make of the space and the structure? Annette and Bernie from The Cabin came up to have a look. Their response was more than I could have hoped for - they loved it! We were all busy talking about what could happen in the space, what could be added to the house. We're going to work on the collage this Sunday - before groups start to use the space throughout the week. Bernie made some lovely comments: "This is right up my street (literally)" ... .."This is ours". Annette and Bernie said they didn't want it to be dismantled at the end of the week - they want to keep it. This turned into a conversation about the lack of a 'space' in SW Burnley. We have real community assets like The Cabin (with its shop selling everything from second hand clothes to household goods) and The Stoops & Hargher Clough Community Centre (which is in constant use by numerous groups, and all overseen by Chris, a much respected community worker of thirty years). But The Butterfly House needed a dedicated space - it couldn't have impinged on the existing community spaces which already meet a multitude of needs. 

From 9th-13th of September The Butterfly House plays host to a number of events. Community commissioning for Ground Up's next public art project (on Monday), The Fold Craft Group (Tuesday), Calico Community Choir (Tuesday), photo walk and performances by actors (Thursday) ... open sessions where people can view the exhibition and contribute their memories to the house (Wednesday and Friday).

It's gonna be a busy, crazy week - can't wait to see what the house looks like by Friday!

Kelly

Collaborative Commissioning - a blog post by Steph

These are exciting times for Ground UP as one of our two artist residencies comes to fruition with an installation and programme of activity at Habergham Mill. Do come along to see Kelly Loughlin's The Butterfly House, inspired by her experience of people and place in South West Burnley.

As part of this programme of activity, local people will be coming together to help shortlist artists for the third and final residency for Ground UP's first year. I thought it might be timely to revisit some of the qualities that our shortlisting group came up with when we last met together to select artists. We asked local people, what should an artist in residence know, what skills should they have, where should they go and finally what values should they hold? Here's what they came up with:

who do we want