A Need to Respect the Past

After several days now spent in Burnley, I am getting to grips with the geography of the town.
As the other Caroline has said (how are we going to manage with us having the same name?!), it was a very enjoyable morning spent decorating ceramics and meeting more lovely South West Burnley folk. Then onto the Weavers Triangle Visitor Centre to see the displays and talk to the attendants there. What knowledgeable people and generous with their time and information. I was struck by the sense of pride they have in the heritage of the town and how today's memories will be made from these foundations. In the same way as the regeneration of that area - with the new technical college - incorporates and respects the now redundant buildings, so the things we will remember from today need to respect the past. This last thought is also partly thanks to Cath, with whom I spent a pleasant hour today sitting by the canal talking about the groundUP project, its structure and history and aims.

Some small seeds of ideas for this residency have been germinating in my head. Not ready to go public with them yet, but they are there and growing in momentum. I need to do some detailed research now to see if there is any depth to them - watch this space!

Caroline (not the film one!)

Belonging in Burnley

I am writing this from the first floor window of a property near Scott Park. The window is open and the birdsong is loud and insistent. The Park is beautifully kept and has been a great source of people for me to meet and talk to.

Forays along the paths and through the trees have led to intriguing conversations around the importance of the green spaces in Burnley to the town's people, for dog walking, pushing crying babies in pushchairs until they settle, exercise, attending concerts, getting away from things. I have noticed the pride and care people take in their gardens here, the acid soil allowing plants such as rhododendron, azalea and pieris to flourish.

All this has set me wondering what it is to belong. Whatever life throws at you, being a part of something can make things bearable - what is it that makes a place home, and comfortable, what do people do to create the strong bonds that I am experiencing when I meet the people of Burnley? Is it landscape, geography, community, openness, neighbourliness, care? Or is it genetic, a family trait passed on from generation to generation, a way of life?

Caroline

Our First Photo Walk and I Saw Red!

We had a great walk yesterday - it was lots of fun, I think we all looked differently at our surroundings and we took some pretty good photos of the area. As Andy Ford (the photographer who worked with us) pointed out, as well as photographs we now have contacts with people who we have spoken to, taken photos of and who have seen us out and about. The more we do it the more normal it will become for us and for the community.
We've got a Flickr page and group now. Andy asked each of us to focus on something to help create a 'body of work'. I went for Red and it definitely helped me. The rest of the group also took some cracking shots which revealed so many different aspects of SW Burnley. I don't have access to them at the moment, but they will be uploaded and shared soon.
The plan is to meet again in two week's time on the 27th June 10.30-2.130 at the Fold. Please come and join us if you fancy it. Bring your own camera or use one of ours.
Cath

A basin of strong community bonds

Funny really, after such a short visit, but I was sad to leave Burnley earlier this week, even though I will be back in a few days time. The landscape of Suffolk was brought into sharp relief after living amongst the hills of Lancashire. Burnley is in a basin, surrounded, by hills including the famous Pendle Hill - but then all you 'Burnleyites' will know that. It seems to me, that the geography there connects with the nature of the people, theirs is an openness that can only come from a security borne through being held together in a basin of a strong community bonds.

On another note, I am looking forward to seeing a copy of The Clarion, published by Burnley school children and containing their hopes for the future. I think it might throw some light on the wonderful nature of the people. Thanks to Chris Keene for alerting me to it.

I'll be back early next week. if any one would like to meet up for a chat, please let me know!

Caroline

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. 

Thinking about the high street

After spending an afternoon on Coal Clough Lane, photographing shops and talking to shopkeepers, I started thinking about the character of small, local high streets and why it feels so good to see one thrive.

This in part is explained by the phenomenon known as ‘globalisation’.  Globalisation is a term referencing the speeding up of life through accessible and convenient global travel, instant electronic communications and also the proliferation of multinational corporations that serve to make one high street look increasingly like any other.

Distinctive places, like a high street packed with thriving independent shops, are increasingly important in localities that are metamorphosing under the pressures of globalisation. In a globalising world, as high streets and other places begin to exhibit more shared characteristics than differences, people become enthusiastic to assert a place identity that makes them distinct from other communities and localities.

In the past, a strong place identity might have been attributed to limited mobility and the tendency towards residence in a single place from birth until death. But within a single generation (from the 1940s to the 1970s), travel has become both more desirable and more achievable (Relph, 2008). In a world where place distinctiveness is threatened by the flood of globalisation, asserting a particular sense of place has presented a form of anchorage (Crang, 1998: 102, Dicks, 2000: 51, Harve, 190: 302, Smith, 2006: 75). 

Which brings me back to the central questions, what is special and distinctive about South West Burnley? What contributes to local people's sense of place?

References:

Crang, M. (1998) Cultural Geography. New York: Routledge.

Dicks, B. (2000) Heritage, Place and Community. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Harvey, D. (1990) The condition of postmodernity: an enquiry into the origins of cultural change.

Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell.

Relph, E. (2008) 'Preface to Reprint of Place and Placelessness', in Place and Placelessness.

London: Pion Limited.

Smith, L. (2006) The Uses of Heritage. London: Routledge.

Ground UP's visit to Anfield

Is it really possible to know a place if you have never lived in it? Existential philosophers have expressed an interest in sense of place as 'lived experience'. They wanted to get to the very essence of place through a study they called phenomenology.

On Wednesday last week, Cath, Iain and I hopped on a minibus in Liverpool and came screeching, slap-bang, face to face with a tale of lived experience so heartbreakingly poignant and electrifyingly angering that we have been able to think of little else this week.   

We didn’t live in that place, but through an incredible artistic intervention we certainly experienced its phenomenology.

 This was the Anfield Home Tour. Originally commissioned as part of Liverpool Biennial, the tour is a careful weaving of personal experience, literary talent, comedic improvisation and theatrical direction that combine to tell a story, or many stories, of life in an area of housing market renewal.





The tour reveals tension between insider and outsider accounts of Anfield's situation; the resulting 'insider' narrative is so rich in colour and texture that lived experience in Anfield is brought into sharp focus.

Housing Market Renewal arrived in Anfield some fifteen years ago. As ‘Carl’ our tour guide pointed out – the emphasis here is upon housing market renewal, not community renewal. In his view, this has been a project entirely focussed on the future with little regard to the ‘now’. The gleaming Keepmoat future has yet to arrive for many who continue to live in Anfield, in a diverse housing stock of Victorian terraces, some humble, some grand: five bedroom redbricks with period features. These are the houses Phil and Kirsty dream of except for their ‘location, location, location’. Because in Anfield residents have been told their location is one of deprivation, undesirable, and their houses not good enough. 

Conversely, as Jayne Lawless explained when our minibus parked outside what was once her family home, “we didn’t feel deprived”. 
 

 Here stood the now ‘tinned up’ terrace in which Jayne’s parents raised their family, both worked and Jayne had a comfortable home in a safe and caring community. When they were just five years away from paying off their mortgage, Jayne’s parents were forced to sell through compulsory purchase order. They didn’t get a fair price and, for their new home, they had to take on more debt which Jayne will be liable for when they pass away. 

As did Bob, who climbed on board our minibus outside what was once his home. A DIY enthusiast, he’d invested in his house over many years, only to watch the damp creep in when surrounding properties fell empty and the council failed to make them watertight. Hospitalised with pneumonia, kids setting fire to empty houses on his street, he was finally delighted with his relocation. He chose not to dwell on the money he lost in the transaction and the fresh debt he’ll pass on to his offspring.

On and on the tour went, with one resident’s story layered upon another until finally we were asked inside Sue’s house. Bought by her grandma in 1920, she described the ways in which her family had modernised and in turn restored this beautifully presented home. A compulsory purchase order has hung over it for years and Sue still doesn’t know if she is staying or going.   

She hangs on as her surroundings fall into the ‘controlled decline’ of absentee private landlords, antisocial tenants and neglected empty houses from which flora grow through into the walls of Sue’s loft space. Sue was barely able to conceal the emotional pain and burden of stress this has weighed upon her for no small number of years.

At the conclusion of our tour, we disembarked at Homebaked. Here over hot tea and fresh bread, we were reunited with all of this story’s characters and they explained what they plan to do next…

  
HOMEBAKED

Jeanne van Heeswijk has been working with the community in Anfield for the last two and a half years. Through the 2Up 2Down / Homebaked project the community can take matters into their own hands. Here the community have come together to reuse a block of empty property made up of a former bakery building and two adjoining terraced houses.

They have set up the Homebaked Community Land Trust, a cooperative organisation with its roots in the garden city movement. This will enable the collective community ownership of the properties and the reopening of the Bakery as a social enterprise.

Visit the Homebaked blog to see what they're up to

“Loaf by loaf, brick by brick, 2Up2Down is building a new idea of community, work, social space and with it a new community resilience”.

 

Thinking at The Fold - a planning meeting blogged by Steph.

Yesterday myself, Cath and Iain spent the day at The Fold doing a bit of planning. It was great to spend time together exploring ideas and charting a path towards achieving our objectives.  We were pleased with the feeling of rapport that has developed between us and we're enjoying working as a team. Chocolate fingers, ginger cordial and plenty of tea oiled our creative wheels as we thought about how to stimulate residents to think and talk about local sense of place.

This put me in mind of research conducted by John Dixon and Kevin Durrheim (2000). They looked at sense of place through the lens of social and environmental psychology, pointing out that our identity is closely related to context and place. They described this as the located nature of subjectivity. They thought place was incredibly important in our creation and maintenance of a sense of ourselves. More interestingly they also pointed out the value of conversation in lifting the notion of sense of place from ‘the vaults of the mind’ to the ‘foreground of human dialogue’. This is what we want to get up to in South West Burnley!

But how to start those conversations? One idea that we’ve bounced around for weeks has been to procure an old, quirky vehicle that we could adapt into a touring ‘pop up’ museum. We imagined parking up in any number of spots in South West Burnley, sparking the curiosity of passers-by and offering them a cup of tea. Then we’d invite them to step inside and visit our museum, hopefully donating a memory, photo or object as they did so.

Our planning day helped us to realise that we actually want to invest in more sustainable activities – events that bind people together, bridging the differences between groups and levering in support through some of the services operating in South West Burnley – this would leave behind stronger relationships and networks instead of an old vehicle requiring tax and MOT!

So we started brainstorming. We don't want to give too much away but here's some clues: we’ll be searching for Eric, hunting ghosts, planting and growing, exploring water underground, mythmaking, and possibly 'pap'ing!…. Curious? Watch this space!

If you want to be involved, why not message us on facebook or contribute to the South West Streets Museum?

 

Dixon and Durrheim - British Journal of Social Psychology - BRIT J SOC PSYCHOL , vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 27-44, 2000