Progress update from the Ground UP team!

On Tuesday 26 March, Steph, Cath, Iain and Helen Jones from Burnley Borough Council got together at The Fold on Venice Avenue, to look at the terrific response to the briefs for the Ground UP residencies and documentation project. Fifty eight proposals were narrowed down and shortlisting will take place in the community with a panel of local representatives on Wednesday 24 April.

The Fold, Centre for Integrated Health and Wellbeing image courtesy of http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2613041

The prospect of shortlisting in collaboration with the community is at once exciting and daunting. We anticipate each individual will come to the process with different levels of knowledge and understanding of participatory arts in practice. If people construct their understanding of something new based around what they already know, then the kinds of arts experiences ourselves and our community panel have had in the past will influence the way we interpret the proposals.

This however, is where the Ground UP project demonstrates ambition. Our aims are for everyone involved to develop their understanding about commissioning and developing socially engaged art, so that each one of us has gained from the experience. We’ll be using approaches that allow the panel to support one another as they consider each idea.

See you on the other side!

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.

Start Small

Inspired by a number of projects I’ve seen that focus on high street shops, I set off with optimism, aiming to photograph shopkeepers and interview shoppers or begin a journey towards that. The resulting images with transcribed text I hoped would capture snapshots of life in South West Burnley.

Butchers

Newsagents

 

A methodology sometimes used in qualitative research involves ‘purposive’ or ‘snowball’ sampling whereby one respondent recommends the next person the researcher should talk to. Taking this approach, I asked Susan in the Library to suggest the next person I should chat to and she recommended one specific shopkeeper whose business had thrived for decades. ‘Have you time for a chat?’ I asked, ‘nah, too busy, too busy’ he replied. ‘Can I take your photo?’ again no and especially not if it was to be published on a website. I wondered about trust and openness and the weight of suspicion and how it might be countered.  Who else should I talk to? ‘Try Kathleen the Florist’. And off I went.

Kathleen's Florist

Picture this: a vibrant local florist shop on the Friday afternoon before Mother’s Day. Workers in high visibility vests contemplated pots over bouquets, carnations over roses with Kathleen amongst them patiently giving her advice. This was not a shopkeeper with time on her hands! With friendly encouragement I snapped away, collecting images of the shop and next door’s green grocer’s.  I’m looking forward to visiting again.

Steph 09.03.13

First rule: gatekeepers

Ground UP is about exploring sense of place and asking questions such as ‘What makes South West Burnley different?’ and ‘What is special about South West Burnley?’ Studying people and place in South West Burnley however has its own particular tensions, especially when discussion moves on to consider change. Unfortunately for some people, asking them what makes South West Burnley different from other places elicits some very negative perceptions about the area or rather what it has become.

On Friday afternoon I set out from Coal Clough Library, camera in hand, with the intention of striking up a few conversations, capturing some images and maybe, if I was lucky, recording an interview or two. Susan at the Library was incredibly supportive and offered me a little space where I could invite people to join me for a chat.

Coal Clough Library

Now, using a digital SLR camera on a residential high street is not the most subtle approach an ethnographer might employ, but based on experiences I’d had late last summer, I naively imagined that the camera might draw a bit of interest. When I was last out and about with a camera, people were sitting on the low walls outside their houses, chatting in groups: quick to stop me and ask, ‘are you from the council?’ or ‘are you a student?’ but crucially giving me the seed from which a conversation could grow. 

Coal Clough Lane

An icey wind-blown day in March was sadly a less hospitable environment for idle, playful chats. One resident, we’ll call her June, was keen to tell me about the changes she had seen over her 30 years in the same house, and the transformation of the street as her old neighbours moved away to be replaced by a proliferation of (largely absent) private landlords. It felt to me almost as if she was struggling to take a position in relation to the shifting social dynamic, where at once she seemed to condemn the ways of her new neighbours, she quickly rounded to boast about how the younger men looked after her ‘Are you OK, we’re going into town, do you need any shopping?’

Low walls and front gardens, places to stop and chat

June clutched her dressing gown around her and sucked on a cigarette as she stood in the front doorway of her house. ‘Would it be OK if I came and recorded a chat?’ I asked, but no, instead our conversation occupied a strange space between June's garrulous geniality and her restraint bordering on suspicion. I strained to catch what she had to say, leaning over the wall, the wind causing tear drops to stream from my face. On three occasions as we chatted, she shouted greetings to passers-by, ‘Do you know a lot of people round here?’ I asked. ‘Oh yeah, I know everyone.’

Where to next? I need to be introduced by a person of trust. First rule of enthnography: gatekeepers.

Steph 08.03.13