..........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.
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.
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.
