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 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