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.

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

South West Burnley Together

The South West Burnley Together group meets at Howard Street Community Centre to discuss issues relevant to residents in the area – who have an open invitation to take part.

Chaired by Alicia Foley from Calico Housing, the group brings together community police officers, councillors, residents, local authority representatives, health care professionals and other community representatives who all know and care for the area.

The meetings are a terrific opportunity for the Ground UP team to begin to identify opportunities to start conversations with people living in South West Burnley. So far the group have discussed issues around the funding of the Stoops and Hargher Clough Community Centre, which in part led to Cath and Iain getting involved with banner -making for the big London march last Monday.

Through the group we have learned about Groundwork’s proposals for improving some underused spaces in the area and heard about the consultation methods they employed. A consideration of how to engage people in discussion and encourage ownership of the new spaces elicited a wealth of local knowledge from those sitting around the table. In particular we talked about what motivates people to get involved in this sort of activity. We thought about how younger people might be involved. Their aspirations (and sometimes their poverty of aspiration) were considered along with the power of geographical  boundaries both political and conceptual. Moreover, residents who have experienced ineffective consultation can be suspicious about those who make promises. All of this only served to reinforce our confidence that the Ground UP approach is worth exploring.   

The South West Burnley Together group have also been thinking hard about National Road Safety Awareness Week. Jackie Flynn from Lancashire County Council is organising banners for schools to hang from their railings and gates, whilst Iain has suggested a family procession to highlight the need for drivers to watch their speed. More information to follow! 

In our last meeting we talked a lot about home economics and Alicia described some exciting schemes she has developed to help people manage their finances and eat more healthily.  Potential project ideas emerged from this discussion, especially with SW Burnley resident Wendy who works with older people and saw the potential for inter-generational cooking hints and tips. Combined with Alexis Walker’s WorldWar II reminiscence sessions this could be a great opportunity to get people talking about sense of place in SW Burnley!