Butterfly House

The Butterfly House is here! It's been exciting coming and seeing it being constructed, and finding out more about the reasons behind its construction, and it's great to see it finished and ready for the public to interact with.

As well as the house, old local photographs lined the unit walls. Kelly left notebooks handy for visitors to jot down names and locations if they spotted any familiar places/faces on the photographs. I saw lots of the visitors to the space seeking out old friends and family members, and trying to identify classrooms and schools. There was a photo walk around the mill too, for people to capture modern images of the area.

 

Cath Ford ran a lantern making workshop in the space, and lots of houses and buildings of all shapes were created in the session. The finished ones were filled with battery operated tea light and fairy lights...and placed inside inside Butterfly House.

 

The space inside the Butterfly House acted as a mini cinema, with old film footage projecting onto the inner walls... and it looked really magical in there, especially once the lanterns had been added to the space. 

Kelly held a variety of events over the course of the week which included singing, decorating the house with images, storytelling, performances and even clog dancing! A choir came from the Calico Group to sing in the space, and it was their very first public performance! They sounded fantastic, and received a good welcome from the crowd of residents and mill users. 

Ex Emmerdale actress Ursula Holden-Gill  entertained the crowd with her brilliant storytelling, clog dancing and singing... with funny and engaging local tales.

The space and events were all really enjoyable, and really varied. Kelly did a brilliant job and the audience all seemed to really enjoy themselves too. The house and space feels part of the community, a bringing together of old and new.

You Are Here

It has been a very hot and an interesting week. Walking the streets of Coal Clough, Hargher Clough, Stoops and Bleak House; meeting people and following leads...

Returned to Stoops & Hargher Clough Community Centre to gather school photographs from Chris, then got talking to people on Cog Lane about some of the photos - and the faces and places they recognised.



This led me to return to Coal Clough Lane at the weekend to visit Lilly, an elderly housebound resident who has lived in her terraced house since 1950. Old biscuit tins were brought down from the bedroom and we spent the afternoon going through the contents (photographs) and talking about family. Mary, the next door neighbour called in with a plate of hot, home cooked food for Lilly; and joined in the discussion about history, family and place.

In the next few days I'm off to visit a lovely lady called Irene. Irene's full of stories and a keen family historian. She grew-up on Bleak House then raised her own family on Stoops. She's a grandmother and at the heart of a strong family.

Another Cog Lane resident came forward asking if I'd like to look at his dad's old cine films (Super8) which are stored in the attic. I love old home movies - let's hope this bunch has survived intact and are viewable. Looks like another interesting week ahead!
Kelly

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!)

Lots of ideas...

Had a great time walking the streets of SW Burnley, which for me are filled with memories. The physical area I grew-up in has changed considerably and is now marked by many absences - streets and schools have fallen silent or vanished completely. Change on this scale inevitably brings memory to the fore.
Memory is about loss, but it's also about continuity, the need to knit together a sense of past and present; it's about making meanings which help to hold us together, as an individual, a family and as communities. Memory is the point where time and place merge.
SW Burnley is awash with memories. I spent time at The Orchard on Stoops Estate, a sheltered housing community, and listened to residents Irene, Joan, Ray and Mick (all great grandparents) talk about their parents and grandparents. I visited Coal Clough Library and listened to Susan talk about the libraries she worked in (some now gone). I spent the following day at Hargher Clough Community Centre, which is a repository of memories, all lovingly cherished by Chris, a community worker of 30 years. Active commemoration is an important aspect of the centre. I was struck by the banners, one made with the help of Ground Up's Cath Ford, and marking the work of local people who marched against the cuts threatening their community space. Next to this was a banner marking the death of local boy Adam Rickwood - at age 14 he was the youngest person to die in custody. This banner accompanied Adam's family and friends to the inquest into his death. The name of Margaret, Adam's grandmother, takes pride of place on the Centre's honours board.
An interest in 'the past' can often be dismissed as nostalgia - a longing for a place, idealized, imagined. Nostalgia furnishes a dream of belonging - often to a place and time more imagined than real. SW Burnley is not awash with nostalgia, quite the opposite. Memory is active, it's lived. The act of remembering can be a form of resistance - 'this happened'.
Memories are personal, local - part of oral culture and family histories. Memories are the vital currency of everyday life, treasured, stored, exchanged, passed-on, but this fabric of memory is also fragile because it often goes unrecorded.
SW Burnley is often reduced to a statistical soundbite or quick headline in national systems of recording - all negative. Thankfully, in all the conversations I've had with residents these 'headlines' were the most significant absence.
Local memory can linger, despite impositions and change to the landscape. This photo by Robert Wade shows the Shepherds Arms at the bottom of Cog Lane - although closed for years it remains a landmark, known locally as The Peeps (Peeping Toms). The name change, imposed by the brewery, never caught on.
Kelly