Reflection
on the past week, 23rd November 2016
The dissertation
I had a very
intense tutorial last Wednesday, focusing on the second half of my
dissertation, which deals with the Armley walk and its outcomes. As I mentioned
last week, sense of place is coming higher up in the mix and Sharon provided a
Guardian interview with John Berger this great quote (though about the Haute
Savoie in his case, not Yorkshire): “This landscape was part of my energy, my
body, my satisfaction and discomfort. I loved it … because I participated in
it” (Kellaway, 2016, n.p.). I loved this and I am going to cram it into the
dissertation somewhere as it really speaks to me about belonging to your place.
From this I have
been reading then writing and writing and writing. I had three days off –
Friday, Monday and yesterday – and I’ve got the second half in better shape,
but it has been a long slog. By the end of Monday I knew it wasn’t right but I
couldn’t understand why. Then when I slept on it, I realised it was because the
whole essay is about looking for Northernness, but I don’t overtly say I’ve
found it (or not). So I’ve pulled a lot of the existing stuff together in a
different way and now it mirrors the part about Northernness in the first half
of the essay and hangs together much better.
I’ve also been
skimming Laurajane Smith’s excellent book, Uses
of Heritage. There is so much food for thought in there and I think it
might even have overtaken Harrison as my favourite heritage book. It is ten
years old now, though. There’s a critical analysis of what I read in this
blogpost. The most interesting concept is the “Authorized Heritage Discourse”
(AHD), which is basically heritage based on the views of “experts”. She rails
against this and argues, more or less, that heritage should be open to all.
This resonates for me with this idea of “official” and “unofficial” discourses
too. There is also interesting stuff about identity, memory and place, so lots
of material to give voice to what I’ve been grappling with and to help me link
it all together. She also talks about the sanitising of heritage. There’s an
interesting-looking chapter that I’ve not read, about the heritage of
Castleford, which I am hoping to get onto as I had a quick glance and there was
some anti-Thatcher stuff in there – the individual speaking truth to power
again as Bathmaker would put it.
Being Human: Urban Dreams (and Nightmares)
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| First Group Walk - discussing the renovation of Merrion House |
The “Being Human” with Leeds Beckett took place on Saturday (19th November) and was an interesting and fulfilling day. Unfortunately it was rainy so not many participants turned up. There were four short group walks around the City Museum, each around 40 minutes, with plenty of time to talk about the surroundings and share opinions. I was fortunate to go out on the first group with Dr Shane Ewen, an urban historian from Leeds Beckett. Shane knew a lot about the history of the area (the Wetherspoons used to be a Methodist Chapel) and this was supplemented by some of the participants. One participant works at the council and she was talking about the sale of the nearby council buildings, and explaining the shrinkage of the council to some international participants. She also explained that the somewhat killjoy bye-laws for Millennium Square are there to stop people from injuring themselves then suing the council. Another participant, Helen Clarke, used to be a tutor at the Art College and is now doing a PhD with psychogeographical elements so we are now following each other on Twitter. I helped out by pointing out the colours and shapes of the buildings and also the amount of text about, which people found interesting.
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| Participants reading about the city and colouring some of the outline drawings |
I then helped out inside, and there were people colouring in my drawings, though sadly not any children! We did make a kind of cityscape but I would have liked to take this further, with participants able to cut out different coloured shapes to describe dreams and nightmares. There was some lovely shading on the colouring though and an interesting subversion of Merrion House to NYC which talks of transgressing boundaries again.
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| The "cityscape". The line drawing in the middle is mine! |
By the time my
next walk came around, the last walk of the day, there were only two or three
participants but Zoë and I braved the rain with them. Zoë discussed the way the
area is intended to be used and a little of the history of the buildings. We
talked about the Merrion Centre and the fact it houses a disused cinema, and I
contributed the tale of the research of one of our PhD students, who is
visually depicting the currently-disused Merrion Hotel. Again people seemed to
find something of interest and this was gratifying.
I was really
pleased I’d had this chance to work with counterparts from Leeds Beckett and to
position myself as an artist within the context of the day. It helped my
confidence and I learned a lot. It was the first time I’d done any public
engagement and it was a really good introduction to it as I wasn’t responsible
for organising the event and could just get on with enjoying it. The event was being filmed for Leeds Beckett, and I was interviewed about my participation and my art for the film. The event generated
some good feedback, with people citing increased curiosity about the city,
increased attention to and appreciation of the surroundings, and a general
appreciation of the time to walk and chat. I would agree with all of that.
And there’s more…
I’d emailed Sarah
Taylor at College to ask about joining the “Crossing Borders” research cluster,
and she kindly invited me to the opening of their exhibition, Pink Slip. I will
admit I went more to meet Sarah than to view the exhibition, but meet her I did
and am hoping to attend at least some of the cluster’s meetings once the dates
are announced.
So, a busy week,
and more to come!
