MAKING SENSE OF PLACES 2007
A Walk in the Company of Young People – Tamworth.
Local distinctiveness, Local voices.
(Photography by Jan Pastoors)
The prime motivation for me as the artist on this particular project was to encourage and support dialogue that engaged young people’s minds in order to develop their confidence to make statements and judgements about their locality. During a town walk and ensuing workshops, attended by members of Tamyouth, it was important that the young people were given adequate opportunity to verbalise their thoughts freely before any art practice could take place. I wanted them to tell stories, reveal secrets, share opinions and listen to others.
Young people are not always credited with being thoughtful or insightful but a mutally supportive atmosphere encouraged a sense of trust which in turn fostered honesty and a belief that their own individual ideas are valuable. 2 discussion workshops where the walkers created mindmaps and debated the virtues and downfalls of chosen spaces or buildings, led to 10 more unusual selections for a guidebook.
The choices made for the guidebook route were unpredictable and quite suprising, revealing a breadth of reasons as to their importance to the participants. These included, curiosity about change of building use, using the publication as a platform to highlight disappointment in local planning decisions, to defend buildings that regularly face bad press, questioning the sustainability of green spaces, celebrating pride in architectural ‘gems’ and revealing spaces secret to the potential reader.
Further workshops to generate pieces of art became the vehicle for young people to tangibly communicate and consolidate their ideas in visual form. In this instance the focus was creating appliqué and embroidered shirts about their chosen place or building, (one walker remarked that Tamworth ‘wears many different shirts’ in recognition of the wide range of architectural styles in the town). As well as learning new art techniques and having fun it was also opportunity to further discuss buildings, towns and spaces in general. It had more than a hint of a ‘sewing circle’, -it is interesting to see a young person patiently embroidering a shirt whilst loudly arguing about the perfect location for a skatepark! The young people developed a great sense of ownership over their work and the potential for it to be included in a ‘ non fuddy - duddy, cool, young peoples voice guidebook ‘(David aged17), was a great incentive for motivation. It was important for them to be aware of the work that MADE, CABE and The Arts Council are involved in and why these organizations exist, to recognise that these organisations are interested in their collective voices greatly strengthened self esteem. By hanging their shirts symbolically in their chosen place they were able to experience a process of thinking and creativity coming around full circle with the publication of the guidebook. The young people have developed a strong sense of ownership over the publication, but more importantly have begun to develop a greater sense of ownership over their local environment, to have opinions about its current attributes, how it could be and how it should be. I run a creative session at Tamyouth every week and it is rewarding to hear young people still discuss the local architecture,– they are still trying to ‘make sense of places’ and I hope that the project will keep questions about their locality firmly in their mind.
For further information on this or other projects please contact Claire Wood at: scissorspaperstone@msn.com or through Mark Aston at Tamworth Borough Council.