My World My City My Neighbourhood Project
I was going to do more frequent blog post’s, but I didn’t manage this. This is my update and reflection on the My World My City My Neighbourhood project.
I’m going to start by using the C word…. Covid. It has disrupted so much and this project was no exception. The start of the project was expected to be October/November 2021, but it was pushed back to January 2022 because of the waves of different variants within my community.
Church Lane Allotment
After many conversations with different people about the project and hours of planning, the activities kicked off on a cold Saturday in January at Garforth Church Lane allotment. We made pinch pots and wire seed heads and talked about creativity and discussed ideas for co-creation. The young boys who attended made some excellent suggestions for co-creation - namely, clay hats and small chairs. We also discussed a nature journaling activity for allotment members that was planned for late February; Local Artist Angela Hennessy took the session as she is a wildlife artist. I also collected some clay soil from the allotment and processed it to make two small pots from it (Garforth had a Brickworks just off Main Street and they use clay from a source in Barley Hill Road). It was good to make them as I was able to make connections with our historic past.
Pinch Pots
Wire Seed Head
Nature Journals
Aspire Benefit Society -Garforth/Rothwell
At Aspire Community Benefit Society, it was clear that music was going to be the foundation of our co-creation. The participants made their favourite musical icons from clay. We listened to their favourite artists and sang as we made and painted.
The Beatles Zebra Crossing
A Beatle forming
Malcom Crossland Interview
I also interviewed Malcom Crossland whose family have lived in Garforth for five generations. He kindly shared his photos and told stories of his life on the farm near Aberford. Malcolm was born in 1943. He lived at Park House Farm on Aberford Road for 23 years. As mentioned, his Garforth ancestry goes back 5 generations on his mothers side, Malcolm married Liz in 1972. Liz was born in London and moved to Yorkshire when she was 6, she’d previously lived in Farsley until she was 17 years old.
Liz and Malcolm lived at the Weigh House on Aberford Road for 26 years.
Park House Farm
Malcom and large pig
East Garforth Primary School
Eco-Friendly Group
I worked with eco-friendly Garforth; we made a sculpture of a human out of waste materials. The sculpture was called ‘Legs’ by a young participant.
Legs
Community Art Club
We also held a community art club where community members could come and make art together. This worked really well as a relaxed way to connect through artistic activity. Families came and I brought loads of materials, and we made things together. We also used some of the work to make a ‘Green Space’ postcard to promote the use of local green spaces. These postcards were handed out at the community sharing event with attendees encouraged to distribute them to people they know who have just moved into the area, so they know the locations of their local green spaces.
Community Art Club
Monoprints
Year 3 Artwork
I worked with two local primary schools, Green Lane and Strawberry Fields primary. At Green Lane we made prints of local mines. We had four coal mines in Garforth, and they were integral to how our community grew. We did the activity over two sessions. At the first one, we painted the water colour background. The kids were learning about Sam Francis in their class, so we did the landscape in his style and then used printing over the top of local mines. The children collected things to print with from their homes and local area. The finished work doesn’t specifically represent any particular Mine in Garforth, but they used the images of local mines as inspiration in their prints. They also went on walks down the Lines Way – a historic mining train route - and they also learnt about the local mining history in their class.
Mining Prints
Year 3 mining prints
At Strawberry Fields we made a cardboard map of Garforth. It was a future map of their town and we made wind turbines and solar panels everywhere. We talked and made things and we touched on political issues like who makes decisions about new buildings and bin collections. It was a very responsive activity, and we covered many issues not necessarily discussed often in the classroom. It made me sad that we were making a future map of Garforth and that most of the children in that year three class would not be able to afford to buy homes in Garforth in the future, due to the high cost of the houses in the area. Garforth was a working-class society, based around agriculture and mining. Now it’s heavily developed with expensive houses that average over £200,000 for a basic semi-detached house. Young people will have to move out of the area while wealthy people move in. There is so much to consider for our future generations, so much to fight for.
Cardboard Map by Strawberry Fields Primary
Public Participation
Local art clubs got involved, they drew and painted the shop fronts and landmarks of Garforth. I took some photos and members painted and drew their favourite locations. Susan Emmett from Garforth Community Association Art Group made work about her father who was a miner. He would come home after his shift covered in coal dust and he would get washed in a tin bath in front of the fire. Susan made a clay bust of her dad in a miner’s hat and she painted picture of a memory of him, washing in the tin bath by the fire.
Susan Emmett
Garforth Art Club Paintings
There was an open invitation to artists and photographers in the local area who wanted to send in images for the community sharing event. Many photographers sent in images of their walks around the local area, they also showed how the area has developed over time.
Sharing Event
There were a few local artists who had never shown their work in public who submitted work for the community sharing event. Two men in particular who were ‘secret painters’ were particularly engaging. They didn’t belong to an organised group and they had never shown their painting in public before and this event, but they reached out and it was worth sharing!
Les Kitching, acrylic paintings
Les Kitching is an amateur artist and started painting at the start of lockdown.
Les moved to Garforth in 1969, his wife lived in Garforth and he met her in Cornwall on Holiday. They have been married for 50 years (In September) and have twin boys. In infant school he won a poster competition at aged 8, he says ‘Art was the only thing I was good at school. Now it’s like a form of mindfulness… My only regret in life is not going to art college’.
Les sent some paintings over for this sharing event and the two on display were particularly though provoking. They show two homeless men - their photos were taken from the Salvation Army Facebook page. When asked about the reason for the subject matter, Les recounts this time in his past…
‘For a very short period in my life, l hitch-hiked to Marrakesh with my mate Ozzy. I was 19 he was 21, there are a lot of stories l can tell about the 4 months we were away, but as far as homeless goes, I stood in Marrakesh square with less than £5 in my pocket and had to get home to England. By the time me and my mate Ozzy got to Leon in France we were starving and homeless as such, it was wrong, but we stole from a shop in desperation and got arrested. We then got deported for theft and vagrancy, and we still had to get home with no money and 3 days to get out of France.
l had never been in trouble before and one of the policemen that arrested us knew we weren’t criminals and sat us down in a cafe and fed us instead of us sitting in a prison.
So, all people need to be treated with respect. I weighed 12.5 stone going and came back just under 9 stone. The sad thing is Ozzy died last week…a life-long friend. His funeral was on 4th March… he tried to help people all his life’.
Shorty Eccleston - Steven King novel inspired painting.
Paul Elleston (aka Shorty Eccleston) started painting at 71. He lives with his cat called Charlie Parker and paints in his flat. Paul has social anxiety. He saw a post for the project on Facebook, inviting local artists to show their work at the sharing event. He had never shown his work in public before and he was so pleased he got to show his work at the community sharing event.
In these two cases, the reasons why these two older men picked up a paint brush to paint a picture, was worth connecting with a wider community. The effects of this small act, resulted in increased confidence, openness and pride.
Papercraft Plus group
Papercraft Plus, who meet at the Methodist church got involved. We met and discussed a plan for the project, this resulted in each participant making a house front that represented them, and we put them all together in a street, it was very effective, and they plan to display them at the Garforth Methodist Birthday celebration later this year.
Community Sharing Event
Community Sharing Event
At the community sharing event, all the work was on display and we also had a table from the Garforth Peace Project sharing their work in the community to promote peace. On the evening we had music from Garforth Ukulele Group and Garforth Community Choir. We had a raffle and raised £225 for the Ukrainian Disaster Fund. The event was attended by 120 people, mostly families of the participants.
Garforth Ukulele Group
Garforth Community Choir
On reflection….
This project was about the people in Garforth and the stories that connected them. We used art as a conduit for expressing those stories. I wrote a detailed report to the Leeds 2023 community team in May 2022. The project was funded through the Leeds 2023 city of culture project and with all funded projects the data needs to be scrutinised. I recently got feedback and they won’t be funding the project further despite all the positive feedback. I am a little disappointed because there were so many conversations worth continuing and relationships worth building on, but I have some ideas, so I won’t let that hinder me.