Celebration

People to Place

 

Whitstable Oyster Festival

If there is a local event celebrating place then this is it! It’s a celebration of Oysters, Whitstable grows Natives in the intertidal zone along its coastline and apparently 2000 year old Whitstable Oyster shells have been excavated from modern Rome.

 

Oyster image from festival brochure.

It is celebrated throughout the week. There has been many activities that are based around oysters and the sea, my favourite is the building of Grotters. This happens in the festival towards the end of the week on one of the beaches. Discarded oyster shells are used to create a cairn type of tower in which a candle is lit. Over the years, so many people have joined in, that now the spectacle stretches out all along the beaches. It is a wonderful sight to come down as the sunsets and see the Grotters glowing. I have noticed over the last few years that the basic form of the Grotter is being adapted so there are many more skilfully sculptural versions being created.

 

Grotter image from the festival brochure.

I remember one year, a while back, the artist Stephen Turner worked on a huge Grotter with the community, which was then lit and was a wonderful sight.

Foraging

I was lucky enough to be asked to join a friend on her pre-event recce early one morning last week. Today, as part of the oyster festival she is leading a forage walk from the town to the shore, sharing her knowledge of edible plants and seaweeds. Jo Barker is an extremely talented and knowledgeable lady.  Whilst studying landscape architecture in the late 1980’s she discovered Permaculture, a practice that she is passionate about. Permaculture is a way of creating harmony, it derives from the two words, permanent and (human) culture. It is a sustainable way of living and has many principles, which when acknowledged create an abundant and wonderful connection to nature. Foraging is a practice that allows humans to remember that we are part of the landscape and recognise the changing seasons of the year. I love this reminder that we are also animals and can graze on healthy plantstuffs for free throughout the year.

 

One of Jo Barkers wonderful seasonal foraged mandalas.

Jo creates beautiful mandalas of the food that she forages on each trip out and they themselves serve as reminders of the time and place, seasons, natural beauty and abundance. I would love to incorporate her knowledge into the walks that I devise, as to see the land as a larder is something most of us have grown away from. Unless we grow our own food at home, the brightly lit food stores of major name supermarkets are the main places that we see as our food supply source.

Seaweed

The last time I really had a good look for seaweed to eat was just before Easter, earlier this year. I had travelled up to the West coast of Scotland to be introduced to an area that I am still hoping to create a walking project in.

Sanna Bay

Arlette had told us of a bay which was reached through a volcanic crater, on the furthest west of the peninsular. That journey in itself sounded exciting. The beautiful white sands of the bay, the blue water and fresh air took us by surprise too. It had a dreamlike quality and we spent a while looking for different seaweeds to take home and identify. Arlette recognised most of them, one she particually sought was Pepper Dulse, it seemed to grow under another one on the top of the dark, volcanic rock. We picked it, in various places, so not to over harvest one area and ate it, freshly washed in seawater. It was delicious.

 

Pepper Dulse

That is a memory I will keep, feeling connected to a new place through recognising the abundance of nature in the area by grazing on it!

Landmarks

Landmarks such as volcanic craters are rare in this country, but through my research and design experience I have studied spatial awareness and know just how important it is that we observe and recognise our surroundings.

My logo is made up of simplified landmark symbols. A lake/loch, a significant place/centre and a hill/mountain.

We mentally map places and create awareness in our minds that we can refer to when exploring an area. This experiential exploration has a name, it is called Phenomenology.  It is from the Greek: phainomenon, ‘that which appears’ and logos, ‘study’. The best book that I came across in my MA study that refers to this is ‘The Spell of the Sensuous’ by David Abram.

 I highly recommend it to anyone who has a desire to feel more in touch with our collective ancestry and how we perceive the land we inhabit. This book asks ‘How did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world and what will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth?’

There is a quote from Gary Synder, a poet, at the start of the book that says it all.

As the crickets’ soft autumn hum

Is to us

So are we to the trees

As are they

To the rocks and the hills

Poetry

I have always loved poetry. I recognise now that I understand it through a form of phenomenology. I experience the words, lines and overall form in this way. Poetry transports me. Chris Jelley, the Storywalk artist that I have worked with has got another unique project on the go. It is called ‘Poetry Pin’ and is ‘a geo-located digital repository for fresh and new site specific poetry’. Based on a path which has become dislocated from the coast due to the redevelopment of Hinkley C power station in Somerset, it allows people to ‘pin’ their poetry in the actual place that it was inspired by. There are monthly artist led walks over the year that encourages participation.

Chris Jelley in action, image is his own.

Personally, I wonder if paths can have their own poem. I would love to explore this. To walk a path with a poet, to see them inspired by the view, route undulation, surface, momentum etc would be inspiring in itself.

This idea could be widened, as to walk the same route with an opera singer, a yoga teacher, an engineer, a potter etc could open so many avenues/paths of thought. What a wonderful project that could be in itself. And if attached to one of my paths, well, it could be shared amongst a wider audience and be a delight for all.

(I completed my MA last September and recorded the last two months of it in another blog called thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

Distraction

People to Place

 

Distraction found in a Hobbycraft visit

I didn’t get an interview for the ‘Home in Cliftonville’ commission. A disappointment but I am glad that I put in for it. It gave me a fuller picture of my project, looking at the budget, outcomes, timing etc. It would have been very interesting to work on, but instead I shall enjoy concentrating on existing leads and using my updated CV and artists’ statement to help me prepare for funding applications. I have another funding workshop to attend next week in Margate, which should focus my efforts. It is at Bernie’s Chocolate Bar again, so I am hoping I will not be too distracted by chocolate!

Distraction is a useful tool. I employ it quite regularly under the guise of ‘inspirational visits’. Often it is a trip to the Turner Contemporary, but on Monday it was a trip to ‘Hobbycraft’. So many things! On two floors! It was a wonderful place to go and see what were out there, what things people could buy that allows them to express themselves creatively. I could understand the attraction of becoming a jewellery maker, card maker, florist, cake decorator etc. It all looked possible. There were aisles and aisles of creative stuff to buy.

I even thought for a minute that I should be making and selling stuff. There it was in all its component form, perhaps I could do well at putting things together…However, I want to create a walking project which is intangible unless experienced. Therefore it is hard to sell. My project will allow people to reconnect with place, it has a big aim, I want people to be happy, healthy and feel part of a place. But it might be easier to sell a product.

A sustainable non mass produced or imported beautiful object.

Productize

This sounds very American. If I could sell my idea through a product, where people could understand it, then it could be marketed, seen and understood.

I plan to create site specific land art on the route, produce maps of the location, design and locate traditional way-markers etc. All of these products could have the route’s brand identity on it and the experiences of the users could be uploaded onto a website. These could all be marketed as products and the sales would help the project become sustainable. I have to get past my cynicism of creating products to be consumed for the sake of it. Perhaps if I looked at this more positively I could come up with a selection of products that relate to the walk that were handmade and individual which people would like to buy. It would be wonderful to create salt from the seawater at Whistable, which could be put in a handmade container and sold. Perhaps people would like to carry it along the Salt Way route with them; this could create awareness, a ritualised layer of intent, which I would like my products to possess.  In fact I could commission a range of artefacts which embody the place; these would be precious and not disposable. People may buy them for their symbolic value alone. For me this would be a better way to offer a sellable product than making something out of mass-produced creative components.

More natural beauty, in detail.

Mad dogs and Englishmen.

Well, two ladies and a dog went out in the midday sun. We started walking much earlier and by midday, it was hot!  We walked along the now familiar path that takes you off the entrance way and out and up towards the horizon.

An inland view of the horizon, with deep track marks.

We had had great rain showers the previous day, with an overcast sky, yet now, it was bright blue with little white fluffy clouds, this set off the horizon line and reminded me of a wonderful BBC Radio Four programme which I had been recommended to listen to on Monday. It was called ‘Playing the Skyline’. Radio producer Julian May was inspired by seeing old nautical charts at Greenwich Maritime Museum and commissioned this series. Courtney Pine and Anna Meredith create musical compositions based on the London skyline in the first episode. This looking at the landscape in a creative way is so very close to my heart, that I thank Helen for recognising that it was something I needed to hear. I have often wondered what the landscape could sound like. When I was in Scotland earlier this year, I could hear and feel the hum of its wild energy. A friend said she has hear the clarion calls of the mountains, I can imagine that. The horizon is a calling. When we walked on this hot sunny day, we walked down towards the sea and came across a couple of low ridges between us and the longer view. It was almost an animalistic urge that made us carry on walking, in that heat, up to the ridge to see over and know where we were.

Walking amongst buzzing bees and colourful butterflies.

Familiarity

It was a conscious decision to walk the same route again. I want to research whether walking a familiar route allows a deeper understanding of the place. I believe it does, but I would like to document it too. Even in the week since we last visited the wood, time had left its imprint on the land. The grasses were drier and lighter in colour, the purple pollen seen on one type had all blown away and clover had become taller along the edges of the path. I have never seen such tall clover! 

Tall, abundant Clover lines either side of the path on the open ground.

Seeing the place in bright morning light was a different experience to walking up there with my family one beautiful evening earlier in the week. I wonder whether it is just an acknowledgement of the details that create a new view. This could be seen in our daily attitude to life in general. William Blake understood this thought.

‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand, and a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.’

He wrote of Imagination. This is something I highly value, which seems financially worthless in the world today. As a designer and artist, I live on this, both for inspiration of the physical breathing kind and as a source needed to create an artistic output.  

The path took us to a cooler established wood, with dappled light and 'bitey' woodants.

Imagination

‘The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity…and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.’

Another William Blake quote. His writing was inspired by his locality and observations. I read that over the course of his life, he only once traveled any further than a day’s walk outside London. This seems unimaginable today, with our wide transport network and choice of travel. The opportunity to get out and see more, further afield, perhaps has blinded us to the place in which we live. Exploring a familiar route over varying times of day and throughout the seasons of year can be a rich experience that I believe will encourage us to feel more ‘grounded’ in our habitat. We are, after all, animals and our knowledge of our territory can only make us stronger, more resilient and content.

My ‘People to Place’ project is initially about route-finding, then the path is way-marked and then if walked regularly, it becomes your own. The path becomes a way in to the landscape, this entry point to a journey is very significant, it focuses the mind, becoming relaxed with the familiarity of place allowing more information to be taken on board. Familiarity allows the survival ‘fight or flight’ element of being in a new place to be relaxed. I want the paths that I help create to be about discovery, safety and enjoyment. It’s that simple; Connecting people to place.

Noticing the sun shining through the green leaves was an inspiration.

(I completed my MA last September and recorded the last two months of it in another blog called thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

Please feel free to look at that anytime, as it is from that, that I am where I am now.)

Pathways

People to Place

Pathways

Yesterday I ventured out and walked somewhere new. The sky was overcast, threatening rain but the wild wind kept it away whilst we walked. We were exploring Victory Woods, just inland from Whitstable, a very young, newly planted wood which reminded me of the scrubby Darland Banks in Medway that I used to visit in my childhood.

Victory Wood, an infant wood, scrubby and open.

There is something in this scrubby wildness which I love. It is mainly a feeling of safety that comes from being able to see far with an enjoyment of the wide-reaching vistas that this provides. But I recognised yesterday something that is now obvious. It is the pathways that I love too. This land is visibly crisscrossed with tracks, some are animal made which create a sense of awareness that we aren’t the only visitors to this place and we have a choice of which human made pathways we will follow. Having not been to this area before, it was with a small sense of adventure that we stopped at each junction and chose a new path to follow.

Following the well trod path.

The wind was blowing and the longer grasses on each side of the path made a noisy, billowing accompaniment to our passage. The path we trod was through a deeper green swathe of clover. The narrower area on which we walked was lower in height and vegetation, but when we looked it seemed to have even more grasses, clover and other species than the taller section of the path, but the abundance was in miniature. The well trod area had adapted to the conditions. The more you looked the more you saw.

Scale

This wonder of Scale is something I have always had. As a child I used to play with the idea of scale and ‘get lost’ in the texture of tree bark, imaging myself to be tiny and exploring its mountainous ridges. Digging for mud pies in the garden was often interrupted by me following an ant or other mini-beast through the grass to see where they were going, gaining an awareness for the miniature world that they lived in.

 

Scale/Space installation 2010.

In 2010 I participated in the Whitstable Biennale, creating a satellite project- a spatial installation based on scale and space. Here I worked closely with a local school, encouraging the pupils to see the world as I do, creating a wonder of scale and a playfulness that allowed them to use their imagination and produce some wonderful work. For one class, the project was to create a bark rubbing which was then transformed into a relief map of an imaginary island. They did wonders with the project, naming features on their maps, creating imaginary worlds which were quite believable!

 

Pupils busy making imaginary worlds.

When reading ‘The Wild Places’ by Robert Macfarlane earlier this year, I was pleased to see that even he, a worldwide adventurer of ‘big’ places, recognised the wild in miniature form. In The Burren in Ireland he discovers, along with Roger Deakin, a recess in the limestone pavement.

‘This, Roger suddenly said as we lay there looking down into it, is a wild place. It is as beautiful and complex, perhaps more so, than any glen or bay or peak. Miniature, yes, but fabulously wild.’

The Street

I have written about ‘The Street’ before. It is a natural feature that projects into the sea from Whitstable beach. In common with Whitstable Castle, it is often prefixed with Tankerton, instead of Whitstable, creating confusion for visitors and inhabitants alike who do not understand where the territorial edges of a place are.

 

The Street, Tankerton Bay.

An Ordnance Survey map of 1921 has it positioned in Tankerton Bay, calling it just Street Stones, which is neutral, so perhaps I shall refer to it as that too. As part of my MA I created a performance piece on the Street, which was part of the Whitstable Biennale, Satellite projects 2012. It has always fascinated me. It is a path out to sea, a wide path, like a pier, but on ground/sea level, with the human scale of a street.

 

Near the end of the Street.

There are many legends about why it is there. An established one tells the tale of an ancient town called Graystown which used to be at the end of the street. In heavy weather you can still apparently hear the church bells ring from under the water… A new tale created by Annie Taylor, an artist in Whitstable tells of how a local boy fell in love with a mermaid and built the street so that they could be together, I like that idea. For the Whitstable Biennale, also in 2010, she dressed up as the mermaid and told her tale on the end of The Street.

The place creates curiosity and intrigue in locals and visitors alike. When the tide is low and the Street is exposed, people will always walk out to the end, whatever the weather, whatever the season. It is as if the tide receding creates a regular attraction to the site, akin to theatre curtains opening after an interval. Whatever the attraction, it is there. When the tide is out enough to see the walkway, then people will venture onto it. For me it’s another path to walk on. To walk out on it on a starry night (on a receding tide) is to be engulfed by stars, above and below, reflected in the water on either side. Scale becomes irrelevant; it is an experience not to be missed.

Home

I put an application for a residency and commission for the ‘Home in Cliftonville’ Project on Monday. It would be a wonderful project to work on. As usual the anticipated onerous task of the application process was very useful. There is nothing like a deadline to clarify and organise thoughts. In fact I need a deadline to really get on with work. I can spend a lot of my time in an observational state. I enjoy watching clouds blow by, bees pollinate and birds fly etc.

 

Just looking.

I used to curse myself for this lack of focus. But now I understand it is this observance that fuels my understanding of the world. I like to understand how things work, what people do etc. This has, in hindsight inspired my own design process, so I now try to honour the need for interested observation, peaceful reflection and understanding. Admittedly I still feel a niggle of anxiety when I realise that time has gone by and I have nothing concrete to show for it. This is I believe the stress of being a self-employed consultant, because when time is seen as money, time without concrete results can be seen as ‘worthless’.

Watching the tide turn and come in.

When I had compiled my application by revising my CV, adding an artist statement and clarifying my proposal I recognised that all time is worthwhile. For me, pathways represent a metaphor for life’s’ journey. We follow a path in life that may not look clear at the time, but it leads us to where we are now. Looking back, the route is obvious, but at the time putting faith into doing what felt best, with upmost integrity seemed like the best I could do, keeping going, stepping one foot in front of another on an unknown journey. Now, after reading my revised CV, I realise I may have known where I was going in my career, all along.

Sometimes you have to forge ahead and make your own path through.

(I completed my MA last September and recorded the last two months of it in another blog called thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

Please feel free to look at that anytime, as it is from that, that I am where I am now.)

Moving on

People To Place

 

Down to Margate

“Down to Margate, don’t forget your buckets and spades and cossys and all.”  

Chas and Dave, 1982.

I find it hard to say I am going down to Margate without starting to sing this! But that was what I did on Monday. I went to a day workshop and training event on funding at a wonderful venue called Bernies Chocolate Bar. 

Wonderful chocolate, cool graphics too.

The day was structured with workshops and talks, one facilitator, Maureen Walby even managed to explain EU funding clearly and eloquently. So, now I have an understanding of where funding could come from for my project and how to obtain it. It looks like a time consuming process, which is why I will need to be sure the funding body I choose to apply to, is the right one.

Home

I was born in Margate hospital, we lived along the road in Westbrook at that time, but moved to Medway when I was young, so I can’t remember much of it. My mum remembers Cliftonville, which is just past Margate on the coast as a very aspirational place to live in the late 60’s, early 70’s. She said ‘Cliftonville was the place. It was very grand. Bobbies Department store, Butlins, The Grosvenor Court Hotel…’

Grosvenor Court Hotel Brochure 1958.

 

That has now changed, it has some beautiful architecture with decorative features of iron railings, canopies and the like, but it has seen better days. With the funding knowledge fresh in my mind I am looking at sending in a proposal for ‘Home, an ambitious programme of creative residencies and commissions that will take place in Cliftonville, Kent during 2014.’ It wants to encourage a sense of local identity, encouraging local people to discover and celebrate where they live. Sounds just like what I do with People-To-Place. Perfect.

Psychogeography

I see this ‘Home’ project as an ideal opportunity to develop the design ‘toolbox’ for People-To-Place. Locals can rediscover the heritage of a place, their natural surroundings and its current activities and identity through creativity. One of the tools that I discovered in my MA research was Psychogeography.

Notes from my MA reflective journals showing my first approach to this subject.

This works especially well in urban areas as they are rich in detail. To me, Psychogeography, apart from being tricky to spell, is a way of exploring your surroundings, by just going out into them and having a wander. Observation is key here as is the ability to just go with the flow. Walk where you fancy, go down lanes or alleys that you haven’t gone down before. Look up, see the buildings above the street, look for detail, find the stories, who has been here before?

It all started with the Situationists, a bunch of men wandering the streets in Paris during the 1940’s and 1950’s. Guy Debord defined the action of the derive, which translates to ‘drift’.

Examples of more modern Psychogeographers are Will Self and Iain Sinclair. The latter was in a  very interesting film by Andrew Kotting called Swandown.

A film still from Swandown

It  recorded their voyage in a swan-shaped pedalo from the boating pond on Hastings seafront up the waterways of Sussex and Kent up to the Olympic Park.

It’s a very poetic and chaotic piece but I find it enthralling in its observance of the daily minuate of places, places passed by on a pedalo. An ode to journeys, of all kinds.

Mapping

I am hoping that by encouraging people out to explore where they live, they will have to engage with their environment, by recognising land marks they will become more spatially aware and build a mental map of where they are.

Contour relief map of the area that the Saltway goes through in Kent.

Mapping can be used and has been over the years as a territorial tool. It can bring out the worst in human nature, seeing place as just a detailed catalogue of reality and then apportioning control, resources etc. but it can also be used as a tool for bringing people together, encouraging them to tell tales and make their own world. Created on a community level, amongst the other layers of my proposal, I can see this would be a good thing.

Mind mapping on post-it notes, another handy MA research tool.

Avian Highway

I visited a local Trust last week and spoke through my People-To-Place proposal with somebody who also shares my love of walking as a form of connection. There are many similarities with a project that he has been working on and many very interesting contacts, so watch this space. The meeting was at The Pines Garden at St. Margaret’s Bay, a beautiful place that I am very familiar with. We had lunch in the conference yurt, a wonderful meal in wonderful surroundings.

Lunch in a yurt, St. Margaret's Bay.

I told him that during my MA research I came across the term avian highway which describes a well used bird migration route. St. Margaret’s Bay, being the closest part of Kent to the continent is on one of these. Where the UK and France were once joined the area was used as a main migration route, now birds still use the path that their ancestors have always followed. Steve said that moths too use that route and St. Margaret’s is a very important place for spotting them. Whilst’ Googling’ moths and St. Margaret’s Bay to research this idea I came across a blog from a man called Tony Morris who is very much into moths. Here is his blog, fascinating stuff. His post from yesterday lists the species trapped on the last day of June; 204 moths of 47 species. These included some with beautiful names such as Scarce Footman, Small Magpie and Buff Arches. There is something to a name, imagination, identification and ownership. Perhaps I could use this idea in my project. If I can encourage people to become aware of their surroundings and map it using their own names for the areas and features that they recognise, that could be a good start. To connect them to the place in which they live.

My favorite road name, passed by every morning. the story is a gruesome one, but a lovely name!

(I completed my MA last September and recorded the last two months of it in another blog called thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

Please feel free to look at that anytime, as it is from that, that I am where I am now.)