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.)