The Shrieking Violet

Daniel Fogarty's Totem: Work, leisure and the art of being useful

2012-02-07T08:14:00.000Z

In March 2011, during the Merz Man festival that celebrated all things Kurt Schwitters and related, dance professor Valerie Preston-Dunlop led a walk down Manchester's Oxford Road reminiscing about running away from home to study under Rudolf Laban, who developed a new form of dance notation called Labanotation, which she described as being like a 'grammar' for dance¹. She recounted how Laban helped factories apply his theories of movement to mass production – an example of how the arts can overlap with and be useful to industry. By teaching workers how to co-ordinate themselves in the most effective ways, and making the most of their repeated movements, he could help maximise production in the factories and enable the workers to be productive for longer, at the same time as humanising their labour. She said that workers could also be taught to move in a certain way to do things they might not be used to doing – for example, women could unload heavy goods from containers on the ship canal.

The artwork of Daniel Fogarty is preoccupied with repetition and prolonging production. He applies multiple processes in the creation of one work, carrying on adding layers and corrupting the original until what started as one thing becomes something else and takes on an entirely new medium and existence. Among the works on show at Totem, Fogarty's first solo show in Manchester at Bureau gallery, is 'Cottage industry', a photographic print of an unfocused computer screen displaying a digital drawing. Another, 'and... and... and...', is a print of a photograph of a set of pinned up photocopies of a blow up digital drawing. 'Stammer' is a series inspired by digestive systems which started as sculptures made of unfired clay, which have been photographed and then painted over. Any one of the digestive systems series could be viewed as three works in one – each has elements of sculpture, but also photography and painting. More work is created for the artist, who keeps producing after what could have been taken as a finished product has been created – and, just like the constant, efficient churning of the digestive system, this reworking could keep on going indefinitely. However many times you repeat something, there are endless variations.
However, repetition has not bred perfection. All, rather than achieving a smooth, sleek finish, are roughly done and imprecise. Sometimes, roughness or a lack of precision is seen as a mark of a product being underfinished or carelessly made. In Fogarty's work, it's the opposite: it's the result of a work of being overfinished, or laboured over beyond the call of duty. Several of the works in Totem are made of concrete, including 'Plant Plant Plant Plant', a series of sculptures made by pouring concrete into moulds created using bricks, which were inspired by the patterns of suburban lawn edging and borders. Concrete, which is commonly associated with building work undertaken on an industrial scale, is generally a material that is valued more for its usefulness – its ability to be hardwearing outdoors in public places – than its decorative properties or suitability for craftmanship on a small scale. A concrete plant pot that was produced during Fogarty's residency at Bureau in summer 2011, part of the 'Helmet/shelter' series, is an object that is both beautiful and useful and has a function within and outside the gallery.

Laban tried to standardise ways of moving, or find a way to teach a common way of performing certain movements, despite movements being highly individual and differing naturally from person to person. One of Fogarty's interests is the imposition of standardisation through subtle graphical languages, especially motorway planting and the language of motorways. For example, before standardisation was imposed through road signage, silver birch trees were planted near junctions as a psychological reminder to the car driver that they were approaching a turning point in the road. We're surrounded by these hidden markers and symbols.

Even though Fogarty's works are created using moulds, or repetition of movements, actions and labour – methods typically used for mass production – he has corrupted any standardisation that might be expected to result from these processes and the marks of the artist have slipped through, visible in the finish of the artworks (just as the stammer is a highly individual movement, an involuntary utterance that slips into controlled movements of speech and language). Whatever material is used, whether paint, concrete or clay, there's always some kind of human presence visible, from the artist's brushstrokes to the pinching of clay. Unlike mass production, in which the efforts of the individual are subservient to the whole and are not visible in the final outcome seen by the consumer, the gestures and actions which have led up to Fogarty's artworks are a part of the finished product.

The theme of work (explicitly referred to in the title of the set 'Cottage Industry, Leisure Industry, Modern Industry'), and utility and usefulness, recurs throughout Totem, along with the tension between work and leisure (in cottage industries, this is the fact that production in cottage industries took place in people's homes, thereby blurring the distinction between leisure/living spaces and places of work and labour). In the set of gardening-inspired concrete sculptures 'Plant Plant Plant Plant', similarly, there's a clear crossover between work/utility and leisure (as well as an overlap between the decorative and the useful).

Typically, gardening is an activity associated those who spend a lot of time at home, for example retired people, as they have the time to devote to what can be quite a labour-intensive hobby, or weekend gardeners keeping busy on their days off. At what point does a gardener's labour cross over the fine line between work and leisure and start to become pleasure rather than toil? Production such as gardening is only defined as 'work' or 'leisure' depending on its context. The term 'gardening leave' is used to refer to a time of not-quite employment (it usually means an employee has left their employment but is still being paid by the previous employers for a period to prohibit the former employee taking up new employment), implying that gardening is the next most productive way of keeping busy to employment. Perhaps this is also why gardening appeals to retired people – it must be hard going from being productive eight hours a day, five days a week, for most of your working life, to not being expected to be useful for the best part of the day and not being watched over to ensure a certain level of production is maintained. As with Laban's factory workers, whose movements were made to conform to patterns and certain ways of doing things, work is a form of control and conditioning through repetition and routine.

If the meaning of 'totem' is taken as an emblem or symbol upheld as epitomising the values of a society, work could be seen as a totem of our society. Whatever right-wing scaremongers say about 'benefit scroungers', we are still a society built around the cult of work: a person's social worth, status, and often self-hood, is defined in terms of their employment, productive output and salary, rather than their hobbies, interests or leisure activities (think about how often you're asked what you 'do', and how you go about answering). Indeed, leisure and spare has become an industry in itself, including exercise. Whereas people would once have gone for a walk or a cycle ride (or been engaged in physical work throughout the day), we are now sold gym membership and personal trainers, an example of how work and 'doing something useful' is encroaching into our increasingly regimented leisure hours (going to the gym is commonly a chore or a duty rather than a pleasure).

For many young artists, art is something they are forced to fit into their spare time. Young people often find it difficult to make a career out of being an artist and artistic production has to be squeezed around the pattern of day jobs. In the context of the current economic and political climate, and cuts to the arts, it's time to look again at the value of artists and the arts. It's interesting to look at programmes such as the Federal Art Project, a depression era government scheme in the United States. Artists were employed as part of the New Deal to work painting murals in public buildings such as schools and post offices. The project, part of a wider scheme called the Works Progress Administration, provided accessible, inexpensive entertainment. It also acknowledged the value of artists, recognising professions such as 'artist' (along with 'playwright', 'musician' and 'writer', pursuits supported by parallel projects) as viable career paths, and the potential uses for art and culture to boost morale and be a force for public good.

Totem previews at Bureau, 60 Port Street, Manchester, on Friday February 10 from 6pm-8pm. The exhibition continues from February 11-March 17, opening Wednesdays to Fridays from 12pm-6pm and Saturdays from 12pm-5pm.

For more information visit www.bureaugallery.com.

www.danielfogarty.co.uk

This text was written concurrently with an exhibition text comprising an exchange between the writer and the artist that took place in January 2012. This exchange will be available at the exhibition and online.

1Laban and Schwitters were both refugees from the Nazis and, in the 1940s, discussed collaborating on a Modern Dance Opera.

The Shrieking Violet issue 17

2012-02-02T17:57:00.010Z

The Shrieking Violet issue 17 accidentally turned out to be an architecture fanzine (or at least, if there's a theme it would be buildings and the built environment), possibly a subconscious influence from visiting the Archizines exhibition in London in November. Pavilions run through the issue (and I have written about my favourite pavilions in architecture and art).

South Manchester-based illustrator Andy Carter was inspired by pavilions to create the cover. He says: “The inspiration for it came from when you said you were writing about pavilions, although I may have mistook that to mean 'bandstands'. So I just thought about what happens on bandstands like brass bands, street performers and chavs/tramps hanging around.” Andy is equally inspired by everyday life and more subjective narratives. His work is heavily reliant on line, shape and texture. He enjoys screen-printing and margaritas. I've wanted to ask Andy to do a cover ever since he illustrated a double page spread on Channel swimmer Sunny Lowry for the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention Souvenir programme.

Stuart Wheeler has kindly allowed me to reproduce a selection from a set of photos he took of Victor Pasmore's Apollo pavilion in Peterlee (currently top of my wish list for daytrip destinations), which has recently been listed. Stuart is an Architectural Assistant at 3DReid in Manchester and graduated from [Re_Map] unit at the Manchester School of Architecture. He tweets @stuwheeler.

Following the excitement of last year's Festival of Britain 60th anniversary year, Joe Austin has written about the spin-off Live Architecture exhibition that took place in Poplar in 1951. Joe is a qualified Architect, originally from the Midlands but a naturalised Londoner for the last 22 years or so (he lives just up the road from the site of the Live Architecture exhibition). Joe's interests are wide (his blog best illustrates his scattergun mind), but generally revolve around writing, design, architecture, art, culture and history. He likes nothing better than learning new aspects of things he thought he knew about. Joe is a fellow William Mitchell fan, and lover of twentieth century art and design, which is how I discovered his wonderful blog.

Kenn Taylor has contributed an article about the 'boom and bust' of social housing, with specific reference to the Woodchurch Estate in Birkenhead. Kenn is a writer and journalist based in Liverpool with a particular interest in the relationship between culture and the urban environment.

Liz Buckley has reviewed Lost is Found, an exhibition currently showing in gallery 1 at the Cornerhouse. Liz is a final year Art History student from Salford. She studies at Manchester University and is going to start an MA in Gallery Studies in September. She loves post-war art and is an aspiring curator and art critic in her spare time.

Jessica Mautner has written up a recipe for 'Liverpool Corpse Cakes' – biscuits inspired by both the local Chinese community and Victorian funeral rituals which were handed out to passers-by in Liverpool city centre in November. Jessica is a multidisciplinary artist based in Manchester. She makes temporary, site-specific encounters which are a political response to place, space, history and community. Her materials-based, experimental practice explores sensoria, particularly through texture and taste, and she is interested in the negotiation and subversion of built and planned environments by flexible organic forms. In the past few years, she has taken part in exhibitions, residencies and festivals across Europe and the UK; in January she made a new piece in Newcastle commissioned by Situation Rhubarb, and her short film Phi is showing at Bangkok Experimental Film Festival.

Richard Howe has written about Alfred Hitchock's classic film Spellbound. Richard is a Manchester-based filmmaker, caterer and musician (google Realitease@vimeo.com, Devilsorange@youtube.com, Tremors@vimeo.com). Look out for Dream Bubble, Realitease Feature and Frankenmovie projects. Hear his music here.

Steph Fletcher has drawn inspiration from Escher to illustrate Richard's article. Steph recently started an MA in art at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, and helps run the North West-based zine Twigs and Apples. She enjoys drawing, writing, cycling and vegan cooking.

Nick Mitchell has contributed two short stories. He was born in Bradford in 1975 and has lived in Manchester since 1999, working as a musician, writer and record label owner (Golden Lab Records). His musical projects have included Summum Bonum, I Had An Inkling, Beach Fuzz, A Wake, The Gamecock, Float Riverer and Chalaque. His stories and poems have been published in both the UK and the USA.

Read the Shrieking Violet online here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More architecture

Download and print your own copy of the Shrieking Violet here.

Very badly photocopied copies will can currently be found at Islington Mill, Salford and Cornerhouse, Manchester and will left around various places around Manchester city centre next week, including Piccadilly Records, Good Grief! shop (in the Soup Kitchen), Koffee Pot, Oklahoma and Nexus Art Cafe.

To request a copy in the post (free) or to contribute to future editions email Natalie.Rose.Bradbury@googlemail.com or join the Shrieking Violet Facebook group.

Also recommended

Your City Is A Public Orchard is a new guide to foraging in the city made by Hotspur House-based Textbook Studio. It's a book with a handcrafted feel and plenty of pictures, which folds out into a page full of recipes for nettles, rosehips and much more! Best of all, it's free and can be picked up from various locations around the city.

Pavilions: Building for pleasure

2012-01-31T13:58:00.000Z

When I was growing up, I had an usual pin-up on my bedroom wall; a sight to gaze at longingly and incorporate into the daydreams I constructed around my future. The pin-up was the Royal Pavilion, Brighton. To my teenage self, with its domes which appeared to glow softly golden in sunlight and extravagant details like no building I had seen before, the Pavilion represented a world that was exotic and glamorous. It was also tantalisingly within reach and grounded in the familiar English environment of the seaside town. I vowed that, as soon as I was old enough, I was going to move to Brighton and start an exciting new life in a flat in a Regency terrace within walking distance of the Brighton Pavilion. Living the building’s distinctive shadow would surely imbue my life with excitement and adventure.

Although I didn’t end up moving to Brighton, the Royal Pavilion sparked an interest in pavilions that stays with me today, from temporary structures and pavilions as works of art, to permanent and now iconic buildings.

Pavilions, which are defined as buildings dedicated to pleasure, encompass structures ranging from humble sports pavilions housing changing rooms to Mies Van der Rohe’s Barcelona pavilion, which provided a setting for his now famous Barcelona chair.

Pavilions have often been used to showcase and show off technical innovations, from the succession of World’s fairs, held throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which dazzled consumers with everything from automobiles to the latest products for the home (and wowed audiences at the 1939 New York World’s Fair with the highway-based model city of Futurama, a display sponsored by General Motors), to the 1951 Festival of Britain which was held to celebrate the centenary of Great Exhibition of 1851. The main Festival of Britain site was on the South Bank of the Thames in London, where 22 pavilions told the story of the British people and their achievements in science, technology and industrial design, themed The Land of Britain, The People of Britain and Discovery.

Pavilions still give nations a chance to show off their innovation at EXPOs (or world’s fairs) today. British designer Thomas Heatherwick’s spectacular pavilion for the 2010 Shanghai EXPO, a twenty high foot structure inspired by seeds which was designed to sway in the breeze, comprised acrylic sections each holding a seed from Kew Gardens’ Millennium Seed Bank.

Brighton’s Royal Pavilion is very much in the tradition of showing off, albeit the wealth of a private individual. It was completed in the early nineteenth century on the site of an earlier Marine Pavilion. Designed by John Nash, it exuded Oriental influences, inspired by India externally and using China as the basis for its decor. The Pavilion was the seaside home of George IV (then Prince Regent), where he could live a life of pleasure and excess far from the constraining influence of his parents. As Jonathan Meades put it in his 2005 TV documentary about the Pavilion, it was a place for George to live, entertain and pose, ‘the stage for a perpetual party’. The Pavilion is completely out of place in the town and is an especially striking sight at sunset and at night when it is illuminated. It is now such a symbol of the city that a simplified version appears in Brighton and Hove council’s logo.

Tastes change, and now I’m a bigger fan of the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea, just around the coast from Brighton in East Sussex, which was built in the International Modernist style. The sleek, streamlined Pavilion faces out to sea and has an escapist glamour, incorporating a sweeping staircase, sun terraces and big windows. Its sleek curves help the Pavilion settle into its surroundings: the bay windows of traditional seaside houses.

Whereas the Royal Pavilion was exclusive, extravagant and fanciful, however, the De La Warr pavilion is clean and unfussy, pragmatic and democratic, a public building that aimed to bring culture and leisure to the people of Bexhill, originally designed to incorporate an entertainment hall, restaurant and reading room. Like the Royal Pavilion, which featured gas lighting and flushing toilets (even for the servants!), the De La Warr was at the cutting edge of modernity when it opened in 1935 and was the first building in England to be constructed with a welded steel frame. It, too, was associated with a member of the aristocracy. The Pavilion was funded by the 9th Earl of De La Warr, who was mayor at the time.

The De La Warr Pavilion was designed by young architects Erich Mendelsohn (who came to Britain shortly beforehand to escape the Nazis) and Serge Chermayeff. During the war the building was used by the military, and fell into disrepair. The Pavilion narrowly avoided becoming a Wetherspoon’s pub, but, after restoration in the late twentieth century, is now back to serving its original purpose bringing leisure and entertainment to the people of Bexhill, from exhibitions of nationally and internationally renowned artists to concerts and film screenings.

Another Pavilion that has seen its fortunes change since it was built is the Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee, County Durham, which was back in the news in late-2011 after it was awarded Grade II* listed status. Built in the Brutalist style out of reinforced concrete, and originally functioning as a bridge over a lake, it was designed by renowned abstract artist Victor Pasmore to be the focal point of a new town in a former mining area. As well as acting as a giant, outdoor public artwork in itself, it incorporated murals by the artist. Pasmore was used to collaborating with architects (he designed a mural for the Festival of Britain in 1951 and another for Kingston Bus Station) and was appointed Consulting director of urban design with Peterlee development corporation, where his role went beyond that of mere artist to have an input into the design of houses and other buildings. Pasmore envisaged ‘a synthesis of architect and artist in which common factors…were pooled in the interests of a common end’, and wanted the Pavilion to be named Apollo after the 1969 moon landing. Like the innovative design of the town itself, the Pavilion symbolised a brighter future of hope, optimism and adventure.

Unfortunately, the Pavilion soon became neglected and vandalised (though, reportedly, Pasmore welcomed graffiti as he thought it ‘humanised’ the structure) and, in the 1980s, a local councillor mounted a campaign to demolish the Pavilion.

I first became fascinated by the Apollo Pavilion a few years ago after I saw artists Jane and Louise Wilson’s four screen video installation Monument (Apollo Pavilion, Peterlee) at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. Made in 2003, it shows local children clambering over the structure and using it as a giant climbing frame. It’s an image that has stayed with me ever since: the fusion of art and the everyday, the practical and the decorative. Though the post-war architectural optimism the Pavilion epitomises has long since evaporated, the Pavilion itself has stood the test of time and underwent a major restoration 2009.

Among my favourite pavilions are those designed by the American artist Dan Graham*. Since the 1980s, Graham has been constructing two way mirror pavilions that sit somewhere between art and architecture, acting as kaleidoscopic halls of mirrors to be explored by the public. Two way mirror glass is both reflective and transparent, and Graham’s pavilions raise questions about corporate architecture and surveillance: who can see in and who can see out? The audience is spectator but also performer, highlighting the gap between the way we are seen by others and the way we see ourselves. Installed in towns and cities around the world, often in public spaces and parks, Graham’s pavilions question boundaries and reflect their surroundings but also corrupt them, reinterpreting the everyday day environment as a place of play and leisure, a space where the real becomes real and the natural unnatural (and vice versa). They’re places to people watch and watch the world go round, or just observe the changing sky. Play is important to Graham’s pavilions, from those designed especially for children and old people to watch cartoons, such as the drop-in daycare centre Waterloo Sunset, an installation at the Hayward Gallery from 2002-2003, to his 1989 Skateboard Pavilion.

Another pavilion which makes you look more closely at your surroundings is Luke Jerram’s acoustic wind pavilion Aeolus, which visited Salford Quays in 2011 as part of a tour that also took in sites as diverse as Lyme Park, Cheshire, and the Eden Project in Cornwall. The Pavilion consists of stainless steel tubes that emit a low murmur when wind hits strings attached to the pavilion at the right frequency and causes them to vibrate. Press your ears to ears to the tubes and they hum different notes, speak into them and your voice bounces back at you.

An accompanying exhibition in the University of Salford explained that the pavilion was influenced by the concept of a room where the silence is so complete you can hear your own blood, and the beauty of the pavilion is that it makes you stop and listen and makes you more aware of what’s around you, whether it’s trams and cars or passing people. The structure also reflects and highlights the light outside.

One of the most impressive clusters of pavilions is in Venice, where the canal-side Giardini (gardens) holds 30 national pavilions built to to show off the talents of their countries at the city’s famous biennial art show (the city is also scattered with pavilions in old palazzi and churches). They were built in different styles over the twentieth century, from elaborate and neoclassical to solemn white cubes and light, airy modernist masterpieces, by some of the most important architects of the twentieth century including Alvar Aalto. Exploring the different pavilions is often as exciting as seeing the art they contain within – especially when the artwork transforms or disguises the building itself, for example Mike Nelson’s 2011 British Pavilion which turned the space into an uncannily lifelike recreation of a Turkish house. At the 2011 Biennale, the festival hosted for the first time para-pavilions – pavilions within pavilions curated by different artists – which comprised some of the most interesting exhibitions.

Since 2000, leading architects who had not hitherto built anything in Britain have been commissioned to create temporary pavilions, lasting for six months, outside the Serpentine Gallery in London’s Hyde Park. Architects have interpreted the brief in different ways, from Daniel Libeskind’s scrap metal-esque pavilion to Zaha Hadid’s marquee. Rem Koolhaas built a gas-filled orb, which was used for his regular collaborator Hans Ulrich Obrist’s 24 hour interview marathons, whereas Peter Zumthor envisaged a garden within a garden, installed in 2011. The Serpentine Pavilions can be purchased and reused, though they are generally not reinstalled in public places.

In Manchester, we have our own small bit of star architect. Tadao Ando was commissioned to design the Japanese Pavilion in Piccadilly Gardens as part of the redesign of city centre Manchester that took place after the 1996 IRA bomb and in the run up to the 2003 Commonwealth games. The Pavilion, which takes the form of a concrete wall separating the gardens from the bus interchange, has long divided Mancunians, who often see it as stark and unwelcoming. Ando has done some spectacular work, incorporating light and water into buildings such as museums and churches elsewhere in the world, but maybe there’s something lost in translation under the frequently grey skies of Manchester. My main complaint, though, is the use of the Pavilion: far from being an open public space for pleasure and enjoyment it holds, rather unimaginatively, a chain coffee shop and chain restaurant (neither of which I’ve ever felt any urge to pay to visit). With the city noticeably lacking bandstands from its public parks, couldn’t it at least be put to use as a space for performance and recreation, a stage for buskers?

*An engaging lecture by Graham on his pavilions from the Glasgow School of Art Vimeo channel:

Dan Graham, 'Pavilions' from GSA on Vimeo.

Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention 2012: Mass Participation and Collaboration, Manchester, Saturday May 19

2012-01-10T18:58:00.010Z

Far from becoming obsolete now anyone can freely share anything anywhere, anytime online, the fanzine is thriving in the age of digital culture, from the simplest photocopied diary-style zine to lavish artists' books and zines created especially for Kindle. The first Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention, held during Future Everything in 2011, looked at how self-publishers can harness digital technology to enhance and work alongside the printed word, using the two formats to engage and cross-promote between different audiences.

Drawing on the 2012 Future Everything theme of mass participation, the second Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention will look at how the virtual world is allowing networks of zine makers to share publications, news and experiences all over the world. Talks will include an exploration of the establishment of zine libraries (growing physical and online archives of self-published material comprising printed matter of different genres sent in by self-publishers all over the world) by Rotherham Zine Library, and collaborative publications.

Visitors will also be able to take tours of the building, browse and buy zines, and take part in workshops to make their own zine or contribute to a collective effort that will compile material into a collaborative Victoria Baths Fanzine. The Convention will include a screening of Salford Zine Library's 2011 film Self Publishers of the World Take-over, which features self-publishers from all over the world talking about their work. The Fanzine Convention ties in with 2012, International Year of Co-operatives, looking at the opportunities for self-publishers to form printing and publishing collectives, and will feature input from Leeds-based Footprint Workers' Co-operative

Stalls will cost £10. Fanzine-makers (individuals and groups), cartoonists and comic book makers, self-publishing and printing collectives, artists' book makers, independent magazines and representatives from book arts and illustration degree courses are invited to have a stall. To register your interest fill in this short form: www.formstack.com/forms/?1147834-b2nNCHBcVB

If you would be interested in doing a talk, running a workshop or volunteering to help out on the day, please email Natalie.Rose.Bradbury@googlemail.com

Image: Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention 2010, Twigs and Apples. See more photos from last year's event here, here and here.

Best of 2011

2011-12-31T12:15:00.047Z

What a year! I've done more than I would have thought it possible to fit into a year. Personal highlights included teaming up with Manchester Modernist Society and the Loiterers Resistance Movement for the Manchester's Modernist Heroines project, organising the first Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention (although, at the time, it was so stressful it made me half-lose my hearing for a week!) and being invited on the Under the Pavement radio show on Levenshulme's All FM to talk about the fanzine convention.

I visited for the first time a number of places I'd long wanted to go to – Bradford, Saltaire, Holmfirth, Bournville, New Mills, Helsinki, Lyon and, my new favourite city, Stockholm. I went to Wythenshawe Park for the first time, and also visited Modernist Heroine Mitzi Cunliffe's epic, monumental public artwork on the Heaton Park pumping station (photos can't prepare you for its scale!). I plunged into the (ice cold) sea on the Kent coast over an unseasonally warm easter and swam in three lidos for the first time, ranging from warm – Hathersage lido in the Peak District on a rainy day (heated), to refreshing – the massive Tooting Bec lido, an escape from the London stickiness (unheated), to freezing – glamorous, art deco Saltdean lido in East Sussex (definitely unheated!).

The Shrieking Violet went a bit interview crazy in 2011, and I did my first ever Skype interview with Ancoats Peeps artist Dan Dubowitz, who is now based in Italy. Favourites included Carol Batton, David Medalla, Maurice Carlin, Dan Dubowitz and Anthony Hall. Overall, 2011 has been a particularly good year for film and art, and I dramatically increased my TV viewing in 2011 (it was a great year for documentaries!), but unfortunately I've not been listened to as much new music or been to anywhere near as many gigs as I should have done (I am never missing a Thermals gig again – not going to see them at the Roadhouse was one of my big regrets of 2011!).

Highlights:

ART

I visited two biennials and a triennial in 2011. This year's Folkestone Triennial, which took over the town and opened up normally private places, was excellent, and I enjoyed some of the pavilions at Venice Biennale, particularly Mike Nelson's British pavilion. The Whitworth Art Gallery had strong shows, including Dark Matters, and Manchester International Festival had a refreshing and thought-provoking art programme, especially 11 Rooms at Manchester Art Gallery. I also enjoyed the Text Festival at Bury Art Gallery. It was good to see new galleries open despite the recession, and I visited the Turner Contemporary in Margate, Kent, as well as Firstsite in Colchester. The latter particularly impressed by the way it showed national and international artists alongside local artists and artefacts telling the story of Britain's Roman capital. In 2011, it felt like every topic I was interested in came back to the Festival of Britain – fortuitously, it turned out, as 2011 was the 60th anniversary of the Festival and was accompanied by TV documentaries and an exhibition of memorabilia at the Royal Festival Hall. However, my highlights were some of the smaller shows:

Dan Graham, Eastside Projects, Birmingham

This show brought together two of the areas for which Graham is best known – his pavilions and his music criticism, combining videos and models of his transparent two-way mirror pavilions and writing on public space with a video of Minor Threat in concert – one of the most unusual and noisiest, but most welcome, exhibits I've encountered in a gallery. Later in the year, I got to inside one of Graham's pavilions in the grounds of the Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm

Susie MacMurray, Islington Mill, Salford

A magical installation on the top floor of Islington Mill, MacMurray filled the loft, accessed via a rickety wooden staircase, with a mass of white feathers which change colour as the light floods in, surrounded by big windows looking out over Manchester and Salford.

Daniel Buren, Lisson Gallery, London

A small show, but one which transformed the gallery space with his trademark stripes, incorporating multi-coloured perspex that caught the light.

GIGS

Las Kellies, Deaf Institute, Manchester

One of the funnest bands I've seen in ages, Argentinian group Las Kellies are a dance-punk-party band, complete with bright coloured floral dress, sunglasses and an ESG cover.

The Middle Ones, Ace Bushy Striptease, my house

A bank holiday Friday garden gig next to the canal, Birmingham's finest Ace Bushy Striptease blasted away any thoughts of the royal wedding – and attracted a pair of fighting geese – before indie-folk duo the Middle Ones calmed things down with an intimate acoustic set.

Lemonheads playing It's A Shame About Ray, Ritz, Manchester

One of my favourite bands playing one of my favourite ever albums in its entirety – plus some solo, more country songs from Evan Dando.

David Thomas Broughton, Sounds from the Other City, Salford

I wasn't planning to go and see David Thomas Broughton because I'd already seen him so many times, but slipped into Peel Hall during a quiet moment at Sounds from the other City and remembered that, live, David Thomas Broughton's extraordinary voice and stage presence is never less than captivating.

Steve Reich, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester

A classical concert that felt closer to a rock concert. Pieces from Reich's long career were performed by young musicians, with an appearance from the composer himself on 'Clapping Music'.

Flamin' Groovies, 229, London

Chaotic but brilliant, Californian power-pop band Flamin' Groovies staggered through a set of rock 'n' roll and surf influenced punk classics. Singer Chris Wilson, who was clinging onto the microphone stand throughout, only fell over once.

Pascal Nichols, Rogue Studios, Manchester

The highlight of the launch of Hiss Heads, Florian Fusco's zine about Manchester's analogue aficionados, was a solo set from Pascal of Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides in the project space at Rogue Studios in Crusader Mill in Ancoats.

RECORDS

Float Rivever – Float Riverer

I haven't been so excited about a Manchester band in years. A boyfriend-girlfriend duo comprising Nick from Beach Fuzz and Kate from Hotpants Romance (one of my favourite Manchester bands), they make great pop songs with a raw, rattling punk sound driven by Kate's Mo Tucker-esque drums, bringing to mind Vaselines, early Pavement and the one hit wonders of Nuggets boxset.

RADIO

The I Love You Bridge, Radio 4

Park Hill's been in the news a lot this year, but by far the best take on Urban Splash's controversial 'renovation' was a short, thoughtful and near-heartbreaking Radio 4 documentary which went in search of the people behind the famous 'I love you will you marry me' graffiti on one the the building's raised walkways, recently highlighted in neon by the developers.

Change of Art, Radio 4

Artist Andrew Shoben came up with a great premise for a radio show – retiring out of date works of public art – that was funny, thought-provoking and at times frustrating but always highly listenable and entertaining.

TELEVISION

There were several series I really, really enjoyed this year. The year got off to a good start with the return of my favourite TV show, Michael Portillo's Great British Railway Journeys (whatever you feel about the man's politics, he's an amiable TV presenter with infectious enthusiasm). Melvyn Bragg's Reel History of Britain was a good idea, but I found it disappointingly patchy (Bragg's wooden presenting style doesn't help, although programmes on early documentary films about slum housing, and the origins of the National Health Service, were good). Jamie's Dream School was an interesting, thought-provoking concept for prime time TV, but I felt the scale and complexity of the project was too great to be represented in the narrow slots of the TV format. Ceramics: A Fragile History, about the Stoke-on-Trent pottery industry, had its moments, and made me want to explore Stoke-on-Trent, but my TV highlights were a series on Pathe newsreels and Julia Bradbury's Canal Walks, which followed an excitable Bradbury as she tramped across the country along its networks of canals. The star of 2011's TV for me was Tom Dyckhoff, who fronted a short series called the Secret History of Buildings, a highly watchable and accessible look at how the built environment around us affects how we live, work and play. I would watch TV far more often if Tom Dyckhoff presented more of it!

There were also a few one-off programmes I loved:

Alice Roberts' Wild Swimming.

A dreamy look at watery outdoor pursuits around the country.

The Great Estate: The Rise & Fall of the Council House

A timely look at the origins of social housing and what went wrong.

The Golden Age of Canals

Everything about this programme about the campaigners who rescued our inland waterways from dereliction was perfect, from the excerpts of archive footage and range of interviewees to the music and the warm autumn colours it was filmed in.

The Wonder of Weeds.

An intelligent look at the history and spread of unwanted plants, taking in science, control and cultivation, with a welcome appearance from Richard Mabey.

FILM

My Dog Tulip

As a social realism devotee, whose feelings towards animals are ambivalent at best, an animated film about a dog is the last film I would expect to be my favourite of a year. My Dog Tulip is warm, funny and beautifully drawn, plus you get to see the best bits of owning a dog – companionship and exercise - without the drawbacks – smells, mess and bodily fluids.

Self Made

Gillian Wearing's film is one of the most involving and absorbing, if at times uncomfortably personal and confessional, films I've seen.

Biutiful

Whilst Pedro Almodovar's The Skin I Live In was a slick, stylish, welcome return, Biutiful was the best Spanish film I saw this year, containing the grit and emotional impact lacking from Almodovar's film. Javier Badem's stunning performance almost made you feel sorry for his shady character.

Utopia London

Manchester Modernist Society screened this documentary about the vision, idealism and buildings of the generation of post-war architects, which took many of the architects, now in their eighties but still full of attitude, back to see their creations.

Submarine

The red hooded jacket unsettled me a bit, reminding me of Don't Look Now, but Submarine is indie filmmaking at its best – despite their flaws, a film where you can empathise with the characters rather than wanting to hit them.

TALKS AND EVENTS

Merz Man

Manchester's galleries were immersed in all things Kurt Schwitters during the Merz Man festival, a Greater Manchester-wide celebration of Kurt Schwitters, which included talks, exhibitions and events related to the artist, his work and his influence (some more tenuously than others). Highlights included experimental dance teacher Valerie Preston-Dunlop's nostalgic walk up Oxford Road, reminiscing about her days studying under teacher Rudolf Laban, and subsequent talk at the Royal Northern College of Music, facilitated by Manchester Modernist Society.

Say Something Series

For the first half of 2011, Thursday evenings settled into a routine of diverse and inspiring talks at Islington Mill, by artists, curators and other people involved in the art world.

Alan Boyson bus tour

An inspired idea for an outing, Manchester Modernist Society and the north west branch of the Twentieth Century Society organised a coach trip visiting Greater Manchester public artworks from the 1960s and 1970s by Alan Boyson, from ceramic tiles on a shop in Denton to a mural outside a pub in Collyhurst to a listed mosaic on a wall in Salford, the only part of a demolished school still standing. My personal favourite was an etched perspex window in St Ann's church, which touched the vicar in a way he couldn't quite explain.

THEATRE

A View from the Bridge, The Royal Exchange

One of the best productions I've seen at the Royal Exchange, a powerful rendition of Arthur Miller's play with minutely observed 1930s period detail.

The Mill – City of Dreams, Drummond's Mill, Bradford

Freedom Studios' eerie, evocative promenade theatre performance round the empty textile mill, meeting the ghosts of its workers as production gradually shuts down.

the modernist issue 3 and other publications I have enjoyed recently

2011-12-21T16:36:00.018Z

Issue 3 of Manchester Modernist Society's magazine the modernist, themed Boom or Bust, is out now, just in time for Christmas. I've been loose with this issue's theme and used it as an appreciation of some of my favourite, underrated 1960s films: Charlie Bubbles (written by Shelagh Delaney, directed by and starring Albert Finney and featuring Liza Minelli), The White Bus (written by Shelagh Delaney and directed by Lindsay Anderson), Mrs Brown, You'e Got a Lovely Daughter, a comedy musical starring the pop group Herman's Hermits, A Kind of Loving, and The London Nobody Knows (starring James Mason).

Whilst some of the films are seemingly slight or frivolous, all share a preoccupation with the new housing projects and changing types of living that were replacing bomb damaged cities and Victorian slums, capturing a sense of optimism and hope for the future that we now know was short lived.

Mrs Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter might come across as slightly cheesy, but I've watched it twice and find it genuinely charming. I found myself singing It's Nice to be Out in the Morning every day when I left the house for weeks afterwards!

If you're interested in finding out more about Manchester and Salford on screen, look out for historian CP Lee's talks which take place at the Cornerhouse from time to time, as well as his Hollywood of the North Coach Trip, or visit his sites It's A Hotun and Manchester Film History.

the modernist issue 3 also features an introduction from Shrieking Violet inspiration Owen Hatherley, as well as Eddy Rhead on TV broadcasting from the north, Matthew Whitfield on Liverpool's Brutalist sandcastle, Dan Russell on Liverpool International Garden Festival, Aidan Turner-Bishop on Hornsea Pottery, Morag Rose on Modernist Essex, Benjamin Tallis on Leningrad, Stephen Hale on FIAT's Lingotto factory, Christien Garcia on Canadian Modernism, and news and reviews. For stockists or to subscribe visit www.the-modernist-mag.co.uk.

Other publications which have made me happy recently:

FEAST is a new food and art journal initiated by Manchester-based curator and writer Laura Mansfield. Issue 1 is out now, themed Indulgence, featuring everything from recipes to an essay on food and film.
The latest edition of annual arts journal Corridor 8, which assumes a different form each year, is out now. Issue 3 is divided into three editions, the first of which focuses on commercial galleries across the north of England, containing interviews with their directors on their motivations and the challenges and advantages of operating outside London.
Canning is a beautifully designed and illustrated fanzine about the area of Liverpool by writer Kenn Taylor, artist Natalie Hughes and designer Mike Carney that combines creative writing with personal observations on place. Kenn Taylor has also recently written a more in depth book about another part of Liverpool, entitled A Brief History of Edge Hill, as part of the Metal Culture project in the city, designed by Ultimate Holding Company.
COPY is a publication compiled by Yorkshire-based Critical Writing Collective. The current issue, titled Unfold, features a contribution by Manchester-based artist Daniel Fogarty. 'In Public' is a photo of a small belemnite fossil embedded in the polished stone of a basin in the toilets of the Bridgewater Hall. Due to certain obstacles (the fossil being in the ladies' toilets), I was asked to take the photograph.
During a recent visit to London I bought a copy of art and culture magazine Garageland, which is published by east London's Transition Gallery. The current issue plays with the theme 'Fake'. Highlights include articles on the south Kent coast's 'pluto' houses and the craze for mock Tudor.

I also really enjoyed spending a couple of hours browsing the Archizines exhibition at the Architectural Association in Bloomsbury, featuring architecture zines from all over the world, including the modernist and Preston is my Paris. Other highlights included Block and Matzine from the UK, and a zine which photographed street furniture and public art across Latin America.

Three litres of sloe gin, or a tale of two blackthorn bushes

2011-12-17T10:21:00.009Z

This sloe gin started life in late-summer 2011 as ripe sloes gathered from two blackthorn bushes: one on the banks of the Ashton Canal, Ancoats and one by the River Sett between New Mills and Hayfield in the Peak District.

The Ashton Canal winds its way from central Manchester to the market town of Ashton-under-Lyne, six miles to the east. It's a remarkable journey that takes walkers, cyclists, boats and geese past the boom and bust regeneration of inner-city Manchester (half rebuilt and reinvented as New Islington, half still rubble and spaces left by ruined mills and factories); alongside Manchester City Football Club's glittering stadium and the slightly less glamorous Eastlands retail park (highlight – ASDA); near the shabby Victorian elegance of Philips Park, Manchester's first public park, leading to reclaimed nature reserve Clayton Vale and the Medlock Valley; and next to Fairfield Moravian Settlement, an island of tranquil cobblestones and Georgian cottages surrounded by suburban Tameside with its canal-side sports pitches and pensioners playing waterside pétanque.

We are lucky to have this urban oasis running through the city: the canal would have been closed in the 1960s if the local council had its way. When road transport became widespread, canals went out of fashion. They grew obsolete and expensive to maintain – and it took volunteers across the country long and laborious hours to restore Britain's canal network. These campaigners reimagined a new use for the inland waterways as sites of leisure and tourism – for boating holidays and afternoon walks – rather than toil – horses and boats still hauled coal and other goods along canals, including the Ashton, well into the twentieth century, the purpose for which they had been built centuries before. At Ashton-under-Lyne, the Ashton Canal hits the Portland Basin (home to the Wooden Canal Boat Society and Portland Basin Museum), where canal adventurers head south east onto the Peak Forest Canal to continue their journey through the Cheshire towns of Hyde and Marple and then on to New Mills (a place defined by its spectacular geography; the town rises up into the hills as the rivers Sett and Goyt descend into sunken Torrs below) and Whaley Bridge in Derbyshire, where the canal comes to an end.

The second blackthorn bush was encountered along the Sett Valley Trail between New Mills and Hayfield on a rainy yet peaceful bank holiday weekend walk. Hayfield is a picturesque rural village overlooked by the Peak District National Park's highest point, Kinder Scout – a landmark visible back in the city, from Ancoats, where this story starts. In April 1932, Kinder was the scene of one of Britain's most famous protests. Several hundred ramblers from Manchester and the surrounding region, including folk singer Ewan MacColl, led a mass trespass up Kinder Scout to protest that what had previously been common land had been taken over by private interests. It's them we must thank for our rights to roam over Britain's countryside today, something we can take for granted: the ability to explore and reach out from the crowded cities around us, to wander at our leisure.

2012 will be the 80th anniversary of the Kinder Trespass. Find out more at http://kindertrespass.com or visit Salford's Working Class Movement Library, which holds material related to the protest.

The Golden Age of Canals, an excellent BBC4 programme about the formation of the Inland Waterways, mass activism to save canals and their changing uses, will be repeated on Monday at 7pm.

The strange stories of sounds — Kinokophone at MadLab

2011-11-22T18:14:00.019Z

Last Thursday I spent the evening in the Northern Quarter immersed in strange sounds and unusual storytelling. 'Kinokologue 1: Sound spore', a temporary sound art installation in the exhibition space at MadLab, was the culmination of a Cornerhouse/Paul Hamlyn Foundation Micro Commission, followed by Kinokophonography upstairs, a regular listening event which showcases sounds sent in from all over the world.

'Kinokologue 1: Sound Spores' was an interactive collection of sound specimens arranged as 'spores' embedded in different objects. Spores were tucked in drawers and filed neatly in a cabinet ready to be opened, or presented as threaded images, interpreted by embroidery artist Akiko Yanagimoto, framed in glass as if in a collaged scene. At the same time as vintage objects were reused and reinvented as listening posts, everyday sounds plucked from their context took on a new meaning as part of a growing sound archive. Listeners were invited to borrow headphones, wander round and get ready to listen closely, then help classify sounds by suggesting categories or turning dials to bring sounds together into compositions and writing down instructions based on successful combinations for future visitors. Although samples included recognisable sounds and even those we might conventionally call music — the meandering of a violin, piercing whistles — the most exciting sounds to explore were those that did not have an obvious source. Burbling water and crunching leaves are atmospheric, but more elusive sounds such as faint 'put-putting' or vaguely familiar scraping are the most interesting as, rather than placing you directly in a scene in your head, they make you listen again and again to try to remember back to the situation in which you've heard them before (if at all).

The origins of the word 'kinokophone' are drawn from both cinema ('kino') and sound ('phone'), and it's easy to build a mental story around each spore. Some sounds stand on their own

— such as the simple, repeated onomatopoeia of the Japanese word 'nyokinyoki', but the recordings presented on the night were not heard in isolation. Contributors either introduced their recording in person or sent a description and context for their sounds, whether a reminiscence about a visit to the dentist that brought about a recording of a dentist's drill and suction — "my pain is your listening pleasure", an anecdote about the conditions in which the recording was taken — conjuring up the exposed, windswept discomfort of hanging around on the side of the mountain to record a pile of rocks, or more technical descriptions about how the sound was achieved — as in 'Growth of reverb', a recording taking advantage of the effects of footsteps on the acoustics of a stairwell at the University of Manchester, a place that was well known to some of the audience. Even those recordings that feature the presence of people are disorientating once stripped of their context: you wouldn't have guessed the setting for a conversation between young people unless told it took place at a goth festival in Whitby.

Sitting in a room of neatly arranged rows of chairs listening to recordings might seem like a strange concept for an evening, but the host described it as a way to "find out about the world by listening to what's around". Whilst my expectations of what an ice berg in Australia would sound like (sparse, barren, windswept) were confounded (it actually sounded bubbling, watery and alive), the recording of a busy, noisy, early morning in Mombasa sounded as if it could have been taken from any urban dwelling or office block with the window open on a summer's day. Recordings such as the Amazon rainforest, taken from the British Library, with its variety of sounds and array of natural wonders (including a bird whose recurring call descended a scale in a way that was almost comical and another bird whose insistent brilling made you wonder if it was the inspiration for the telephone's ring), and an amazingly evocative amplification of tree roots creaking in the wind like groaning wooden furniture, achieved in Lithuania using contact mikes, were beautifully observed. However, my favourite recording was of a sound so ordinary you would not normally think to stop to listen to it. A recording of the shaking of a tin roof on the Manchester University students' union, caused to move by the reverberations of the bass and drums-dominated practise session of a heavy metal band, couldn't help but make me smile.

Find out more about the work of the Kinokophone collective at www.kinokophone.com.

Quick answers on photocopying, being free and the 'aesthetics' of fanzines

2011-11-13T14:13:00.017Z

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from a Manchester-based design student named Jenn Trethewey who is currently doing research into self-publishing, with a view to producing a map charting the overlaps between different types of formats in self-publishing. She asked me a number of questions about photocopying, the Shrieking Violet being free and the aesthetics of self-publishing. You can read her questions, and my answers, below:

JT: Why, when you started the Shrieking Violet, did you choose to photocopy and have a free fanzine?

SV: I'm afraid I won't really give you any passionate, ideological answers, as the way I publish mostly comes down to laziness and convenience.

I started off photocopying the the Shrieking Violet because of the immediacy – I could go from finalising the content to publishing and distributing it almost immediately. As there was no waiting around for printers or anyone else to deliver a finished product, it was all up to me.

It is very important to me that the fanzine is free so that it is accessible. Having a cost on it – even a small one, is a barrier to the casual reader picking it up. Also, if there was a cost, selling it would have to be regulated somehow – I wouldn't be able to leave it around to be picked up. Again, the process of distribution would lose its immediacy if some kind of transaction had to take place – it would limit where and how it was available.

The Shrieking Violet was conceived as an alternative guide to Manchester, as there are number of free city guides which are left around the city – in hotels, cafes, bars and other attractions. It seems that most of them are sponsored by big business and are very unimaginative – they mainly recommend shopping, or visiting the big city museums and galleries if you want some culture. I wanted to offer an alternative to that which was also free and could just be picked up in some of those public places, but gave a guide to things in the city which were free.

JT: Why, sixteen issues in, have you kept it that way?

SV: I would love to publish a fanzine on lovely paper with staples and make it a nice object to hold. There are a number of reasons why I haven't, most of which come down to laziness:

1. There are always mistakes and typos in the Shrieking Violet, however hard I try to proofread it. It doesn't matter quite so much so much if it is just photocopied, as a photocopy feels like a temporary object, but a properly printed publication would feel much more 'permanent' and I would want everything about it to be perfect.

2. Photocopied fanzines are quick, cheap and easy to reproduce – if I got a fanzine printed professionally it would be limited by print run and it would be harder to produce extra copies as and when needed if I ran out.

3. As i'm not really from an art and design background, I feel a bit overwhelmed by all the choice of different papers and qualities and ways of printing as I have never had something professionally printed before, but I do know how to use a photocopier. I grew up around my dad's collection of early 80s punk/indie zines, so I knew that photocopying was a long-established way of making fanzines!

4. Cost – it's important to me that the Shrieking Violet is free, and if I got it printed professionally I would need the money to do so, which would probably mean applying for funding, or asking for people to advertise, which would be another stage in the process of making the fanzine that would hold the process up.

So, in answer to your question about why I continue to photocopy the Shrieking Violet 16 issues in, it is about momentum – I decided momentum and keeping the project going (firstly as a monthly zine then bi-monthly, now quarterly) was more important than worrying about improving the print quality.

I would love to produce the Shrieking Violet in colour, but I have struck a balance by having a pdf version online which is in colour – and the vast majority of readers are online, important as it is to have a paper version as well.

JT: I'm looking at the boundaries of different self-publishing formats and how we define them, so I'd be interested from a zine creator's point of view, what do you think makes a zine a zine? Would you say this sort of aesthetic and free distribution is part of what a fanzine is? Or is it the content and motivation behind the publication which you feel defines it?

SV: Regarding content and motivation, I like to think you could call the Shrieking Violet either a fanzine or a magazine. The distinctions between fanzines, artists' books and magazines are often a lot less clear than is made out. I would prefer for the Shrieking Violet to be defined by the content and the quality of the writing inside it rather than how it is delivered. The content and standard of the writing and range of contributors is always the most important thing and not the format it is made in. Just like blogs – I feel they should be judged by the quality of their content just like any other website and not by the medium in which they exist.

I don't know if I can define what makes a fanzine a fanzine as they vary so much. I'm not sure there is an 'aesthetic' that can be linked to fanzines as they range from the very, very basic – handwritten and photocopied – to more 'crafted' artists' books. I have thought about this a lot over the past couple of years, and I have come to the conclusion that 'self-publishing is a far more helpful word/concept than 'fanzine' because it is much broader and encompasses many different types of publications and many reasons for publishing, but the thing that often unites them all is autonomy and the freedom to be your own editor and maker.

Jenn's blog: http://ideasandthat.tumblr.com

The Shrieking Violet issue 16, Manchester Blog Award and recent inspiration

2011-11-01T07:26:00.029Z

Issue 16 features Bert Jansch, Manchester's typography, city quarters, Esperanto, Belle Vue, smokey beans, creative writing, poetry, embroidery and illustration.

I have been thinking about the different types of quarters that seem to be appearing more and more, not just in Manchester but in other towns and cities I have visited.

Nija Dalal is a writer and radio producer, and has just finished an MA in Anthropology. She's radio obsessive, cooks and crafts and sews, and keeps a blog about it when she remembers. She grew up in the American South, in a bizarre immigrant household, though no more bizarre than most immigrant households. She says "y'all." Currently in Manchester, she's lived in Sydney and Atlanta, and she's looking for a job in radio (do you have one going, by the way?)...Nija has condensed some of her Masters thesis findings into an article about the anthropological implications of Manchester's typography.

Bill Chapman, who has been speaking Esperanto since 1967, got in touch with me offering an insider's perspective on an article I wrote about the Esperanto for the modernist issue 1. During our subsequent exchange of emails, he sent me a photo of the Manchester Esperanto society in 1948 (motto 'Obstinately onwards'!) and told me about the adventures Esperanto has enabled him to have. Esperanto celebrates its 125th anniversary next year, and I asked Bill to expand on his stories in article form for the Shrieking Violet. Bill is a magistrate in north Wales and has worked for many years in education and training, most recently in the field of lifelong learning. He is enjoying being a grandfather.

Long-time contributor and friend of the Shrieking Violet Rebecca Willmott describes herself as 'a self publisher with a specific writing interest in revisiting the circus with a needle and thread'. Her favourite things are: pumpkins, clowns, embroidery hoops and running writing and book binding workshops with children and sometimes adults, 'but children are more curious'. Manchester's Belle Vue circus holds a particular fascination for Rebecca, and she has written and embroidered an article on it. Rebecca has just moved to London to start an internship at textile magazine Selvedge.

Louise M. North wrote her first story, about a blue apple, aged 5. She likes writing about the odd, the weird and the wonderful and, if she can manage it, the odd, weird and wonderful all in one story. Louise has combined the odd and weird in a story about a recognisable Manchester locale, with an illustration by Alex Boswell.

Cyrus Amini, who has contributed a poem to issue 16 of the Shrieking Violet, has previously been an independent video producer and broadcast professional. He now develops property nicely but mainly concentrates on enjoying himself.

Mr Jacket's smokey beans recipe came to the Shrieking Violet via Morag Rose of the Loiterers Resistance Movement. I have tried and tested it and recommend eating hearty helpings on top of toasted, buttered rye bread for dinner on a winter's night, with the leftovers for lunch the next day.

The cover is by Manchester-based illustrator Bryony Jackson. I'm really pleased as I have long been a fan of Bryony's work and have been asking her to design a cover ever since the Shrieking Violet started back in August 2009!

Daniel Fogarty, an artist and designer based at Rogue Studios in Ancoats, kindly assisted with the design and layout.

Remember, this publication is best read whilst listening to guitarist and singer Bert Jansch, who died of cancer last month.

Read issue 16 online here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More fanzines

Download and print your own copy of the Shrieking Violet here.

Very badly photocopied copies will be left around various places in the city centre this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon, including Piccadilly Records, Good Grief! shop (in the Soup Kitchen), Koffee Pot, Oklahoma, Nexus Art Cafe, Cornerhouse.

To request a copy in the post (free) or to contribute to future editions email Natalie.Rose.Bradbury@googlemail.com or join the Shrieking Violet Facebook group.

Manchester Blog Award

The Shrieking Violet won Best Arts and Culture Blog at the 2011 Manchester Blog Awards which took place during Manchester Literature Festival, after being nominated for the third year in a row. It was good to hear readings from other blogs at the awards ceremony, and to hear the winning entires in the Real Story competition, including Shrieking Violet contributor Nija Dalal! It was a shame that I was rushing off to the Jens Lekman gig at Band on the Wall, on the other side of town. Many thanks to anyone who read, nominated or voted for the Shrieking Violet.

Other winners included Shrieking Violet issue 10/Manchester's Modernist Heroines contributor Hayley Flynn, who won Best City and Neighbourhood Blog with Skyliner. David Bailey, who designed the cover for the Shrieking Violet issue 10, won Best Personal Blog for Food Legend.

Recent inspiration

I've been dipping in and out of the artist Ryan Gander's book Catalogue Raisonabble Vol. 1. My favourite bits of the book are his writing, especially extracts from his 'Loose Associations', interesting essays which flit from topic to topic in 'loose associations'. These led me to a brilliant magazine called Dot Dot Dot, produced by Stuart Bailey of Dexter Sinister, in which some of Gander's Loose Associations appeared. I've been reading issue 19 of Dot Dot Dot, which compiles editions of a newspaper called THE FIRST/LAST NEWSPAPER which was issued from Port Authority for three weeks during November 2009. Content is a mixture of archive material and contemporary articles written by different international artists and writers, some fairly short and others more in-depth, quite often concerning the media, the history of the press, the evolution of publishing and mass communication.

I recently watched this lecture from 2007, which has contributions from Stuart Bailey, as well as Michael Bierut from the website Design Observer. I really enjoyed hearing about how Dot Dot Dot started and developed as a magazine, and how it received submissions of content that was not what you would expect to find in a graphic design magazine but the editors published it anyway to change conceptions about what 'should' be printed. I was also interested in Michael Bierut's talk about how Design Observer started and grew, and attracted readers despite the length of its posts! He made some observations about comments on blogs and blogging 'communities'. I am often discouraged that there are few comments posted on the Shrieking Violet (especially negative comments) and the lack of discussion or debate around anything I write.

How many quarters make a city? Clue: it's not four

2011-11-01T07:10:00.022Z

Birmingham has seven designated city quarters¹, Sheffield eleven². In Manchester, the well-known Northern Quarter (and slightly less well-known Green, Civic and Millennium Quarters) will soon be joined by a co-operative quarter (although the Co-op Group hopes the public will take to its official name, NOMA, speculated to be a reference to its geographical position just north of the city centre³) and another, a Medieval Quarter, is proposed. Add to that other well-defined areas of the city which are not officially designated quarters, but could be seen as such – Canal Street and surrounding Gay Village as a gay quarter, Chinatown as a Chinese quarter, a university quarter around Oxford Road – and there are a lot of slices that make up Manchester.

There is a bewildering away of terms for dividing up the city into convenient chunks: corridors (the area around the universities and university hospitals is packaged as the corridor, Manchester's “economic and knowledge powerhouse”⁴), gateways (Southern Gateway, a new residential and business district in an area which had suffered from "a lack of identity and economic purpose"⁵), an urban village (Ancoats), the UK's first Urban Heritage Park⁶ (Castlefield) and even a curry mile. The language and concepts used to describe quarters is similar to that applied to these other corridors, gateways and urban villages, and they share many of the same attributes and aims – rejuvenating an area through mixed-use developments that will attract business and investment to the city and help raise its profile beyond the city boundaries.

Quarters often reflect the aspirations of a place, and are used as a way of conveniently packaging and marketing the different types of activities that make up the diverse life of a town or city. If a town or city has a well-defined creative quarter, for example, a hub of cultural industries, it will not just attract creative people but will also catch the eye of tourists and shoppers eager for an alternative retail or leisure experience. This provides customers for other facilities such as hotels and transport, and therefore acts as an incentive for business investment. Likewise, a heritage or tourist quarter puts a city's attractions conveniently into one place for visitors – and attracts the sort of retail or dining experiences that go with it.

The use of quarters to define areas of a city is nothing new. Think of Paris's quartiers – meaning living quarters. Cities have long had designated areas based on ethnicity – Jewish Quarters being a widespread example – and Birmingham, to name just one city, still has Irish and Chinese Quarters. Other quarters grew up around shared characteristics uniting the people who lived or worked in an area, such as speaking a common language (Latin around the universities in Paris' famous Latin Quarter, during the Middle Ages, a name which struck). Other quarters were named after the industry that was prevalent in an area, for example Birmingham's renowned Jewellery Quarter, catchily marketed as 'Birmingham's Gem'⁷. Or they may simply be descriptive of what's there, like Altrincham's Market Quarter, or what goes on there, such as Leicester's Business Quarter. Others are defined in geographical terms, including Manchester's Northern Quarter, which also goes by the postcode N4, or based on obvious physical attributes, such as Stoke-on-Trent's Canal Quarter. Others reflect the type of people the area has come to attract, or wishes to attract, or tells members of a certain demographic they will find likeminded people there – for example Liverpool's Gay Quarter. They can also be a tool in conservation, if a number of noteworthy buildings are clustered in one area.

Manchester's Civic Quarter, outlined in 2009's Civic Quarter – Manchester Central Regeneration Framework, aims to use Manchester's heritage, including some of its key buildings – the town hall, central library, Manchester central and St Peter's Square – as well as its transport links and infrastructure, to attract business and institutions to Manchester in “a new meeting place in the city centre”. Its goal is to extend both the city centre and business district and: “Bring together the values of civic pride and civic leadership, with international trade and commerce, world class innovation and research, at the heart of an entrepreneurial community.”⁸It also acts as a link between the various other districts that comprise the city centre: Spinningfields, the corridor etc.

The proliferation of quarters all over the country today, some based on a logical connection with an area and some more tenuous, often coincides with redevelopment and regeneration. Manchester's Millennium Quarter (there are also Millennium Quarters/Villages in London) refers to the redevelopment that took place around Manchester Cathedral after the area was destroyed by an IRA bomb in 1996. Its name reflects that rebuilding took place in the lead-up to the Millennium as well as the fact it incorporated one of a number of national projects funded by the National Lottery through the Millennium Commission⁹.

Typically, quarters incorporate new or improved public space (Cathedral Gardens, check), retail (Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, the Triangle, check), leisure (the Printworks, check) and residential opportunities. Often, refurbishments of traditional buildings sit alongside eye-catching new builds. The Millennium Quarter acknowledges Manchester's past, containing some of its most historic buildings (the cathedral, Chetham's Library), but it also contains new flagship development such as Ian Simpson's Urbis building, which was conceived as a museum for the city.

Soon, the area could have another quarter, currently dubbed the Medieval Quarter¹⁰ by local media, that will straddle two city centres, linking to the Greengate development in Salford. Plans include a new cathedral square, as well as a redesign of Cathedral Gardens, new memorials to the anti-slavery movement, the suffragette movement and firefighters. A statue of Oliver Cromwell, currently in exile in the suburbs, could also be moved there.

Just down the road is NOMA – colloquially dubbed the Co-op Quarter to reflect the fact that the Manchester-based Co-operative Group is redeveloping a huge, 20 acre site¹¹ near its new headquarters. The £1 billion plan, funded by the Co-operative Group with some investment from the Council, will see the makeup of the area fundamentally changed to attract new up-market shops, offices and cafes, potentially generating thousands of jobs. New public spaces will be created and the inner ring road will be moved. The Co-operative Group will be hoping that the quarter can be seen as a physical manifestation of its values, which include commitment to community and environment.

Quarters can create a sense of place. Put a name on it and people can feel an affinity with a place and identify with the characteristics associated with it. As people are increasingly encouraged to live in city centres as opposed to the suburbs, residing within a distinct quarter makes it a lot easier to see yourself as part of a neighbourhood. When asked where you're from you might no longer have an area such as 'Chorlton' or 'Withington' on the tip of your tongue, but being able to say you live in 'the Northern Quarter' or 'the Green Quarter' helps whoever you are talking to identify a more specific locale than the more general term 'city centre', which encompasses a wider geographical area.

The advantages of this for developers are clear: from 2004 onwards, the Green Quarter was created just outside of Manchester City Centre, referring to the largest ever housing development in the city. Developers Crosby Homes promised a “self-contained urban oasis, combining 10 cutting-edge apartment blocks, business accommodation, hotel, leisure and retail facilities set against the precious commodity of lush landscaped open green space”. Sold on its close proximity to Victoria Station, the MEN Arena, the Printworks and leisure and retail opportunities, the developers highlight “the convenience factor of a lifestyle on their doorstep”. They tempt: “Are you addicted to city living, yet yearn for more than a splash of greenery? Do you enjoy the buzz of the urban social whirl and the spark of metropolitan business, but would relish having a haven to escape to?”¹²The green part? It was envisaged that more than half of the area would be public open space with lawns, tree-lined walkways, water features and landscaping.

A common example of the adoption of quarters as a regeneration strategy can be seen in cathedral quarters, which are found in towns and cities around the country, including Sheffield. Blackburn's town centre strategy¹³ works with “the inherent and distinct uses of existing areas”, including the cathedral quarter, which has “one of the most established identities in the town centre”, to “encourage a unique sense of place”. Heritage quarters are being established in towns and cities including Gravesend and around the harbour in Sunderland. University quarters include Stoke-on-Trent's catchily-named UniQ, a partnership between local education providers that aims to raise aspiration and increase skills in the town.

One of the most prominent types of quarters is the creative, or cultural quarter, which can be found in towns and cities around the country including: Southampton, Brighton, Folkestone, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leicester, Oldham, Liverpool, Stoke-on-Trent, Doncaster, Boston, Colchester, Leamington Spa, Wolverhampton, Bedford, Bury and Warrington¹⁴. The Local Government (LG) Improvement and Development Group put together a guide to cultural quarters, which it defines as “an existing cluster of creative and cultural industries, or the desire to create a cluster of creative and cultural industries”¹⁵. Quarters give creative people the opportunity to “work, live and socialise in one environment”, and the LG foresees the associated networks and facilities growing up around them. In Folkestone, Kent, the Creative Quarter was initiated by a charitable Trust buying and refurbishing, then letting, empty properties to creative businesses and artists, supplemented by events such as a book festival and art triennial¹⁶.

Whilst there is debate over how desirable it is to set out to create a creative area, as opposed to letting it evolve naturally over time (and there are also concerns about the knock-on effects of 'gentrifying' an area, including pricing out its previous occupants), Manchester's Northern Quarter, which was one of the first cultural quarters in the country along with Sheffield's Creative Industries Quarter, is seen as a successful example of what a cultural quarter should be and do. As the LG site observes, “the most successful examples of cultural quarters usually had some longstanding cultural activity or venues”. The Northern Quarter became established as an alternative to mainstream shops such as the Arndale Centre, its lower rents attracting a mix of cafes, bars, vintage clothes shops, independent book shops, record shops and galleries. It also has a distinctive nightlife, with a reputation for alternative gigs and club nights. Its proximity to the city centre shops, as well as transport interchanges such as Shudehill and Piccadilly, means the Northern Quarter is described in the Northern Quarter Development Framework Report of 2003 as: “A key piece in the city centre jigsaw, an area different in character and function to any other part of the city centre and of great strategic importance to Manchester as a city of distinctive quarters.”¹⁷

Increased investment in and focus on the Northern Quarter as an area came about after Manchester City Council commissioned a Northern Quarter Regeneration Strategy in the mid-nineties. This set out a vision for a mixed-use area, including increased residential space, as the Northern Quarter's role shifted from housing traditional industries such as textile manufacture to incubating new creative industries. The Northern Quarter Association was formed, a voluntary body comprising residents, representatives of trade and users of the area, and various environmental changes were made such as commissioning public art to make clear the area's identity as a cultural hot-spot. Around a decade later, the Northern Quarter Development Framework Report observed: “The individuality of the N4 remains – it is not currently a ‘corporate’ location, a place for large firms or for retail or leisure chains. It is the place for the independent sector, where residents of Manchester and visitors can buy high quality, unusual products and soak up the atmosphere of a truly ‘working quarter’.”¹

Councils are honing in on quarters and creating visions and plans for areas at postcode level, but quarters are part of a bigger strategy to put cities like Manchester on the world-map. Ensuring certain quarters cover specific functions ensures that Manchester is seen to possess everything you would expect to find in a world city. The Northern Quarter Development Framework Report explicitly states of the Northern Quarter: “This non mainstream offer is important for any ‘global’ city.”¹⁹

Cities change and evolve up over time. The name 'Northern Quarter' entered popular use because it referred to an area which already had a distinct identity and role in the city. Few people outside those who live in the Green Quarter refer to it as such (or would even have reason to think about it as a 'place'), and it remains to be seen whether the other quarters, or even the name NOMA, will enter popular conversation as place-markers.

Quarters have been at the back of my mind for a while as something I would like to know more about. Above is merely a collection of things I found interesting about them. If I had had more time and space I would have liked to have also thought about the creation of Spinningfields as a 'luxury shopping quarter', and thought more about other concepts such as urban villages and had a closer look at the overlap with quarters and the language that is used to define and sell them.

1 For a list of the seven city quarters outlined in Birmingham's Big City Plan see http://bigcityplan.birmingham.gov.uk/tag/seven-quarters/

2 For a list of Sheffield's eleven quarters see http://sccplugins.sheffield.gov.uk/urban_design/quarters_city_centre.htm

3 See http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/News/NOMAehwhere

4 For more on Corridor Manchester visit http://www.corridormanchester.com/

5 See http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/business/s/1008378_business_district_goahead

6 See http://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/511/conservation_areas/972/castlefield_conservation_area/2

7 See http://www.jewelleryquarter.net/

8 Download the Civic Quarter – Manchester Central Regeneration Framework from http://www.corridormanchester.com/_filestore/corridormanchester/civicquarter-manchester-central-regeneration-framework-1-pdf/original/CivicQuarter_Manchester_Central_Regeneration_Framework[1].pdf

9 For more on Millennium Projects, including Urbis, see http://www.millennium.gov.uk/cgi-site/awards.cgi?action=detail&id=87&t=2

10 See http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1435585_cromwells-new-stand-plan-for-statue-to-move-to-manchesters-new-medieval-quarter

11 See http://www.noma53.com/ for more information on what's proposed.

12 Visit the Green Quarter's web page at http://crosbylendlease.co.uk/?u=48_Welcome%2Bto%2Bgreenquarter

13 See http://www.blackburn.gov.uk/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.2472 for more information on the town centre strategy.

14 I came across this map of the UK's cultural quarters via a blog post on taCity (http://tacity.co.uk/2011/03/01/the-uks-cultural-quarters/): http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=206639182478297374758.00049c3bf7eb53f1c8a72&z=7

15 See http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=11224715

16 See http://www.creativequarterfolkestone.com/

17 Northern Quarter Development Framework Report, 2003

18 Northern Quarter Development Framework Report, 2003

19 Northern Quarter Development Framework Report, 2003

There are some great videos on Glasgow School of Art's Vimeo channel, including a lecture on culture-led regeneration, which looks at creative or cultural quarters in Manchester/Salford, Sheffield, Newcastle/Gateshead and Glasgow:

Ann Markusen, 'Arts & Culture as Regeneration: Four UK Cities Experiences' from GSA on Vimeo.

There is also a good lecture on the idea of creative cities and creative classes, and the differing experiences of big cities and small/medium size cities:

Graeme Evans, Creative Cities, Creative Spaces? Form and Function from GSA on Vimeo.

Self-publishers of the World Take Over! Salford Zine Library exhibition and film at Salford Art Gallery

2011-10-14T13:12:00.011+01:00

The Shrieking Violet was interviewed over the summer for a film compiled by Salford Zine Library which will be shown during a new exhibition at Salford Art Gallery. Craig Barr from Salford Zine Library interviewed self-publishers across Manchester, including OWT Creative, Vapid Kitten and Manchester Municipal Design Corporation, and invited zine makers from all over the world to send in short films of themselves. Also on show will be items from the Salford Zine Library collection, usually based at Islington Mill, Salford.

Watch the trailer, starring artist, actor, Hotpants Romance member and the Shrieking Violet issue 11 contributor Lowri Evans, which has music by Maria and the Gay:

Watch a short chapter from the film here:

And another here:

The exhibition and film will run from October 15 to January 29 at Salford Museum and Art Gallery, Peel Park Crescent, Salford M5 4WU.

Issue 16 of the Shrieking Violet will be dedicated to Bert Jansch (1943-2011)

2011-10-07T13:52:00.013+01:00

The Shrieking Violet issue 16, which is currently in production, will be dedicated to (as in I will recommend that people listen to his music while reading it) Bert Jansch, singer and guitarist in Pentangle and notable folk musician in his own right, who died from cancer earlier this week at the age of 67.

It will be the third issue of the Shrieking Violet to be dedicated to the memory of a musician who soundtracked my teenage years and passed away prematurely: Issue 8 was finished in April 2010, coinciding with the death of my musical hero Alex Chilton (Box Tops/Big Star) at the age of 59, and Trish Keenan of Broadcast passed away just as I was finishing issue 12, aged only 42.

One of the most compelling arguments for owning records (or books) in a physical format is that you never forget how you came into possession of those that sum up certain stages of your life.

As a big fan of folk and blues guitarists like John Fahey, I’d heard a lot about Bert Jansch but it wasn’t until a trip to Ireland after my A-levels to meet the editor of a fanzine I had been contributing to that I bought The Best of Bert Jansch (along with Fakebook by Yo La Tengo and a Hank Williams boxset, both of whom also became major musical obsessions) from a cosy, crowded record cum bookshop in Dublin. The record came to define the end of that summer, the changes in my life as I moved away from home to start university, and the passing of the days into autumn; there’s a darkness and sadness to Bert’s music behind its delicate, fingerpicked beauty and I have always thought that Bert’s was a music for the drawing in of the days, falling of leaves from the trees and the brief intensity of autumn light.

What makes Bert’s music for me is his warm, personal voice, which is one of the most distinctive and recognisable I’ve come across. As well as being one of my favourite guitarists, he’s also one of my favourite singers: his voice is plain, unadorned and unaffected. Bert’s is singing how it should be, unflashy and unshowy, complementary to rather than distracting from the guitar melodies which are at the centre of his songs.

As a shy, awkward teenager, when I started university my love of musicians like Bert Jansch helped me make friends. A fellow guitarist lived in my flat in halls and we traded CDs, introducing me to Bert Jansch’s 1968 album Birthday Blues.

This summer I stumbled across The Pentangle’s absolutely magical 1969 LP Basket of Light for £1 at a car boot sale at the end of my parents' road in Kent, a record I had long coveted on vinyl. Returning home, I rushed to put it on the stereo. My mum, who was lucky enough to be teenager during punk and post-punk, protested loudly and turned it off; she couldn’t stand it. In a reversal of the usual parent-child relationship, my taste in whimsical, gentle, introspective folk music made me a rebel!

Recipe callout

I am currently looking for a vegetarian/vegan recipe to include. If you would like to contribute a recipe, with photo of the finished dish, email Natalie.rose.bradbury@googlemail.com.

The 'public art' of Ford Madox Brown: Manchester's town hall murals

2011-09-23T16:19:00.021+01:00

If there is one building that every visitor to Manchester (not to mention every resident) must see, it's the town hall. A building founded on cotton and industry, it's a working monument to the trade that made Manchester what it was, from the statues of great men that stand in the entrance ways to the bee mosaics laid into its floor to ceilings that are covered in the coats of arms of Manchester's former trading destinations. The architect, Alfred Waterhouse, even aimed to capture the area's history in its architecture through a series of murals, realised as Ford Madox Brown's twelve scenes in the great hall. Unfortunately, unless you've been invited to an event in the great hall, it's unlikely you've made it up close to Brown's great work of public art. Partly this is because, as curator of Manchester Art gallery's new exhibition Ford Madox Brown: Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer, Julian Treuherz, says, “It's in use all the time. It's a working building”, and partly because the public by and large don't know they are allowed to look around the building. Now, as part of the exhibition, the murals will be freely open most Sundays.

When the murals were painted, says Julian, the town hall would have been more accessible (although, he admits, “the very, very poor would not have got through its door”) as it was regularly used as a venue for public meetings. Waterhouse intended art to be an integral part of the building, with murals throughout – though this eventually proved to costly and time-consuming as Brown's murals in the great hall alone took fifteen years to complete.

Commissioning murals for the building at all was, says Julian, an act of “complete daring” by the architect following the failure of similar schemes in the Houses of Parliament (Brown's proposals for the Houses of Parliament murals, which were not chosen, are in the Manchester Art Gallery show) and the Oxford Union which, unsuited the the UK's damp climate, soon faded. Waterhouse learned from this and the preparation for murals in Manchester town hall was carefully thought out. Hot air was installed behind the spaces where the murals would go, and stained glass kept to a minimum, free of flashy colours that would shine onto and distract from the paintings. A Gambier Parry style of spirit fresco was chosen, and the walls prepared so that the pigment would react with the surface of the walls – making them “truly architectural, not easel painting”, says Julian, as “they're meant to tell at a distance in this space”.

Whilst Waterhouse tried to ensure the murals were a success technically, Brown faced other difficulties. Winning the town hall commission is described by Julian as a 'lifeline' for Brown in the last years of his life, but it was not easy: he suffered from gout and ailments brought about by the cold in the building in winter and a stroke meant the loss temporarily of the use of his right hand. Nor did the council offer their unfailing support, vetoing his plan to end the series of murals with a depiction of the Peterloo Massacre. His painting of the opening of the Bridgewater Canal was also unpopular, with its pomp and circumstance and bright, bawdy colours.

Many of the events in the murals have only a “tenuous link to Manchester” as, explains Julian, “Manchester did not really have a history with lots of heroic events and great personalities.” A Roman Fort is built in Mancenion by a worker writhing with tattoos. Christianity is brought to Manchester following the baptism of King Edwin at York. Closer to home the Fly Shuttle is discovered at Bury, jeered by baying luddites. The world famous scientist John Dalton's discovery of natural gases, a pastoral scene, is overlooked by a curious, almost-cartoonish cow. Brown intended the murals to be 'typical' of Manchester's history rather than 'documentary'. In some cases he even imagines how the future might be, envisaging crowds of children at Humphrey Chetham's school. Animals and children recur throughout the pictures, which are often light-hearted. As Julian says, Brown's paintings are humorous, containing “a lot of fun and wit and satire”. He is “anti-hierarchy and egalitarian” as an artist and “emphasises role of ordinary people, has a lot of fun at the expense of authority figures.” He paints his friends, family and patrons into the pictures – and even himself as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

As the accompanying exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery shows, Brown was in his element as a storyteller. Passionate about literature, he often depicted scenes from Shakespeare and other great works, for example creating series of narrative stained glass windows both for churches and private houses.

Brown believed in “equality between the fine and decorative arts”, designing many of the frames for his paintings, and the exhibition also displays examples of his furniture. He also excelled as a portrait painter, eliciting a candid directness from his sitters, among them Madeleine Scott, daughter of the famous Guardian editor CP Scott, perched atop a then-fashionable tricycle. Another of his most striking paintings, 'Mauvais Sujet (The Writing Lesson)', which depicts a sensuous young girl biting into an apple, her hair in disarray, shows Brown's concern for society: proceeds went to Lancashire Relief Fund to help those affected by the Lancashire cotton famine.

Brown's talent for storytelling and portraiture combine in pictures such as the vivid 'Last of England', where you can see the steely determination on the emigrants' faces, and 'Work', one of his best known paintings. Described by Julian as showing “a humble incident – the type you wouldn't have been allowed to exhibit in the Royal Academy”, it comprises a street scene based around the laying of a sewer in London. Presented is a cross-section of nineteenth century life, from the rich on horseback to workers bent over in toil, right down to the unemployed, beggars and the very poor – those who had to sell wild plants such as chickweed in the street. In the background, layers of advertisements on the wall show the concerns of the time and reflect Brown's interests, including posters for workers' colleges, and the scene is watched over by the social thinker Thomas Carlyle. As Julian explains: “Ford Madox Brown challenged prevailing ideas of what art should be. Victorian artists were governed by decorum. They did not paint life as we saw it in the street.”

At £8 for entry, perhaps the Art Gallery show is suited to enthusiasts. But even when the exhibition has finished, the town hall murals are accessible to the public – just ask at the front desk and, as long as there are no events on, you should be able to wander the great hall at your will.

Ford Madox Brown: Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer, opens at Manchester Art Gallery, Mosley Street, on Saturday September 24 and runs until Sunday January 29 2011. Entry is £8 for adults, £6 for concessions and free for under-18s.

www.manchestergalleries.org

Photos used by permission of Manchester Art Gallery (click for larger images)

Meeting William Mitchell (the modernist magazine issue 2)

2011-09-07T19:37:00.073+01:00

"Today it has become necessary to demolish the myth of the 'star' artist who only produces masterpieces for a small group of ultra-intelligent people...the artist must step down from his pedestal and be prepared to make a sign for a butcher's shop (if he knows how to do it). The artist must cast off the last rags of romanticism and become active as a man among men, well up in present-day techniques, materials and working methods. The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing."

Bruno Munari, Design as Art, 1966

At the start of July I traveled to London to meet William Mitchell, a prominent post-war architectural sculptor (and innovator in the use of materials such as a new type of concrete called Faircrete) whose work I have been visiting across Greater Manchester and Liverpool over the past year. I spent the afternoon with Mitchell and his wife Joy at their flat in Marylebone, where we watched black and white archive footage from several episodes of Tomorrow's World that were presented by Mitchell (he can't remember exactly when), and their local chip shop, where the couple's lively anecdotes continued (and lunch was paid for with the flourish of a £50 note).

We discussed things including: industrial design (Mitchell helped design the first 125 and 250 mph trains, which were tested at Marylebone); Prince Philip's (in)famous reaction "What the hell is that?" to his Minut Men sculptures outside Salford University (then Salford Technical College) when the Allerton Building was opened in 1967 (ironically, says Mitchell, the Prince had been heard to complain of a "lack of adventurousness" in contemporary architecture, and Mitchell's connection to Prince Philip goes back further, to when they both served in the navy during the war); the big personalities and back stories behind some of Manchester's most high profile buildings (such as the Piccadilly Hotel in Piccadilly Gardens, now the Ramada); his many commissions across the world and working with groups such as schoolchildren; having his own company, William Mitchell Design Consultants Group; Mitchell's numerous, sometimes controversial, speaking engagements; his Dodi and Diana memorial in Harrods; the rediscovery and reassessment of his work, including the renovation of a mural in Hawaii; public space and how to define 'public art'; the dying out of skills such as mosaic making, and why mosaics are not widely commissioned any more; the stigma attached to social housing, even in the post-war period; and the market-led state of art and architecture today ("it's not the quality of the art that makes the headlines but the record prices”).

The maquette for the doors to Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral hangs in the entrance to the Mitchells' flat, which also contains pieces of furniture he made, including two tables in the same style as his mosaic in the Piccadilly Hotel (possibly my favourite Mitchell piece) inset with waste products such as bits of old pianos. "You forget to look at them," said his wife, but the couple kindly moved their furniture around while I took photos.

The text below is a slightly longer version of the interview that will appear in Issue 2 of the modernist, accompanied by photos supplied by the Mitchells. the modernist is quarterly publication produced by Manchester Modernist Society. Issues cost £3.75 each — or £15 for a subscription (including postage).

Issue 2, which is themed 'brilliant', also features: Ben Tallis on Orford Ness; Eddy Rhead on the Arndale's Cromford Court set; Stephen Hale on painter Kit Wood; Laura Gaither on Conrad collectibles; Jack Hale on Salford's Stella Maris Salvation Army centre; Matthew Whitfield on Southgate, Runcorn; Richard Brook on Manchester's District Bank; and news and reviews.

Issue 2 will be launched, with wine, at Ferrious (in a converted railway arch on Whitworth Street West) on Thursday September 15 from 6-8pm.

It will also be available from Cornerhouse bookshop, Magma and RIBA Hub in Manchester, News from Nowhere in Liverpool, Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, Site gallery in Sheffield, Aye-Aye books in Glasgow, Magma and Tate Modern bookshops in London, PLACE in Belfast, do you read me?! in Berlin, Papercut in Stockholm, or online here.

William Mitchell: Artist, Designer, Inventor

A man, armed with a tube, is doodling giant-scale on a concrete wall. Dressed in white overalls he explains, from behind a protective helmet, that he is blasting the wall with grit, enthusiastically advocating the technique's potential for widespread decorative use. The man is William Mitchell, artist, designer, innovator, inventor – and sometime television personality. Mitchell made an entertaining presenter and the programme demonstrating sandblasting was just one of the episodes of Tomorrow's World he was asked to present because “I could talk at the same time and didn't confuse people with art”. He remembers,“I got lots of letters from doctors saying I would die at a very young age as my lungs would be filled with dust and to stop what I was doing” – although at 86 he is still very much alive and opinionated.

In the 1960s and '70s Mitchell, who had studied Industrial Design at the Royal College of Art, pioneered new techniques and materials, working with other professions such as architects, engineers and builders. In another edition of Tomorrow's World, Mitchell balances on a plank of wood above a building site in Croydon, where he is installing a textured concrete wall in an office block. He explains: “There were not many people in my line of work who would go out on the roof with the builders. That was unusual. If it was now I would have had to wear protective clothing I couldn't even get up the stairs in.” The most remarkable episode, though, is that in which he demonstrates a new technique he has come up with for advertising – an unrealised plan that have illuminated Manchester's Piccadilly Gardens with a 350ft by 65ft sign comprising thousands of lightbulbs triggered by films and photoelectric cells. Mitchell says you can still see the holes on Piccadilly Plaza where the bulbs would have gone.

Planners across the UK – and as far afield as America and Hawaii – wanted a piece of Mitchell for their developments, and he undertook hundreds of public and private commissions. These range from the small, functional and unobtrusive – clocks in schools, motorway detailing – to the grand – the massive (in Mitchell's eyes, "almost barbaric") doors to Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral (the design for which had to be signed off by the Pope) and, later, the Egyptian Room at Harrods. Mitchell was so prolific he can't remember the exact location and details of each artwork, but there are a several in some of Manchester's most striking and iconic Modernist buildings – a bold fibreglass mural in the entrance to the plush CIS Tower, panels around the lift shaft in the snaking Gateway House on Piccadilly Approach and sculptured decoration covering the Humanities Building at the University of Manchester.

Mitchell's most publicly visible work in Manchester and Salford is his Minut Men, three giant concrete monsters outside the University of Salford. Mitchell says he had to set them on fire to get the plastic moulds off* (something he notes would never be allowed today, especially so close to the main road!), and the figures are extraordinarily detailed, covered with patterns and inlaid with mosaic. He explains: “I wanted to do something with the material which was not indicative of trying to be something else. As it was new, let it be new. It had as much to do with the practicality and being outside. I also had to take into account, was it waterproof and was it vandal proof?”

Often, says Mitchell, his artworks used a “very, very involved process”, a challenge to himself to prove they were possible. He remembers: “It was almost an exercise in character building, the artworks were so hard to get to the finish of!” Another unusual use of materials can be seen in the epic mosaic, gleaming with objects such as bottle tops and textured by the addition of gravel, that climbs the full height of the staircase in the Piccadilly Hotel in Manchester's Piccadilly Gardens. Made of bits of furniture and pianos set in resin, Mitchell says "there's a richness to it". It took up the whole of his studio and he had a whole team sanding it down as he wanted to show “there was still the possibility of doing hand craftwork”.

Mitchell finds public art to be a problematic concept: “One of the troubles of public art is the public are not asked whether or not they want it.” Yet you can tell Mitchell is proud of the artworks which people have taken to heart: he was pleased to hear of a fashion show being held in front of the Minut Men in Salford, and recounts that Salford students defended the figures from attack by rivals from Manchester University. He even tells a story of tenants taking it upon themselves to clean one of his artworks in a council block. Mitchell also considers his fantastical creatures for the water gardens in Harlow, Essex – modern day gargoyles for a new town – to be a success. Too often, he says, artworks of the period were “thought of as brooches to stick on the building”, whereas art needs to “give a sense of the international, community and place”. Harlow, he thinks, was different as “they were starting to put an infrastructure in, an environment”.

Mitchell would like to see a percentage for public art built into new developments today: “I think it's appalling architects don't consider art. It is so categorised today, art and architecture. There isn't any interrelationship to my mind. At one time there was the possibility of an integrated art form but now you don't get anything like that.

“Every square inch in London is built up as far as ground level. Architecturally, buildings take no notice of the pedestrian. Where the building hits the ground is more like the basement than a public thoroughfare.”

Today, some of Mitchell's works have already been demolished, whereas others are in buildings that have fallen out of favour and face uncertain futures. He's stoical about artworks being lost when buildings are knocked down, although he thinks it's important that “some are kept to give an idea of what the time was like and the type of things you could do”. The social and historical significance of these remarkable artworks is now being reassessed. In Islington, London in 2008, one of Mitchell's works for a school was the first mural of its kind to be listed in its own right, not in the context of the listing of the building to which it was attached. In a library in Kirkby near Liverpool too, a mural has recently been restored and reinstalled. It had languished in storage after the library, ironically, “took it down to be modern”. Those trying (unsuccessfully so far) to get the Turnpike Centre in Leigh listed, which, when it was opened in 1971 featured a new, open-plan library design, also highlight Mitchell's distinctive concrete frieze on the front.

Mitchell still receives requests to undertake commissions, mainly from the Far East, where he says "the money is". He is currently working on a book, which will be “part instruction book” (“always paint the concrete”, he insists) and “part adventure book”. There couldn't be anything more appropriate for this brilliant artist. As he sums up his long career, “It has been an adventure! I was a person of my time. Nowadays I'd be put in a box!"

* Rumour has it that some of the moulds still hang in the Modernist bungalow built by the Allerton Building's architect John Parkinson Whittle in Didsbury as his family home.

For photos and more information about the works discussed above visit Mitchell's extensive website at www.william-mitchell.com.

If you want to find out more

A Pathe Newsreel of Mitchell at work in 1960:

CEMENT MURALS

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An essay by Dawn Pereira, who has been researching public art commissioned by the London County Council at the University of East London, on Mitchell's legacy

A resource which provides a fascinating introduction into the influence of art on town planning in post-war Britain, with an overview of the Festival of Britain, new towns, housing, comprehensive education etc

Jonathan Schofield on concrete public art in Manchester

The Shrieking Violet is two! Issue 15

2011-08-19T23:36:00.027+01:00

Issue 15 of the Shrieking Violet is out now, roughly coinciding with the fanzine's second birthday (which would have been August 1 if real life hadn't got in the way!).

It features a passionate defence of urban green space Birley Fields (under threat from MMU's new 'super campus') by 'lefty, greeny veggie', Keith Reynolds, who writes the blog Valiant Veggie about creating a mini-wildlife habitat on a balcony in inner-city Hulme, as recently featured in the Manchester Evening News. Keith is "passionate about his work (in mental health), community development, nature and green issues and making stumbling efforts to be "the change he'd like to see in the world".

Brian Rosa, an artist, curator, urban researcher and PhD candidate in human geography at The University of Manchester, writes about Manchester as the 'original modern' city.

John Mather is a Civil Engineer by profession. His passion for swimming has led him to compete in Windermere's 'Great North Swim' and also swim between Scotland's Western Isles. He once ventured into Siberia's (very cold) Lake Baikal. John has returned closer to home to contribute a page about Levenshulme Baths from an illustrated guide he is compiling to Greater Manchester's swimming pools.

I have written a mini-guide to the summer wildflowers which can be commonly found in Manchester, inspired by the nature writer Richard Mabey whose most recent book is entitled Weeds: A Cultural History (listen to Mabey in the Wild, his recent Radio 4 mini-series on wildflowers here). I have also included my interview with Ancoats Peeps artist Dan Dubowitz.

The Shrieking Violet is all about taking inspiration from the everyday, and Sam Lewis from London-based band Being There, who have just recorded their debut album, asks whether the American beat poet Frank O'Hara was saying something or nothing. Alex Boswell has drawn a picture of Frank O'Hara.

Bury artist and poet Josef Minta has contributed some poems accompanied by an illustration. He has just published his first collection of poems and images for the Kindle, called The Abbreviated Day.

Manu Pérez, who is originally from Seville but lives and works in Manchester, has written a recipe for traditional Spanish Easter dish torrijas (this fanzine has been a long while in the making!).

The cover is by Manchester-based graphic designer Alyson Exall.

Read issue 15 online here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More fanzines

Free paper copies have been left in various locations around the city centre such as Good Grief! shop, Oklahoma, Koffee Pot, Common, An Outlet, Manchester Craft Centre, Nexus Art Cafe and Piccadilly Records. The fanzine can be downloaded and printed here. Issues 1-14 can also be downloaded here.

To request a free copy in the post email Natalie.Rose.Bradbury@googlemail.com. Email this address also if you would like to contribute to future editions or are interested in helping out with making the design more interesting and exciting, or join the facebook group here.

More news

The Manchester's Modernist Heroines walk (a collaborative project with Manchester Modernist Society and the Loiterers Resistance Movement) will be repeated on Saturday September 3 during the DIY Feminist Festival. Meet at 2pm in Platt Fields Park. For more information see www.nowhere-fest.blogspot.com.

Ancoats Peeps: Dan Dubowitz and the Presence of Absence

2011-07-16T01:33:00.017+01:00

Walking around Ancoats, it's hard to believe it was the birthplace of the industrial revolution, that the quiet, cobblestoned streets would once have been ringing with the clog-heavy footsteps of thousands of workers crowding into the mills. Almost as hard to imagine is that businesses still operated out of its centuries-old mills well into the twentieth century, clinging on even as production was moved to cheaper factories in the developing world. Walk around the area for long enough, though, and you start to spot things. Brass portholes, barely noticeable, are attached to the outside of boarded up mills and empty buildings. Many look from a distance like just another piece of the buildings, pock-marked as they are with functional bits of metal. Crouch down, though, and peep, and you're looking into another world, a place where workers have just popped out for lunch and could be back at any time. At the end of each of the Ancoats Peeps is a scene, a tiny bit of history; close-ups of machinery, slowly rotating objects, a room with workers' pin-ups still on the wall, the inside of a public toilet. Some have a photographic stillness – until you realise a tiny detail is moving. You're not really sure what you're looking at, or even where you're looking at, but want to look again and again and again, waiting for someone to return or something to come back to life and spring into production again.

The Ancoats Peeps, of which there around a dozen in total, dotted about Ancoats (their exact number and location is delightfully mysterious), are part of a project that's spanned the best part of the last decade. When the last of industry was moving out of the area and buildings had been compulsorily purchased for redevelopment, the Ancoats Urban Village Company decided to hold a nationwide competition for an artist to undertake a public sculpture as part of the regeneration of the area, which was by then run-down and crime ridden. Artist and architect Dan Dubowitz won the commission; however, when he arrived in Ancoats in 2003, he was clear that a sculpture would not be right for the area. “I went and handed the cheque back. The area doesn't need another visual object to try and define it. There is a tendency towards edifices and big objects but Ancoats needed something subtle you would stumble across. It needed something about the whole area and the identity of the area that people could be involved in. The whole area is a sculpture in a way, a visual beast.”

Whilst most of the historic mills of Ancoats (those that weren't victims of arson) are still standing, in many ways the area is being rebuilt all over again. Not just in conversions and new apartment blocks, but culturally, as an area, in people's perceptions, as a place to live and work, a community, and it was this that Dan found he needed to address – why regenerate the area, when it was derelict, over any other part of the city, instead of just leaving it to rot or knocking it down and starting all over again? He explained: “I discovered a real problem that no object could ever address, which was cultural continuity. Ancoats has been such an important place and about certain things – capitalism and communism, written about by people like Engels – and now it's a wasteland. It's going from industrial to domesticity. I had to ask: 'How is it going to be about that if it was once about dark Satanic mills? What is Ancoats going to be used for next?' There aren't really professions whose job it is to ask those questions but they still need to be brought to the table on a weekly basis and asked over again. I was asking, 'If we're going to build, what should we be building and why?'"

Dan has experience of working on cultural masterplans around the country, although he admits: “Some of them don't really kick off and get that far. Public art is a very fraught field. The idea that art is something that beautifies an area does not help. So often the brief of an artist is to try to rescue something, for example liven up a public space when they decide it needs something. There is a huge value in involving an artist at an early stage – but it shouldn't be assumed that it will lead to a physical artwork.” The regeneration company agreed to let Dan approach the project organically. Dan was given his own studio and set about deciding what form his involvement as an artist should take. He started by exploring Ancoats and its stories, getting to know the dynamics of the area and the diaspora of its people by conducting hundreds of interviews. “There were still one or two man businesses in Ancoats – little guys with repair shops hanging on in corners. Lots of people have their own stories from different periods.”

Dan had decided to focus on art rather than architecture when he realised he was more interested in wastelands and derelict buildings, and working with what was already there, than putting new buildings up. Once he had gained access to the deserted mills of Ancoats, he starting documenting the place as he found it: “Once I got inside I'd just stay there all day. I developed a kind of photography using very long exposures and through that I got to know the place.” The resulting photos are beautiful. You feel like you're looking at a scene from a fairytale like sleeping beauty. Once industry moved out, nature moved in. Under glass ceilings, mills become greenhouses, overgrown with ferns and trees. In other cases, whole rooms were found intact, walled up. Some of these photos now sit in light-boxes in Cutting Room Square – the first ever public square in Ancoats, and another product of the regeneration process.

Part of the success of the Ancoats Peeps is that Dan was working with a diverse team that included not just town planners, engineers, architects and a landscape designer but a photographer and archaeologists. The latter unearthed all sorts of artefacts relating to the area's history, including eighteenth century ladies' shoes and a penny that had lain undisturbed in a roof of a mill since it was built. Dan realised the value of leaving things where they were: “I said, if we found things walled up, instead of putting things in a museum why don't we put them back? The team really understood the wider ramifications of things we found and their interest to wider types of people.” Dan appreciated the willingness of different members to bring their expertise to the team, but also “step outside the group and think outside the box”. There was real commitment to the area: “We sat in a room and knew that if we all made decisions this part of the city would be different. We weren't interested in writing reports that would just sit on a shelf.” He admits: “Ancoats was all-consuming. It took over my whole life.The space is really quite special. It really got under the skins of people. It has a spirit. It's something with no rational words, that you can't put your finger on.”

Dan described the creation and siting of the Peeps as “a long and complicated process”. Each Peep was installed on a building site – some of which were then themselves abandoned and became the new ruins of Ancoats, half-built skeletons, when the slump and depression hit (in one case, Dan had to steal in and rescue a Peep from a building whose owners had gone in to receivership). Dan ended up banning the use of the word “art”, preferring the word “features” for his work, and funding came from the European Regional Development Fund rather than the usual arts channels. The reasoning was that “the Peeps would be features in the street and a part of the streetscape, where you'd usually put benches”.

Whilst the buildings have had shell repairs to stop their deterioration, their fate is still far from decided. Though they are no longer ruins, several are still empty and “frozen in a kind of limbo”. However, Dan sees the completion of the part new-build Ice Plant residential development, which recently hosted an exhibition of his photos as well as a display of artefacts rescued from the area, as a turning point. With the Halle orchestra looking at moving into St Peter's church, he'd like to see the area buzz with culture and become a hive for arts activity – “like Victoria Baths”. Mainly, he acknowledges, “it just needs more people in it”. The regeneration of the area has created its own set of tales, and Dan and the team recently ran a weekend of walks around the area telling the story of the Peeps, which attracted 1,000 people – including former workers who came back to reminisce (one visitor even recognised themselves in some photos of Whit Walks that they'd forgotten existed). It's quite a transformation for an area that Dan admits “was such a no-go part of the city”. Now the project has come to a natural conclusion, Dan reflects: “We all wanted to see the area change in people's minds – we hope if those 1,000 people begin to see what we see then they will tell another 1,000 people.”

For more information and to purchase the accompanying book, The Peeps: The Presence of Absence, published by Manchester University Press, visit www.ancoatspeeps.com.

For more information on Dan's other work visit www.civicworks.net.

Folkestone Triennial: A Million Miles from Home

2011-07-01T23:35:00.024+01:00

Once, Folkestone was a destination. Authors from Charles Dickens to Agatha Christie found inspiration in the town and so popular was it with those with money and leisure that a bar in the Grand Hotel is named after Mrs Keppels, the mistress of once frequent visitor Edward VII. It's hard to imagine its glory days now. Like so many other seaside towns, which fell out of favour in the era of cheap overseas holidays, it's enjoyed better times. The opening of the Channel Tunnel saw off ferries to France and even the Orient Express, which until recently passed through Folkestone on its way to the continent, has ceased to stop at the harbour station. In the past few years, a new (extremely ugly) shopping centre has been built in an attempt to revitalise the declining town centre, and the Folkestone Triennial initiated, aiming to reinvigorate the town culturally.

The first festival, in 2008, installed works by leading artists in prominent places around the town, inspired by both Folkestone's heritage and the cultural baggage of seaside towns – from teen pregnancy to pigeons. Some of the artworks have become permanent, and settled into the fabric of the town – Richard Wentworth's plaques denoting non-native tree species, Tracy Emin's casts of discarded children's items, Mark Wallinger's cliff-top pebbles commemorating the lives of local men lost in the first world war and Richard Wilson's beach huts, refashioned from a former crazy golf course. The second Folkestone Triennial builds on the first, with international artists opening up the town's hidden, deserted and overlooked places (whether through dereliction, decline or obsolescence), from lowly back rooms and storage spaces to a grand Masonic Hall. I went to secondary school in Folkestone, and the Triennial is not just an art treasure hunt, challenging you to find works scattered about the town, but an alternative guidebook, taking you from the West End to the East Cliff and giving a new perspective on the sights in between.

One space usually unseen by the public is a dank, dark deckchair store underneath the cliff-top Leas promenade, where French-Algerian artist Zineb Sedira's films play on mismatched video screens around the room in an effective, immersive installation. Her films document two Algerian lighthouses and the sometimes isolated lives experienced by those who work in them. Tucked away in a corner of the south east, Folkestone isn't really on the way to anywhere except France and, watching Sedira's films in a space cut into the cliff, it feels like you're detached from the rest of the world, on an island even, protected from the waves that crash against the rocks on screen. It's hard to forget that Calais is 30 miles from Folkestone – less than half the distance to London, and a number of works dwell on themes of immigration, displacement and cultural alienation. These include a floor of office space in the high street given over to an installation by Israeli artist Smadar Dreyfus, where visitors stumble around different rooms, filled with the sounds of children's classrooms. The total darkness and unfamiliarity mean it's completely disorientating.

Right at the Western end of the Leas is what looks, if you notice it at all, like an unusually large piece of topiary. Hidden below a gently swaying mass of leaves is a Martello tower, one of many solid, round structures that were built to defend the coast against Napoleonic attack. They still stand along the Kent coast in various states of repair, from crumbled ruins to now-desirable house conversions. This Martello tower is so deserted it has gone beyond a ruin to a jungle, and Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias has cut a wavy path up to it through the undergrowth. With leaves above your head, and the foliage multiplied by mirrors and castings of branches, it's like you're walking into a hedge. You emerge into a viewing platform, separated from the Martello tower by a living moat of brambles and nettles, to admire the tower. It might be hidden, but it's still standing after centuries in front of the ancient Kent hills.

The tower's nearest neighbours are mansions overlooking the sea set in spacious, sun-catching grounds. On the same stretch, and slightly further towards the town, is the massive Grand Hotel. With vintage open-top Jaguars parked outside and afternoon tea served to live music on a grand piano, it's one of the few places where it's possible to imagine how glamorous Folkestone would once have been. Yet Brazilian artist Tonico Lemos Auad leads you through the vast, spacious rooms with plush carpets and elaborate wallpaper to a plain back-room with floorboards and old furniture – a part of the hotel that isn't normally seen by visitors. It houses a giant scratchcard which visitors are invited to scrape to reveal images of seaside festivals, from Brazilian carnivals to Folkestone's annual Charivari parade. Auad has also placed work in another sometimes hidden space, down at the harbour – low tide reveals Carrancas, carved figureheads inspired by Brazilian good-luck talismans, attached to poles amongst the boats that have come to rest on the (usually submerged) harbour mud.

At the nearby Harbour station, the train tracks snake right out into the sea on a pier for trains to be loaded onto boats. A sculpture by Paloma Varga Weisz has landed on the tracks, on top of what could be a magic carpet – only it's been grounded and Folkestone's its final destination. The figures on the rug are going nowhere, and neither is anyone else – the station was closed in 2009. The station and pier are decrepit, but have spectacular views over the sea to the White Cliffs of Dover, where cross-channel traffic continues.

By the sea a bell, removed from a church because it no longer fits the tuning of the other bells, is suspended over wasteland, waiting for passers-by to ring it. The surrounding area is also in suspense – once home to the Rotunda fun fair, source of memories of childhood birthday parties and, when we were older, Friday night trips to the rides, it was cleared for redevelopment (a supermarket, casino, leisure complex and housing were all suggested for the site), before the recession and a tussle over opposing plans for the land put development on hold.

The other side of the Harbour, at Sunny Sands, the town's sandy beach, I was sceptical about seeing Cornelia Parker's mermaid sculpture, thinking I wouldn't find much of interest in a sculpture copied from an iconic artwork so associated with another place. In real life though the figure, cast from a local woman, is rather lovely – she stares out to sea, calm and serene on a rock above the crowded chaos of beachgoers with their personal stereos, livid skin and screaming children.

Back up the cliff, in the town, Hew Locke has placed colourfully painted wooden boats on a bright sea of lightbulbs in secluded St Eanswythe's Church. Hanging below the wooden beams of the roof (you realise the nave of the church itself is shaped like an upturned boat), and above antique wooden pews, the boats make you notice the beauty of the friezes and stained glass windows that are already there.

One sign of the town's changing fortunes is the restoration and reopening of the Leas Lift, a Victorian water lift. £1 gets you up or down the cliff – soundtracked by an installation by Martin Creed. I took the Lift up the cliff, and the ascent is matched by a musical composition performed by local string players. It rises like a musical scale, starting off with a low grinding and ending in a high pitch, in a reassuringly smooth transition as the lift stutters and clacks its way towards the Leas.

Other highlights of the festival include Spencer Finch's giant colour wheel and flags, changed daily to match the colour of the sea. Strange Cargo, who have long been doing good projects in the town, complement the Triennial's artworks with plaques drawing your attention to the quirkier aspects of the town's history, drawn from the memories of local people. Perhaps best of all, though, are Ruth Ewan's subtle interventions into the town's timing. She has placed clocks in prominent (and some not so prominent) places in the town, from a pub to a fireplace in the woodlined bar of the Grand Hotel, next to important-looking portraits, to the former town hall and even an entirely new clock on the Leas. The clocks have been changed to French republican time – meaning they only go up to ten, making you do a double take and look again more closely!

It's not often enough you get to be a tourist in your home town. It's three years since I last spent any significant amount of time in the area, but Folkestone's transformation from the place where I grew up has been considerable with new bars, cafes, galleries, independent businesses and venues, and even a University College Folkestone. The Triennial seems to be having a knock-on effect, with its own fringe festival this year – something to explore next time I visit!

Folkestone Triennial is free and runs until September 25.

www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk

the modernist magazine and other news

2011-06-21T22:22:00.015+01:00

the modernist is a new, quarterly magazine for lovers of modernism, published by Manchester Modernist Society. Whilst it leans towards architecture and design, primarily in the North West, I was asked to write an article about the constructed language Esperanto, which shares many of modernism's ideals. The article came about following a chance discussion about encountering a strange, early to mid twentieth century young people's magazine (published in Manchester) in the National Co-operative Archive called Our Circle which was so enthused by a Esperanto and its possibilities for fostering international freedom and contributing to world peace and universal brotherhood that it published stories, lessons and correspondence from its readers in Esperanto.

The theme of the first issue is 'bold', and other contributions include: a foreword by Jonathan Meades; Blackburn market; Aidan Turner-Bishop on cooling towers; Richard Brook on an iconic logo; Dr Steve Millington on the Mancunian Way; Matthew Whitfield on the 1965 plan for Liverpool; David Oates' photos of Oscar Niemeyer's Brazil; Eddy Rhead on tripe restaurants; Stephen Hale on mods; and news and reviews.

the modernist will be launched at CUBE gallery on Thursday June 23 from 6.30-8.30pm, with wine!

Issues cost just £3.75 — or £15 for a subscription (including postage).

It is available from Cornerhouse bookshop in Manchester, Aye-Aye books in Glasgow, News from Nowhere in Liverpool and Do You Read Me in Berlin and can be purchased online here.

Read more about it at www.the-modernist-mag.co.uk.

Read it online here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More architecture

In other news:

Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention went really well. Thanks to everyone who came and browsed, helped sell out Deerly Beloved Bakery's stall, ran and took part in lino-cutting and embroidery and fanzine-making workshops and watched the film and spoke and listened. There are a few write-ups floating around, as well as lots of photos taken by Alex Zamora from Fever Zine here, and there are some more photos here and here and here. Maybe there will be something similar next year...

More news:

Hayley Flynn nominated The Shrieking Violet in the monthly blog section of Blank Pages, Blank Media's magazine, which meant I had to write about my blogging experience then nominate a blog (my choice was not very imaginative!).

Read it here:

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Open publication - Free publishing - More art

Rotherham Zine Library asked me to do an interview about The Shrieking Violet fanzine! Read it here.

54th Venice Biennale

2011-06-18T21:39:00.016+01:00

Four years ago I visited Venice for the first time, an impromptu trip booked a couple of days beforehand to join a friend at the Biennale. It was a rewarding experience – Venice is the ideal city to wander round unplanned and without a map – in fact it's best experienced lost as you never know what's waiting around the next corner. I was overwhelmed not just by the canals and narrow passageways, but excited and inspired by a few days of wandering around a city taken over by art. As well as the two main Biennale venues – the Arsenale and the Giardini – I constantly stumbled across pavilions spread throughout the city, peering at art tucked into the corners and attic spaces of palazzos, on show right next to the ever-present, gently lapping, intensely blue water. I had to miss the Biennale two years ago, as Venice can be a very expensive city to visit, especially when unemployed. Being in the lucky position of having a job meant funds permitted me to attend this year, but it was a flying visit with a day at the Giardini and a day at the Arsenale and not as much time as I would have liked to have visited the independent pavilions.

Even by the standards of Venice – itself a floating, watery marvel (for a short documentary about how Venice 'works' visit http://vimeo.com/21688538), the Arsenale is spectacular, a series of vast spaces where ships were once built and various outbuildings which still contain the rusty, broken remnants of machinery. I found it all too easy to be distracted from the art by the surroundings and much of the art that stood out for me was that which took on the epic space by standing up to the hefty brick columns and reaching upwards to the high ceilings. Adrian Villar Rojas' dense display of monumental clay sculptures stand like cracked, uprooted trees in the Argentinian pavilion, and other highlights are some of the para-pavilions – pavilions constructed by artists across the Biennale to house the work of other artists.

Song Dong's para-pavilion makes an impressive introduction to the Arsenale – a recreation of a traditional Chinese home surrounded by a maze of wardrobes salvaged from local families. Each is similar but subtly different – remnants of their past still stick to them including scraps of wallpaper and stickers, reminders of the individuals that once owned them – although they're all connected by a recurring green curtain. It seems appropriate that the parapavilion houses personal work by both Moroccan Yto Barraba and Ryan Gander. Barraba's plays with the reliability of memory – Family Tree is built from the faded, leftover spaces where photographs once sat on the wall of a family home, and her film Hand-Me Downs is a series of childhood stories effectively set to found film footage – whilst Gander's is a tiny self-portrait of the artist sprawled out of his wheelchair.

Another highlight at the Arsenale is Christian Marclay's The Clock, a rare opportunity to forget your surroundings – and a film in which you could quite easily lose yourself. The Clock is a twenty four hour collage of clips which literally follows the clock around the day, capturing the suspense as well as the boredom of waiting for the time to change – and rousing a few laughs from visitors stretched out on sofas and settled down to escape the torrential rain outside.

I found the shows at the Giardini, where countries have their own pavilion in the grounds, for the most part, more interesting. This year there was a trend towards transforming the pavilions until they were unrecognisable – the Dutch pavilion has been reinvented as a theatre because, as we're told in the show, it's completely unsuited to showing art despite being an icon of modernist architecture. Greece's is reclad in wood and filled with water, the visitor experience stripped down to crossing a bridge across a new, artificial lagoon. The roof has been removed from the British pavilion, where Mike Nelson's installation I, Imposter recreates a dwelling in Istanbul, down to the smells and head-ducking lowness of the ceilings. Visitors are left to wander round a series of rooms which bear the traces of recent human activity – as if someone's just left. It's eerily realistic, and the inclusion of two darkrooms – hung with photos of buildings which inspired the work – make make you suspend your disbelief and wonder if you might be in a 'real' building, transported piece by piece to Venice and painstakingly rebuilt.

Although I preferred pavilions which stuck to one or two artists, such as the understated elegance of the Austrian pavilion, which houses sculptures and films by Markus Schinwald, and the interplay between the sculpture of father and son Dominik and Jiří (who stopped making sculpture before his son was born) Lang in the Czech pavilion, rather than group shows, other highlights at the Giardini include Jan Švankmajer's disquieting and subtly ominous 1968 film The Garden in the thought-provoking Danish Pavilion, themed around free speech. In the main venue at the Giardini, Ryan Gander's imagining of what a 25 euro coin would look like, stuck to the floor as if it's landed from the future, is worth a look (if you don't walk straight over it!), and I enjoyed Amalia Pica's work, including Venn Diagram, which goes back to the censorship facing society in her native Argentina during the dictatorship of the 1970s.

One thing I didn't remember from my last visit to the Biennale is how bizarre and surreal the experience can be. Much of the work consists of grotesque spectacle – thousands of stuffed pigeons overlook visitors to the Giardini, placed there by artist Maurizio Cattelan, whilst Hong Kong's Frog King (inhabiting a cavern that's like a bit of Camden Market transported to Venice) greets visitors outside the Arsenale. Italy's pavilion, bewildering and often kitsch, incorporates a terrifying installation on the mafia that uses every technique possible to disorientate and confuse – darkness, corridors, loud noises. Visiting the overbearing Swiss pavilion – a claustrophobic cave constructed from consumer detritus and graphic, inescapable images of human violence – is also a genuinely uncomfortable experience – although the effect is slightly lessened by staff crouching with brown tape making repairs and the whole thing starts to fall apart when the cotton bud structures begin disintegrating. Algorithm, a pipe organ attached to an ATM in the US pavilion is, whilst not exactly subtle, at least, entertaining – especially watching the reactions of members of the public who have queued up to take out cash to a musical soundtrack.

Venice Biennale is on until November 27.

A ticket allowing entry to the Arsenale and Giardini costs €20.

Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention — stallholders

2011-05-17T22:13:00.006+01:00

Twigs and Apples (Preston)

Twigs and Apples is a North West UK based zine collective, started in 2009. It operates as an open collective and as such has a wide range of content, including art, writing, poetry, illustration, film and music reviews, sports writing, vegan recipes, photography, DIY and craft, philosophy and the odd rant. Twigs and Apples is fuelled by biscuits, tea, and bicycle rides into the night.

http://twigsandapples.webs.com

http://twigsandapples.blogspot.com

Pink Mince (London)

Pink Mince is a queer zine published in London, UK every couple of months or so by Dan Rhatigan. Its aim is “to delight, titillate, amuse, provoke, and inspire”. That is to say: it features jokes and blokes, possibly with a point behind it all.

http://pinkmince.com

Christa Harris/Camberwell Books (Manchester/London)

Christa Harris is a Manchester based book artist with work in several national archives including TATE Britain. At Victoria Baths she will present a stall showcasing work from a variety of friends and colleagues, including zines from Norwich based artist Sammy Merry (http://incident88.blogspot.com), and bookworks from the Camberwell Book Arts MA (www.camberwell bookarts.blogspot.com). She will be happy to answer any questions about book arts, bookmaking and small/self publishing and will be disseminating information on a variety of related topics including basic bookbinding, advice for small publishers, how to get an isbn etc.

MUSEUMS PRESS (Manchester)

Launched in June 2009 MUSEUMS PRESS is a small independent publishing house based in Manchester. Its publications have included a range of formats and subjects from heavily compiled books, comics and poster packages to photocopied fanzines and individual artists’ prints.

www.museumspress.co.uk

Manchester Municipal Design Corporation & Ultimate Holding Company (Manchester)

The Manchester Municipal Design Corporation works through cross-disciplinary collaborations involving publications, provocations, events, exhibitions and interventions. It has published two issues of Things Happen, a fanzine about Manchester and Salford, and co-produced a map of the creative ecology of the two cities with Laura Mansfield.

Ultimate Holding Company is a creative social engagement project, artists’ collective and design studio. It has operated at the junction of visual art, design and socio-political activism since 2002. UHC’s process-driven ethos seeks out co-production and public collaboration, looking to encourage new connections to the arts through social solidarity.

The MMDC now works within UHC at Hotspur House, and they are together establishing a Design Without Boundaries-esque creative space on the 4th Floor of the building. The third issue of Things Happen, due later in the year, will be a Hotspur Special, after a comic that may or may not have been printed here.

www.uhc.org.uk

www.mmdc.org.uk

http://thefourthfloor.tumblr.com

Ultra Horse (Nottingham)

Ultra Horse zines is a Nottingham based zine conglomerate split between one crafty comic drawing girl and a lovably crude zine making boy. Their style could be described as the product you’d get if Viz was cut up with David Shrigley and served as a hot quesadilla from Taco Bell.

http://ultrahorse.blogspot.com

OWT Creative (Manchester)
OWT creative is a five-strong design collective based in Manchester. OWT focuses on producing a monthly zine showcasing work from themselves and other up and coming creative talent in the North West. Each zine has a set theme to which OWT invites young creatives to contribute a response to be it photography, illustration, graphics or creative writing, as long as it’s imaginative. OWT recently produced issue #6 and are accepting contributions for issue #7, the theme of which is ‘Science’.

www.owtcreative.com

Threads and Letters (Manchester)

Rebecca Aimée Lanyon Willmott is a self publisher, poet, storyteller and textile artist. A love of storytelling and stitching inspired the publication Threads and Letters, uniting textiles and literature. Handcrafted on cotton paper, it has a traditional book theme, reflected in the Gothic fonts and framing. Its contents include: an article on the button collection at Platt Hall, Gallery of Costume, Manchester, embroidery as puppet illustration, activist textiles and patterned poetry. When at the fair, It comes with a button bookmark and is bound with linen thread and printed on recycled paper.

http://threadsandletters.blogspot.com

Sugar Paper (Manchester)
Sugar Paper is a bi-annual craft zine always featuring 20 things to make and do, from knitting to dressing like your favourite fictional character! The Sugar Paper Gang have two aims: to get everyone crafting and to make crafting BADASS!

http://sugarpapergang.blogspot.com

Nude (nationwide)

Nude is an eclectic, independently-produced magazine covering all aspects of indie and retro culture, with a strong emphasis on the vibrant new crafting scene as well as numerous aspects of visual culture; comics, illustration, designer toys and street art and zines.

www.nudemagazine.co.uk

Emily & Anne (Manchester/London)

Emily Howells and Anne Wilkins met at Kingston University where they both studied Illustration & Animation BA. After graduating they decided to work together, as it is a lot more fun than working by yourself. Their first film, A Film about Poo (2009), musically promotes the importance of washing your hands, and was made with long-term collaborator and musician Billy Payne. The film went on to show at fifty film festivals worldwide, winning seven awards including the audience’s choice at New York International Children's Film Festival 2010, and the Golden Poo Award at London International Animation Festival 2009. When they are not animating, the girls also draw illustrations, and have produced three zines to date — one about growing up, one about French dogs in hats and one about poo. Emily and Anne love drawing so much they often don’t sleep, and have created work for clients such as the BFI, BBC Learning and Bolton Museum & Archives.

www.emilyandanne.co.uk

Silent V (Norwich)

Currently on its fourth installment, Kyle Baddeley’s Silent V is an absurdist comic saga set in a twisted cartoon world populated by mansize talking buzzards, scheming scientists, and malevolent teddy bears. Its madcap, non-linear structure often leaves the reader questioning the characters’ motivations, whilst continually throwing up new plot tangents. Filled with sudden, unexpected violence and funny dialogue, Silent V is both dark and hilarious.

http://gulagcomics.livejournal.com

www.webcomicsnation.com/bakesale

Charlotte Fiona Percival and Born Restless (Sheffield/Manchester)

Charlotte is an eternal obsessive with her own enthusiasms and other people’s.

www.gnarlotte.wordpress.com

Born Restless is Hayley, an eternal doodler, embroiderer and cut and paste-er. She is interested in mistakes and trying to copy or create creepy images that usually end up looking wonky and silly instead. Her hands won’t stop.

www.welovetolove.blogspot.com

www.etsy.com/shop/bornrestless

Vapid Kitten (Manchester)
Vapid Kitten is published quarterly and is now up to its fourth edition. The ‘zine is ‘for the lazy feminist.’ It’s designed to be a platform for commentary on modern society for those of us with an opinion but no desire to protest about it. This is done through the often quirky contributions of various artists and writers around a different theme each issue. Themes so far include Feminism, Green, Craft, and digital vs analogue.

http://vapidkittenblogs.blogspot.com

Love to Print (Birmingham)

Karoline Rennie is an illustrator who makes her own zines and small artists’ books using screen printing or Japanese gocco printing combined with digital printing. She collaborates with other women illustrators to make limited edition zines, colouring books and postcard books featuring their work. She also sells her own handmade cards, mini prints and zines made by other women.

Memo (Leeds)

Helen Entwisle is a freelance illustrator and screen printer currently based in Leeds. Her work includes hand drawn and screen printed illustration, self-published zines, hand printed stationery, limited edition prints, tote bags and accessories. She puts together a collaborative zine called Ten Fingers.

www.hellomemo.com

The Hare Newspaper (Glossop)

The Hare Newspaper is an independent publication, released once a month and stocked in Manchester, Edinburgh, London, Cardiff and its birthplace, the sleepy Derbyshire town of Glossop.

Mr Hare and his woodland chums turn their attentions to a wide-range of topic, with sport, both international and domestic, politics, music and academia their main focuses. With 20 monthly issues under the belt and several spin-offs – such as Modern Spiv andThe Hare Sports Mag – already in circulation, it is an exciting time to join the form.

The Hare is always looking to grow its production team and, in the process, further diversify its voice. If you would like to write/draw/distribute for The Hare, you need only contact the team at theharenewspaper@hotmail.co.uk or via the website and they will gladly consider your submission for inclusion.

www.theharenewspaper.co.uk

Salford Zine Library (Salford)

Salford Zine Library was formed in January 2010 and aims to showcase and share creative work in the self-published form. The archive is open to all to contribute. You can visit the Library at Islington Mill, Salford.

http://salfordzinelibrary.blogspot.com

Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention souvenir Shrieking Violet special plus some directions and timings

2011-05-13T19:04:00.006+01:00

The Shrieking Violet programme for the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention. Includes information on all the stallholders and speakers, an interview with Joe Biel, director, $100 and A T-Shirt: A Documentary About Zines in the Northwest US, an interview about letterpress with artist Amy Pennington, Deerly Beloved Bakery's recipe for stuffed bread and interviews with Antony Hall and Yu-Chen Wang, artists who are working in the building for Future Everything festival. The zine also features my article on Edwardian swimming pools in Manchester, with annotated illustrations by Daniel Fogarty. Jacky Hall and illustrator Andy Carter have collaborated on a spread commemorating channel swimmer Sunny Lowry who trained at Victoria Baths. Paper copies will be available at the event.

Open publication - Free publishing - More fanzines

Download and print a copy to assemble yourself here.

Timings

10.30am Guided tour of the building

12pm Guided tour of the building

12pm Film screening: $100 Dollars and A T-Shirt: A Documentary About Zines in the Northwest US, committee room (upstairs)

1pm, Talk: Dave Haslam, "The DIY alternative; fanzines 1977-1990", committee room (upstairs)

2pm Talk: Alex Zamora, Fever Zine, committee room (upstairs)

3pm Talk: Betsy Lambourn and Anna Frew, Vapid Kitten, "Is digital publishing the future of zines?", committee room (upstairs)

Directions for anyone coming from outside Manchester by train into Piccadilly station

1. Exit Piccadilly Station via Station Approach (the exit on the same level as the trains, next to WH Smith).

2. Follow Station Approach to the traffic lights and cross over onto Piccadilly.

3. Follow Piccadilly for 5 minutes until you reach Piccadilly Gardens bus station (across the road on your left).

4. Go to the bus stop at the far right of the bus station and get on a bus - numbers 41, 42, 43 or 142 or 143, which are very frequent, are best. These are operated by Finglands and magic bus (cheap) and Stagecoach (expensive). Ask for a single ticket to MRI (they don't sell return tickets). This should be £1.20 on a magic bus, a lot more on a Stagecoach bus.

5. The bus follows Oxford Road, the university corridor. After 10/15 minutes look out for the Whitworth Art Gallery on your right hand side, in a park called Whitworth Park. Ring the bell and get off on Oxford Road by Tesco (just past Manchester Royal Infirmary on your left).

6. Go back slightly and turn right onto Hathersage Road (the MRI is on the corner) and follow for about five/ten minutes.

7. Victoria Baths is on the left!

View Larger Map

Future Everything will be running a regular free bus between Piccadilly Place in central Manchester and Victoria Baths, with the first bus leaving from near Piccadilly Place at 10am and the last bus leaving Victoria Baths around 4pm.

Yu-Chen Wang: The Splash and A Last Drop, Victoria Baths

2011-05-08T15:41:00.011+01:00

When Yu-Chen Wang first walked into Victoria Baths she was overwhelmed by the space – its size, Edwardian grandeur and industrial-age history. Invited by Future Everything to produce a piece of work in the building, to coincide with the drawing to a close of a three month residency at the Chinese Arts Centre, she decided that, rather than try to fill or change the space she was working with (the former female pool, the smaller of two, now drained, pools that remain in the building), her work would focus on the way the audience experienced the building. She explains: “When I first went I was immediately in love with the space but I found myself very small. My own voice sounded very different. The space itself has already done a lot and there's a lot going on in there so I'm getting people to experience the space differently rather than constructing a lot or displaying a big artwork.”

On the final day of Future Everything, visitors to the Baths will encounter Yu-Chen's work in different spaces around the female pool as part of a sound and performance piece entitled The Splash and A Last Drop which imagines the creation of a machine that produces a last drop of water in Victoria Baths then multiplies it so the water will never dry up again. The work will function as a “moving device”, playing with the transition between different parts of the building.

The story starts at the Chinese Arts Centre, where an actress playing Yu-Chen is filmed boarding a spaceship which transports her to Victoria Baths. Visitors to the Baths will catch-up with the story so far by viewing this video in the former female cloakroom that once served the female pool. A nearby room housing the aerotone – an early, yet still slightly futuristic looking, jacuzzi that, when it was installed at Victoria Baths in 1952, became the first such public facility in the country – will be transformed into an installation of Yu-Chen's highly detailed drawings, which often focus on aspects of machines. When she saw the aeorotone's buttons and controls, Yu-Chen was struck by the feeling “it should be moving, going somewhere”. Yu-Chen's interest in machines is closely connected to her approach to drawing: “Machines are very much about structure and structure is about creating something. Drawing for me is a concept – how bits fit and are connected to each other. It's very much about movement. Machines have a performative element and quality and a human presence and spirit – I always imagine they will start moving and talking. And that's how I would describe what drawing is – it's not just about pencil and paper.” Likewise, The Splash and A Last Drop itself will consist of a number of “components”: “There are lots of bits and pieces put together. The viewer can look at it as a whole or as individual works."

Yu-Chen has been exploring the history of Victoria Baths through its archive, which includes photos, hundreds of memories donated by former users and artefacts relating to its past. Actors playing uniformed ticket officers will regale visitors with stories and hand out publications drawing on industrial heritage, which will act as a programme. The work will culminate with the Cavendish Singers from Didsbury singing a song entitled Songs of the Machine in the female pool, a 1910 poem about machines that start talking to humans that was later set to music by one of its members. Yu-Chen explains: “The space is so big it needs a group. A group of people gives power.” The performance will become a short film that will be screened in Manchester city centre in the days following Future Everything.

The work is a collaboration with writer Bob Dickinson, who Yu-Chen met through her residency, and six MA Media Lab students from Manchester Metropolitan University. She says: “I like to work with people who aren't just artists. The idea goes to writers, film makers, actors, costume makers – it organically develops and becomes a collective idea. It creates different readings – the text levels, the costumes, the actors, the live performance – it is a different way of constructing narrative.”

Visit Yu-Chen Wang's Open Studio at the Chinese Arts Centre, Thomas Street, Manchester from May 11-14.

www.chinese-arts-centre.org

Read more about Yu-Chen's residency on her blog.

The Splash and A Last Drop takes place at Victoria Baths, Hathersage Road, Chorlton-on-Medlock on Saturday May 14. The building will be open from 10am-4pm. Free event.

Recreational science and Physical Oscillators: Interview with Antony Hall at Victoria Baths

2011-05-04T20:49:00.016+01:00

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, gentlemen found a new hobby: recreational science. Vicars built their own microscopes. Would-be astronomers went out into their gardens and gazed up at the stars. One man kept a diary in which he wrote detailed observations about the decay of a nut whilst another, a collector, fashioned a bespoke moss jacket lined with pockets for his specimens.

Artist Antony Hall is a like recreational scientist for the twenty first century, inspired by these gentlemen of a certain age and their ability to find “interest in obscure things that weren't immediately exciting” whilst exploring new opportunities such as biohacking and nanotechnology. Often working with slides and Hele-shaw cells, he's interested in “how many different experiments you can do in a slide”.

He explains: “I always wanted to be a scientist when I was a kid – I had a sign on my bedroom saying 'lab', and I loved my microscope, but I wasn't very good at school so was encouraged not to do science. I did art instead and turned it into my science practice.

“I started doing animal sculpture. Then I looked at the natural world and how things are formed and how animals and insects behave. This got me interested in biology and ecology and the conceptual art of the 1970s.”

Antony often works with living creatures such as fish and insects. Pond Life, for example, magnified and projected microorganisms. “I like the element of collaboration with other creatures – of caring and nurturing them and getting them to behave in a certain way by providing them with things that are suitable such as food and light.”

He is a founding member of the Manchester-based Owl Project, a collective that looks at how humans interact with technology, and hacks old technology and turns it into something new, often through sound performances. Part of his practice also involves interactive workshops under the name of Tabletop Experiments. Antony explained: “I've always liked my work to be quite fun, and it makes science accessible.” Sometimes this involves showing participants how to make creations, for example 'brush-bots' – robots made from batteries, brushes and motors which draw spirographs and patterns. He describes them as: “Little units that interact. They've all got their own characters – it's as if they're alive but they're not. They dance around and back into each other. Some go round in circles and others go in straight lines.”

During Future Everything festival, Antony will be creating a “generative soundpiece” in the empty, disused gala pool in Victoria Baths, which members of the public will “walk in and compose”, experiencing invisible fields around motors via electromagnetic sensors akin to microphones that they will be encouraged to pick up and move around the space. Antony's challenge was: “How can I represent movement and liquid in this space that is now just air? How do I represent volume?” He decided the answer was to “energise objects in a big space” by suspending different motors above the pool and adding electricity: “The more energy you put in to it the more chaotic it becomes. The motors affect each other and associate themselves with each other in subtle interactions.”

He elaborated: “I wanted to represent the surface. Visitors will walk into the pool and, instead of walking under water, walk under a layer of activity. When you're beneath it you can hear it buzz above your head.” He admits: “I like going around my garden with a microphone recording the buzzing of bees.”

Inspiration for the installation was drawn from the natural world, in particular a type of beetle known as a whirligig that sits on the surface of the water and has split eyes so it can see above and below. Antony explains that: “Whirligig beetles swarm and “display” to each other. Sometimes they fight, and likewise it sounds really good when the motors clash.”

Antony's interest in capturing movement will be continued with a large wave pendulum made of jam jars hanging in the entrance to the cafe that visitors will set off with their movement as they enter and leave – simulating the continuous motion of a wave.

Antony Hall's Physical Oscillators can be experienced at Victoria Baths, Hathersage Road, Chorlton-on-Medlock, on Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 May from 10am-4pm during Future Everything festival. Free event.

Amy Pennington – A Whistlestop Tour of Letterpress

2011-04-11T19:17:00.009+01:00

Artist Amy Pennington is based at the From Space workshop on Chapel Street, Salford. Her work encompasses drawings, installations, film and print exploring “everyday life and subject matters and often things that I find interesting in Manchester”. This includes an ongoing project about Belle Vue, which has involved undertaking research in the North West Film Archive, leading up to animations and 3D work. She enthused: “I just find it absolutely mad that there used to be a grand Victorian theme park in Manchester. I'm fascinated by how it developed, what it became and how it shut down – I think there's something really interesting in there, that something so grand and memorable is reduced to nothing now really – a greyhound track and a housing estate."

Since January, Amy's work has taken on a new dimension as she has spent one day a week as a printer's devil – the industry name for apprentice – at Incline Press in Oldham. The apprenticeship came about as Amy applied to become a community researcher with the Library Theatre's Craftworks project, for which artists explored the part traditional crafts and Manchester's industrial heritage play in the modern city. The project culminated in two evenings of performances at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation last month, for which Amy produced a beautiful artists' book about the letterpress and traditional printing methods and allowed visitors to press their own band for the cover.

She explained: “Letterpress has always interested me. It's got a lovely quality to it. I like the way it embosses onto the paper sometimes. Inkjet just isn't as nice as having that ink right there in front of you. A lot of people pay to get their wedding invitations letterpress printed as it's the most important day of their lives and letterpress gives such a nice feel and finish.”

She continued: “Nowadays technology is enabling letterpress to carry on. Type is becoming really rare and not the best quality – antiques dealers and people on ebay sell it for an absolute fortune.”

The Craftworks project enabled Amy to meet different people working with traditional printing methods all over Greater Manchester. She explained: “I put the proposal in to Craftworks as it's a great opportunity to dedicate yourself to something, to have a purpose. I met so many amazing people and was so inspired by what they do and that they have managed to keep themselves going as letterpress practitioners. It's about people sharing their knowledge of it all. There's so much to know! It's really added something to my work. What I've got out of it is ongoing. I've made links and formed friendships.”

She added: “It's really nice to learn an actual craft – to learn the terminology and a great opportunity for me to make something. At Incline I set up the polymer plate and do type setting and dissing (putting away) type. When I've been there I feel like I've done a proper day's work!”

Amy will be demonstrating the letterpress at the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention on Saturday May 14 and allowing visitors to have a go, as well as selling copies of A Whistlestop Tour of Letterpress.

Email Q & A with Joe Biel — director, $100 & A T-Shirt: A Documentary About Zines in the Northwest US

2011-04-05T15:08:00.009+01:00

$100 & A T-Shirt: A Documentary About Zines in the Northwest US will be shown as part of the Victoria Baths fanzine convention on May 14, offering a concise, watchable overview of what fanzines are and who makes them through a look at the zine scene in Portland, Oregon around 2003/2004. Producing the film was a real labour of love, as The Shrieking Violet found out during an email interview with director Joe Biel from Microcosm Publishing.

SV: Tell us about yourself — who you are and what you do, and what Microcosm publishing is.

JB: I've been reading, making, and self-publishing zines for about 18 years. More recently I've taken to editing and writing books and directing documentaries. I co-authored a book called Make a Zine! and have a new one called Beyond Resistance and Community about people who took the ethics and aesthetics of punk beyond music. I'm currently finishing a new documentary feature film called Aftermass about the history of bicycle activism in Portland, where I live.

Microcosm Publishing is a distribution and publishing outfit based around the zine movement. We work hard to give these writers' voices more reach and a wider audience. The thing that people don't talk about much in publishing — especially in the digital age — is that it's easy to publish but it's harder to build an audience. Microcosm fills that gap.

SV: Can you explain your involvement with zines and what interests you about them?

JB: Beyond the fantasy books, when I was in high school I thought reading was simply very boring. Aside from the Dr. Bronner's label, I stopped reading completely. Then in 1993 I went to a punk show at the Euclid Tavern and Jake Kelly sold me a copy of his zine Summer for $1 and I was hooked. It was engaging and funny, spoke in a familiar tone and didn't pull any punches. I wrote to all of the other zines listed in it and haven't much looked back. I started publishing my own zine almost immediately and within a few years I founded Microcosm to do essentially what it does today.

After a shaky few years, Jake and I reconnected recently after he read an interview where I mentioned this incident. He replaced all of my back issues of Summer — which somehow hold up to the test of time 18 years later. He's a poster artist now and make new things regularly.

Ken Blaze recently produced a book recently about that era of Cleveland — Escaped To The Future — that I feel captures the scene perfectly that we were growing up in around the punk and performance club Speak in Tongues.

SV: Could you tell us a bit about the zine scene in Portland at the time of $100 Dollars and A T-Shirt, and the zine symposium?

JB: When we were shooting $100 in 2003 it felt like the zine scene couldn't get any bigger in Portland. Any it would seem we were right. That might have been the biggest zine boom I've seen here. So in that sense our timing was perfect but that wasn't the reasoning — it felt like an exciting time. People were successfully expressive and not necessarily looking for something bigger or better. There's an awkward relationship with self-publishing certainly and there are certain people who would say they wanted bigger things, but I think if I was to generalize I would say that everyone in the film had something to say and that was ultimately what motivated them.

Nicole Georges, Eleanor Whitney, and I started the Zine Symposium in 2001 out of similar motivations — we wanted to showcase the emerging scene and attract people from across the country to Portland. By 2005 none of us were involved anymore and while there are some longtime organizers that still come and go, it's largely organized by a new group of people each year. And while the scene hasn't continued to grow steadily across ten years, the event and the scene still exist and people still come from across the country for it. And it's a difficult thing not to be nostalgic about and embrace the change that is largely inevitable.

SV: Why did you decide to make the film?

JB: The simplest reason is that I was teaching gifted and talented high school students and later classes at Univ. of Oregon about zines and it really felt like a video would be the best educational tool for classroom use. I looked and looked for a functional video and came up dry over and over. So eventually I tried to organize other people to put together such a thing. I guess I didn't realize how big of a project a feature length documentary was because people kept asking to see my outlines, financial planning, and the standard presentation that you would use to solicit someone with your film.

The films I had been involved with had been no-budget, DIY, very collaborative, and still completed in a matter of a few months. I assumed this would be the same. But it was hard to keep people involved when there was a lot of work involved and most of it wasn't fun. Then the editor had a baby. A year later I was directing and editing and most of the other people had dropped off. By the end only one other person had been involved during the whole duration of production — Phil Sano. He had also been nice enough to provide all of the equipment, tapes, instructions, and ideas. On top of that I suspect he put in another hundred hours of free editing while I slept next to him.

University of Oregon stopped inviting me back and starting using the video instead. Did I win or fail?

SV: How did you decide who to interview and how to make the film?

JB: I was working as an idealist and literally tried to interview everyone who was making or had made zines in Portland. At one point Basil Shadid was doing the same thing in Seattle but those tapes were never sent to the editing studio. We couldn't get everyone to agree to be interviewed — Jim Goad in particular I spent a lot of time trying to convince to talk to me but despite being at the center of the national media as a zine maker he felt no connection to any "zine community".

Basil was very interested in writing the documentary and so we had some pre-production meetings and hammered that out together. But he had to quit shortly after. It was helpful because even with over a hundred hours of footage that part seemed confusing and formidable — and after watching Exit Through The Gift Shop it was comforting to see that's not a unique problem to have.

SV: What sort of obstacles did you come across making the film – I understand that it was quite a time-consuming process?

JB: Our production timeline wasn't unusual for a documentary film — especially considering that everyone involved had full time jobs on top of doing the work. And we produced everything with no grants, financial loans, or funding. But we did have a lot of problems that were unique. I had an abcess on my foot through much of the interviewing process and was on antibiotics that prevented me from sleeping — and later turned out to be destroying my colon. We broke a lot of equipment — including the main camera and tripod. We didn't have any cars so we rode our bikes with all of the equipment to each shoot. I tried to schedule four interviews per week — two per day each on Tuesday and Thursday. I would work my normal job the other five days and then later on after the editor had to step down I spent 4 days per week in the editing studio — which was rented at $10/day — a price that I couldn't appreciate enough at the time. Then the biggest obstacle was that I didn't have any experience editing anything near this size or an understanding of how to tell a clear story.

SV: Who was $100 Dollars aimed at? It's quite a comprehensive overview of zines that anyone could watch even if they didn't really have any prior knowledge on the subject.

JB: We operated on a somewhat utopian ideal — we knew people into zines would watch the movie so we tried to sink the hooks into a general audience. Did we succeed? I don't know. It seems so inherently nichey to me but as soon as it came out Library Journal reviewed it positively and that seemed to drive sales for a few years to libraries and schools. It's fallen off in the last three or four years but it's also getting older and perhaps everyone already owns it.

SV: The film has stood the test of time — it’s structured in a way that is still relevant now, broken down into clear sections like ‘Who makes zines’ and ‘Why do people make zines’. If you remade the film now, would anything be different?

JB: Perhaps it's my age, but the interviews are only eight years old and so the world hasn't changed too drastically in that time.

However, in eight years, I have learned a lot about filmmaking. Dozens of people have said the documentary hooked them on zines. Well, it hooked me on filmmaking. I devour books on film and still watch at least a few documentaries each week — and that process started when I was doing research for $100.

The biggest changes I would make are for watchability's sake. It would have been very different structurally. I would selectively do a closer focus on five of the better spoken characters and follow them around a bit more with some verite footage and a more revealing look at their lives. I would look at the biggest picture in ways other than interviewing and trying to include clips from everyone remotely involved. I would try to tell a story more intentionally through my research rather than following what clips I had and what people said articulately and with good-quality footage.

Other than that, I would use closer shots on the interviews and I would have shot a lot more b-roll so we weren't always looking at talking heads. I also have much better equipment of my own now. The technology shift has been very fast with cameras and mics and I feel like I could produce a feature documentary for $1,000 that ostensibly looks and sounds like a documentary with a $20,000 budget. I couldn't have done that eight years ago and maybe, as every review says, "it's fitting for the subject matter”.

SV: Would you add a section on digital technology — webzines etc?

JB: I don't think so because I don't think that connects to the same social scene that the documentary looks at. I feel like that warrants its own documentary...that I have no interest in making.

SV: Do you think zines have become even more popular now, or have undergone a resurgence in the last few years?

JB: I don't think you can look at zines with the same booms and busts that you would look at a financial progress or something linear. I think there's a major shift that has been slowly evolving where the people attracted to the medium stick with it and those who simply want an audience, springboard, or have something to say will employ other methods that have the potential for mass-markets or elevation.

I think for those reasons it is harder and harder to find zines but I don't think there are less being produced. Microcosm publishes a journal about zines Xerography Debt that writes reviews of new zines. Shortly after we started publishing it there was concern about not enough zines being produced. Part of the motivation was to encourage more zines to be made and made-available for readers. The focus of Microcosm has long been to build a social movement. And one success we've had is to be able to show where and how zines are booming worldwide — but maybe not in the most obvious places that you would look.

SV: Do you think there is a future for zines and, if so, what do you think it will look like?

JB: I think zines will continue to move in the direction of hand-sewn bindings, screenprinted or blockprinted covers, and personal/textual things that couldn't be replicated in any other medium. I think zines are largely still recovering from an awkward flirtation with mainstream success in the 90s.

http://microcosmpublishing.com

$100 Dollars and a T-Shirt will be screened at 12pm on Saturday May 14 during the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention. Find out more information about what's going on the day and how to get involved here.

Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention May 14 — stalls, speakers, film screening, tours, food, workshops

2011-04-01T11:29:00.025+01:00

The first ever fanzine convention to be held in the beautiful setting of Victoria Baths will explore the past, present and future of self-publishing through stalls featuring self-published books and zines to browse, talks, a film showing and workshops.

Manchester's opulent Edwardian water palace, which opened to the public in 1906 and closed in 1993, will be packed with events as part of the Future Everything festival.

To have a stall on the day, either as an individual zine or group of friends, costs £10. Apply by emailing Natalie.Rose.Bradbur y@googlemail.com. Facebook event here.

All events in the building are free to enter, although donations are welcomed. Read more about the building at www.victoriabaths.org.uk. Tours of the building will be on offer.

Poster by Kate Prior.

What's on

A screening of $100 Dollars and a T-Shirt, a documentary about fanzines in Portland, USA and the famous Portland Zine Symposium, will introduce what zines are and who makes them. http://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/title/1011

DJ and writer Dave Haslam will explore the legacy of post-punk fanzines, including his own publication Debris (1983-1989) which ran to 19 issues and was called the "the best fanzine in the world" by the NME. Debris featured everything from interviews with Sonic Youth and the Fall to authors Raymond Carver, Tony Harrison and Hubert Selby Jr to a 70 year old barber and the woman who ran the local launderette.
www.davehaslam.com

Alex Zamora of London-based Fever Zine, and contemporary Manchester zine makers Vapid Kitten, who produce an edition for Kindle, will explain how zines are adapting for the digital age, and consider what lies in store for the medium in the future. www.feverzine.co.uk
http://vapidkittenblogs.blogspot.com

Visitors will be invited to create their own response to the building and its stories on the day by making their own zines drawn from what’s going on in the building during Future Everything as well as using material reproduced from the archive at Victoria Baths. This includes hundreds of memories donated by people who used the building before it closed, from reminiscences by children from nearby schools who were so keen to swim they rushed there in their lunch hours to vivid recollections of scary swimming teachers and post-swim Bovril to old ladies nostalgic about meeting their husbands at the dances that were held at the Baths when the gala pool was covered over in the winter. Artefacts also include swimming shields and certificates, as well as material relating to the Channel Swimmer Sunny Lowry who trained at Victoria Baths.

Workshops

Linocut your own versions of the Pilkingtons tiles that adorn Victoria Baths with Lauren Velvick!
Letterpress with artist Amy Pennington!
Embroider with Threads & Letters fanzine! Stitch your own Angel of Purity inspired by the colours of the spectacular Victoria Baths stained glass window. Materials will be provided along with angel templates.
Manchester-based book artist Christa Harris will be happy to answer any questions about book arts, bookmaking and small/self publishing and will be disseminating information on a variety of related topics including basic bookbinding, advice for small publishers, how to get an isbn etc. Hardback bind your Victoria Baths fanzine for a nominal cost!

In advance of the Fanzine Convention, on Sunday 1 May, Tess Lomas and Alison Kershaw of Pool Arts will revisit the 2003 classic but rare fanzine "The Vicky" for one more issue. Become an instant "The Vicky" Journalist and file your report on the day's happenings. No experience required just willingness to get stuck in! The new issue will be available at the Fanzine Convention on 14th May!

Elsewhere in the building

Also in the building will be a HANDMADE event and two artists in residence: Antony Hall from the Owl Project and Yu-Chen Wang from the Chinese Arts Centre, who will make an installation and performance.

Physical Oscillators at VB arts

Sunday 1 May 12-4, Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 May 10am-4pm

Artist and local resident Antony Hall will make use of the magnificent and newly refurbished Gala Poolto develop a new work on a grand scale, involving local young people and students in its construction.

He will be creating an installation continuing his research into physical oscillators to generate sound and visible patterns in a new kinetic artwork, created within the space of a now empty swimming pool. The project will use pendulums and the gyroscopic action of motors and fans to create a sensory walk-through environment reflecting the behavior of small swimming or flying insects.

The residency culminates in a demonstration and exhibit at Future Everything Handmade event.

Antony first explored VB arts (Victoria Baths) as an MA student and has gone on to develop a practice that examines the boundaries of art and science.

A multidisciplinary artist who investigates biological and physical phenomenon; the behaviour of liquid or animals, and the physicality of sound, he is interested in how we interface with science & technology; visually, physically and ideologically; and how these interactions effect us creatively and socially.

He is a founding member of the 'Owl Project' who with north east based producer and musician Ed Carter have been selected as the north east winner of a £500,000 commission for Artists Taking the Lead, one of the major projects for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

Handmade: Digital | DIY | CraftVB arts (Victoria Baths) will co-host a day of contemporary craft, digital hacking, interactivities and DIY culture. A new maker community is emerging, connecting the culture of traditional skills and materials with modern-day digital production, distribution and interaction techniques.

Future Everything will invite makers to create objects, installations and performances that explore the cross-fertilisation of new and traditional media and materials.

Taking a conference strand from discussion forum to practical exploration, Handmade will bring the dialogue around the intersection of craft and digital culture to life in one of Manchester's prime heritage locations.

The festival will create an all new forum for Crafters, Hackers and Digital Innovators to share ideas and practice, led by some of the UKs leading digital crafters.

The UK's only FabLab will be moving the lab to Handmade for the day, inviting the public to play with their digital manufacturing equipment and create something they can take away with them.
Established Digital Ceramisist Michael Eden will be contributing to Handmade by delivering a short presentation on the relationship between the handmade and the digital in the evolution of his work. This will be followed by a Q&A session.

MzTEK and SPACE Studios and Dundee University will both be present to host a range of digital crafting workshops while Manchester Craft and Design represent the more traditional world of craft and design.

www.futureeverything.org

Merz Flâneuries: Meeting David Medalla

2011-03-13T13:03:00.015Z

Artists David Medalla and Adam Nankervi s have spent the last week retracing the footsteps of Kurt Schwitters, visiting some of the places associated with Schwitters in the North West — including the ‘claustrophobic terrifying dungeon’ Warth Mill in Bury where he was incarcerated with other artists in 1940, and Eleterwater in Cumbria, site of his famous Merz Barn. Schwitters also spent some time in Salford and Manchester so, acting as flaneurs, in the spirit the nineteenth century French dandies who observed the city, the pair have also wandered around Manchester and Salford seeing what these places throw up. The resulting flaneuries, including text and images, will be shown in Tate Britain in two years time for a Schwitters retrospective.

During their visit, they stayed in the bed and breakfast at Islington Mill in Salford, where I had a chat with David. He explained: “We haven’t had any rest. Flaneurie is a French thing that involves walking around noting things, observing them and initiating actions. The end is organic.” It fits in with his work as: “I do a lot of walking around. I’ve done things in the street all over the world — in the slums of India, in Africa, in Latin America." He added: "One oscillates between necessity and choice or a combination of both. I enjoy anything and I say yes to everything. A lot of my work is very ironic and totally unpredictable.”

David was born in the Philippines but went to Columbia University in New York, and has lived and worked all over the world. He met Adam in the Chelsea Hotel and they’ve been long-term collaborators but David describes it as more like a ‘dialogue’ because he lives in Bracknell and Adam is currently based in Berlin.

David’s half-century career has been fuelled by chance encounters and impromptu performances, taking “coincidences and chance and uniting them in a curious way”. Particular favourites he reminisces about are Mr Casanova International, a street performance where young men were asked to read sex adverts from the local newspaper, only realising they had taken part in a performance years later when they looked back and remembered and a toy Bambi shitting (photocopied) $100 bills all over Manhattan — an artwork which nearly got him sued by Disney! Spanning performance, land art and kinetic art, he’s also famous for creating hundreds of machines, including sand machines and bubble machines, and sculptures shaped like flowers that close when it’s cold and open when warm, and respond to favourite smells and sounds, such as lovers’ armpits, birds in the morning and jet planes overhead.

His works are often interventions into cities and places, reacting and responding to what’s around. Elegies for bendy buses, for example, was inspired when “babies in prams started making very interesting sounds. They were imitating the closing of the doors like a mechanical lullaby”. For one performance, David walked up and down Westminster wearing boxing gloves. “People were depressed about having to go to work on a blue Monday so I punched them. Some would punch me back which was quite terrifying.” For another work called Salute Roma, undertaken when David was homeless, he slept on a different one of Rome’s seven hills on each day of the week.

He’s made a hat, which he puts on during our interview, that he’s built from found objects during his visit: an alphabet in Chinese and English, playing cards arranged in full houses and part of a Salford University student newspaper with the headline ‘Change that’s just too big to fathom’, because he “liked what it said”, which he found during a visit to Salford Museum and Art Gallery. Across the road, David also took inspiration from a Karl Marx quote on the wall of the Working Class Movement Library, ‘Philosophy only explains the world. We have to change it’, although he thinks “Marx should have added three words — ‘for the better’.”

He plans to develop the hat further as a performance — “I will stand in front of estate agents in London saying ‘it’s full house’. I think I will be hated by estate agents — they rent even garages out for £1million”— and eventually visit the potteries of Stoke-on-Trent to create a ceramic version.

David has long been a fan of Schwitters’ work, which also crossed genres to encompass everything from collage to sound poetry. He explained: “My take on Schwitters is personal. I really like his work. I stayed in a cheap hotel when I first arrived in Paris and in a gallery two doors away was a very beautiful work by Schwitters — the rusty wheel of a pram called The Sailor, which I didn’t understand and it didn’t look like a sailor to me but I asked the gallery who it was and later I found out a lot about Schwitters."

He continued: "The Merz Barn has had a great influence on artists and on architects, for example Frank Gehry. Eventually they’ll make a musical of Schwitters’ life. His poems are beautiful when they are recited by him, even with old fashioned, amateur recordings.”

David particularly admires Schwitters’ 'transformation and renewal', explaining: “He thought that with the right spirit we can make a new kind of world, he was very optimistic. Schwitters was from a middle class, comfortable family but they [the Nazis] said he was a degenerate artist. He had to flee Germany and was incarcerated but he had that strength. He had to live in the cold in the barn in Cumbria with his wife and no heating except body heat and that’s admirable. That’s a lesson people can take. Human beings can suffer any form of destruction but with the right spirit can transcend it.

“I have a moment of sympathy as I was conceived and born during the second world war and ninety per cent of Manila was bombed during the war but I had an opinion that you could build a better world.”

David thinks it is important to, as he terms it, ‘surf the angst’. He advises: “There are moments when you get angst, despair, worry and fear. Learn how to use the moment and make the most of crisis and calamity.”

The Merz flaneuries project isn’t the first time David has produced work inspired by Schwitters or visited the Merz Barn in Cumbria. Two years ago he did a performance for which participants were given each other’s phone numbers and told to ring each other at midnight on one side of the barn, and recited their favourite vegetables on the other side of the barn, a response to Schwitters moving from Hanover — the city — to Cumbria — the countryside. David explained: "It was a poem, a choral symphony. It started to have a rhythm.”

David has been invited back to Islington Mill for a residency in October, and is interested in the city’s renewal. He visited Manchester for the first time in the 1960s, and remembers “the mills were closing and it was the end of the industrial revolution. There was a feeling of having been bombed (which it had, during WWII).”

He is looking forward to returning: “The new culture is really rising up. It’s amazing. When I come back I hope to do something about Manchester.”

Merz Flaneuries was part of a series of city wide events celebrating the work and legacy of Kurt Schwitters throughout March.

Find out more at www.merzman.co.uk.

Manchester's Modernist Heroines — publication and events

2011-03-04T09:29:00.012Z

Manchester Modernist Society, The LRM (Loiterers Resistance Movement) and The Shrieking Violet have teamed up for a collaborative project exploring the stories of ten fabulous North West women spanning the fields of invention, aviation, media, science,geography, design and architecture throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty first. Manchester’s feminist history did not stop with the Suffragettes!

Anyone (please note: these are not women only events!) is welcome to join us on Sunday March 6 at the Town Hall in the Women of Achievement room from 1-4pm for your free copy of 'Manchester's Modernist Heroines’. Manchester's Modernist Heroines is a special edition of the Shrieking Violet fanzine (with a cover beautifully stitched and collaged by Rosa Martyn, who studies Hand embroidery at the Royal College of Needlework) which aims to commemorate their achievements, uncover many more via your own favourites, and who knows – inspire some heroines of tomorrow. An exciting range of contemporary Manchester women – ranging from artists and writers to tour guides and even a dance troupe! – has responded to the ten women, and the results include essays, interviews, poetry, planned events and artworks.

The publication can also be read online here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More the lrm

Or downloaded and printed here.

At 3pm on Sunday March 6 The LRM will be curating a walk inspired by the work of Modernist Heroine Professor Doreen Massey focusing on flow, energy, gender and exploring space. The wander will uncover some of the hidden histories and power relationships which have shaped the city; Manchester is made up of myriad stories and some about our marvellous modernist heroines are absent from the official narrative.

This is the start of an ongoing project; please tell us about your heroines on the day or add them directly to a special Modernist Heroines page on the Modernist Society website.

Carol Batton: “Two things people don’t know about me are that I’m from Salford and I’m sixty.”

2011-03-01T07:35:00.014Z

Given out sheet by sheet, hand to hand around the Northern Quarter for nearly three decades, Carol Batton’s poems are an everyday, but unique, part of Manchester’s cultural fabric. They have the ability to surprise you, to make you smile, and generally make nicer the experience of living in the city. They’re part what gives a place its individuality.

Today Carol turns sixty but, rather than using this interview (which took place a few days beforehand) to reflect on that milestone, she’s keen to find a new, original angle on her work. After I sit down at a table in the Night & Day, where we’ve arranged to meet*, she decides that this should be anti-technology diatribe and comes up with an impromptu list of criticisms:

“Computers and mobile phones are something you pay to get rid of. I can’t see why people want the following:

Viruses
Trojan horses
Phishing with a ‘P’
Fraud (credit card)
Emails from people who may want to destroy your computer
‘Sorry you can’t have that page’
Antivirus treatment
Emails about the health service and what they’re going to do to you.”

A keen gardener, she concludes indignantly: “I would rather be watering a plant than giving a computer power.”

Despite this, and not even having an email account, she has used a family computer to search for me online, and recognised me when I walked in because I have joined the Carol Batton appreciation society on facebook (388 members at the last count).

Although she is the Northern Quarter’s unofficial resident poet (she explains “ninety per cent of people in Manchester have been to the Northern Quarter and it’s a creative area. I wouldn’t hand my poems out in Marks and Spencer”), Carol came to poetry relatively late, prompted by being prescribed lithium in 1983. This was a pivotal moment in her life: “I went on medication; first it sent me to sleep and then I started jotting down poetry.

“The medication is by far the worst thing that ever happened to me but it gave me poetry.”

Carol has an impressive range of hobbies and interests, and has experimented with a range of career options, including studying art at teacher training college: “I knew I wanted to be famous when I was at school. I tried tightrope walking at twelve and ballet dancing in the garden — anything to be famous! I didn’t want to be a hairdresser!”

She’s also enthusiastic about hill walking, dancing, tai chi and rare birds and can name all the flowers, trees and fungi, explaining she writes about “anything apart from love, surprisingly”. She says: “You have to be a polymath to be a poet. You have to know what you’re writing about if it comes up.”
Making up for the late start as a poet, Carol has been extraordinarily prolific. At one time she was writing up to a poem a week (now it’s more like one a month) and she estimates she has distributed 100,000 sheets of poems around Manchester, first reproduced by risograph and now photocopied at Marc The Printers on Edge Street.

“This is a how a poem comes about. I’m looking out of my window or I’m walking along in the rain. I’m looking at flowers and I’ve got a first line which is usually very good and I take a second or third line and if it’s looking good I take out my notebook — I’ve usually got two or three. Then I try it out with a couple of friends and they say ‘wow wow wow’ or ‘no no no’.”

The final poem is turned into a master copy, either typed or handwritten on paper (so “it cannot vanish out of existence easily”), which Carol refers to as CRC (camera ready copy) ready to be printed. These pages then comprise ‘stock’, added to poems from the past ten to fifteen years which have proved popular and stood the test of her time, which is kept in the Oklahoma bag she carries with her — something Carol describes as ‘like my shop’. As the thick pile indicates: “There are an awful lot I can lay my hands on.”

Carol is well-known for giving out her poems on the street: “I accost people and it’s very random but my poems give me a form of recognition for a stranger, they’re a ‘hello’, an introduction that establishes me. There’s an astonishing reaction to stuff. People like the short poems on card and they like the long, lyrical poems. I get accosted by strangers three times a day. ”

Carol once described herself as a samizdat poet, drawing a parallel with clandestine self-publishers evading censorship in Soviet states under oppressive regimes. “It is mass produced but it is not formally processed. It is handed out individual to individual. It is hand made and passed around by hand — I manually control it. It is self-publishing, my style.”
In 1990, Carol started memorising poems and performing at an open mic night called the New Troubadors, amongst a group that also included Bryan Glancy who was the inspiration for the title of Elbow’s album The Seldom Seen Kid. She has also performed at the Royal Northern College of Music with Stephen Fretwell, but she admitted: “It scares me. People think you just stand there and feel important but you’re panicking. You have to throw poetry in the air and catch the audience.”

Although Carol claims ‘TV and the newspapers don’t want me’, she has also been published in many magazines and appeared on two records. In 1999, Carol met Andy Votel of Twisted Nerve Records, who recorded her for the spoken word compilation Twisted Words, where she appeared on vinyl in the company of Billy Childish and Malcom Mooney, and for the album Folk is Not a Four Letter Word.

Carol has been looking forward to turning sixty: “I’ve waited for it and I deserve it!” But she has acknowledged it’s time to slow down, and is returning to planting seeds (“I very much like flowers. I’m digging them in as fast as I can”), deciding this is a good note on which to end our interview:

“I’m going from poetry, printing and publishing to petunias, planting and pansies in my old age.”

* Grateful thanks to my friend Richard Barrett, poet, writer and fellow Carol Batton fan, who first offered to interview Carol Batton for the Shrieking Violet some time ago, then decided I should interview her, then patiently set this interview up whilst we umed and ahed about who would do it.

Woman's Outlook magazine (visiting the National Co-operative Archive)

2011-02-06T12:36:00.020Z

Working a few metres away from the National Co-operative Archive, occasional glimpses into what lays within has made me fascinated by Woman's Outlook, a bi-weekly (and later weekly) magazine produced for the Women’s Co-operative Guild between 1919 and 1967. I recently visited the Archive on my day off work to have a closer look.

Woman's Outlook was an enticing and, in some ways, surprisingly modern, mix of the political and the domestic that combined tips for housewives and working women with fashion, fiction and features. Its editors included Mary Stott in the 1930s ‘40s and ‘50s, who went on to edit the women’s pages in the Guardian.

The Women’s Co-operative Guild (which still exists today as the Co-operative Women's Guild) was formed in 1883 and worked for the improvement of the status of women, championing women’s rights, campaigning for women’s suffrage and demanding other important changes to society such as maternity benefits. Issue one of Woman’s Outlook describes the guild as: “Over 50,000 woman co-operators who have banded themselves into a guild to work through co-operation for the welfare of the people, seeking freedom for their own progress and the equal fellowship of men and women in the home, the store, the workshop, and the state.” Co-operation is described in a later issue as 'not only an ideal form of trade for the community' but also 'the fairest system under which the consumer can purchase his needs'.

The first issue of Woman's Outlook has on its cover the WCG logo, which depicts a woman gazing out over an industrial scene. As encapsulated by the logo of the WCG, Woman's Outlook was aimed at broadening its readers’ viewpoints, offering information and comment on the issues and laws affecting women in the UK, as well as global economics and politics, and preparing women for an increasingly prominent role in industry and society. In its own words: “We hope to assist her in her outlook upon industrial and social questions, and to give her thoughts, through our pages, something of the freedom of a flock of birds…we dream of it as a friend of all, seeking always to help forward to better things — a fuller life, more social opportunities and a wider choice of spheres of civic usefulness for women.” Later covers featured glamorous, stylised women either at rest or engaged in various pursuits such as golf, with my favourite being the decorative covers of illustrators such as G Beuzeville Foyster (who also illustrated children's books) in the 1930s.

Though Woman’s Outlook was published from Long Millgate in Manchester, it had an international perspective, with regular features on women and their place in societies all over the world, considering issues such as Scandinavian countries’ attitude towards prostitution and what it was like for Muslim women living behind the veil. As well as sending journalists to the House of Commons and to see a police court at work, it went out and about visiting women and celebrating their achievements, featuring profiles of women ranging from prominent trade unionists to Canada’s first women senator and 'the world's champion female aviator'. As it noted: “No paper would live that confined its news to events of its own town and nation. Readers, even the most rabid and nationalistic, want to know all about the world…the world is alive and we can no more escape being members of it than we can jump out of our own skin.”

When Woman’s Outlook started in 1919, women over the age of thirty had only recently gained the vote in England, and throughout its almost fifty year lifespan the magazine urged its readers to be politicised, join trade unions and get involved in campaigns such as: increasing the number of women MPs; providing nursery education; raising the school leaving age; abolishing the marriage bar; bringing women’s wages into line with men's; providing pensions; giving women equal compensation to men after industrial accidents and disarmament, to name but a few. Discussing a 1930s inter-country naval conference one writer pondered “I have been wondering if there is no dramatic action we women could take up so as to impress the world with our serious attitude on the question”, and elsewhere the magazine wondered 'is it any wonder we women get fed up and become radicalised' doing 'the same jobs day after day'. The magazine also offered self-help tips, from how to make a portfolio and advice on chairing and managing meetings — women were encouraged to become board and committee members in co-operative societies — to suggesting setting up study circles to share experiences with other women.

Whilst Woman’s Outlook urged women to take up causes and from its start gave women advice on how to find jobs, it acknowledged that many women were based in the domestic sphere — indeed, many women, such as teachers, had to give up their jobs upon marriage well into the twentieth century — and offered practical advice on hygiene, nutrition, child rearing and maternity as well as hints on furnishing the home and ‘smart and practical’ patterns for knitting and sewing. Love stories — often didactic tales with messages warning against moral ills such as taking credit and investing money unethically — sat alongside entertainment features on art and literature and more serious, educational articles on housing solutions and women’s working conditions.

Published during times of high unemployment, the magazine encouraged thrift and making the best out of limited means, and recipes were introduced with titles such as ‘You can’t eat your cake and have it but you can eat your orange and have the rind for use in countless ways’ and ‘When shelves are empty. Emergency jams from dried fruit.’. Women were encouraged to write in with recipes and advice, with the magazine running competitions ranging from making your own wine, including how much it cost (a potato and raisin wine, its submitter adding the detail that it was ‘in colour like best whisky’, triumphed), to the best ways to make the others around you happy at Christmas. A regular children’s page, ‘For the Bairns’ offered riddles, stories and advice such as how to look after pets.

From its inception Woman’s Outlook argued for world peace. It continued production through the second world war, printing a woman’s war time diary, a rousing series on pioneers of social reform throughout history, growing advice for allotments and recipes for making rations last as long as possible — whilst also running pieces scrutinising the distribution of food and questioning policies such as conscription. Women entered into debate through its pages, writing in to discuss topics ranging from the benefits of vegetarianism to political hot potatoes. Light relief was provided by a regular film column. All the while Woman’s Outlook urged for a Britain to be rebuilt as a fairer, more equal society after the war with better housing and access to healthcare and education.

By 1967, though modernised and resembling more of a newspaper, the magazine was no longer viable and closed for economic reasons. As the final issue noted, however: “Outlook has outlasted many of the women’s magazines that were concerned only with the more trivial aspects of a woman’s life.”

Woman’s Outlook was one of a number of publications produced by the Co-operative Movement. The magazine, and others including the Our Circle children’s magazine and the Co-operative News, can be found in the National Co-operative Archive in Holyoake House, Hanover Street, Manchester.

Cover images are used by permission of the Co-operative Press.

The Shrieking Violet Issue 12 (and why you should read it whilst listening to Haha Sound by Broadcast)

2011-01-31T21:18:00.014Z

Issue 12 of the Shrieking Violet has no theme. It does, however, pick up on topics covered in previous zines such as public transport — Tom Hiles has created an imagined map of how a Manchester Underground system might look, whilst poet, artist and public transport enthusiast Stuart Vallantine explains plans in the 1970s for a tunnel to connect Piccadilly and Victoria stations, with an illustration by Alex Boswell — and the media — Steve Hanson recounts a strange but true experience working for the Daily Sport in the Express Building and I have included my interview with artist Maurice Carlin about his project The Self Publishers.

Artist Daniel Fogarty (whose work can be seen at the BlankExpression 2011 show at BlankSpace at 43 Hulme Street until 13 February) has contributed a design essay on Granada idents and Anouska Smith from Cause and Effect art asks why it is so hard to make a living being an artist.

The zine also includes a letter from Joe Troop to his childhood home in Moss Side — part of his project My Hero — and creative writing by Michael Cassidy. Instead of a food recipe, Issue 12 contains instructions by Tom Hiles for making a seed bomb.

The cover is by Fuchsia Macaree.

Small numbers of black and white paper copies of the Shrieking Violet have been left in Piccadilly Records, Nexus Art Cafe, Cornerhouse, Magma books and Good Grief! in the Soup Kitchen as of Wednesday.

Issue 12 can be read online here (in an unfortunately low resolution PDF):

Open publication - Free publishing - More manchester

Download a copy to print yourself here.

To have a paper copy sent to you free of charge email your address to Natalie.Rose.Bradbury@googlemail.com. Also use this email address if you would like to contribute to future issues or join the facebook group.

Issues 2-12 of the Shrieking Violet can be read online here and issues 1-12 can be downloaded here.

Tom Hiles is hoping to sell merchandise featuring his Manchester Underground map in the future. If you are interested in finding out any news on this when it becomes available email thomashiles@gmail.com or follow him on twitter .

At the start of the year, when I was putting Issue 12 of the Shrieking Violet together, I started listening to Haha Sound by Broadcast a lot again. So I was shocked when, a couple of weeks into the year, it was announced that Broadcast’s singer, Trish Keenan, was battling pneumonia in hospital and had been on a life support machine since Christmas after contracting swine flu on tour in Australia. Sadly, the next day, on Friday 14th January, it was announced that she had died at the age of just 42.

Since it was released, Haha Sound has rarely been far from my record player, and it is one of the records that came to define for me a certain stage of growing up. Haha Sound was released in August 2003 during, in my case, the long, extended summer between GCSEs and sixth form. At that awkward age when you’re too underage to do much, but old enough to want to do something, being a shy teenager in a small, sleepy seaside town the highlight of my (not so) social life was listening to John Peel on Radio One and daydreaming about moving to a big city. Having fallen in love with Broadcast after hearing him play Pendulum and Before We Begin from Haha Sound on a regular basis, I got the bus to the nearest place with a decent record shop, Canterbury, when the record was released to buy it (from the unfortunately now long since closed down Richards Records) on a thick slab of Warp records vinyl. Over the next two years — the final two years I spent living in Kent before I moved away to go to university — it is only a slight exaggeration to say that Haha Sound was all I listened to.

I had previously obsessed over the wonky genius of Syd Barrett and early Pink Floyd. Broadcast, too, are a brilliantly skewed pop band but, whereas Syd Barrett’s eccentricity was familiar and recognisable, grounded in an everyday, typically English setting of big bands, curly hair (in contrast, Steve Lamacq mentioned on the Evening Session around this time that Trish Keenan had ‘the straightest hair in pop music’ and seemed genuinely amazed by it), floorboards and bicycles, Broadcast’s experimental take on pop music was a different kind of weird altogether. Trish Keenan’s smooth, icy, precise vocals floated over pop beats and sounds I had never heard before, including percussion that, in my mind, made me think they were hitting an assortment of boxes, bells and bits of scrap metal. They even sang the odd word in German. The record sleeve, too, was like nothing else I’d seen, featuring collaged fragments of photographs, scattered boxes and clusters of warped, typewritten letters in strange arrangements.

Syd Barrett’s comforting, flat, boy-next-door vocals reminded me of quaint, leafy cathedral cities, but Broadcast, from far-away Birmingham, were glamorous, exotic and arty and, I decided, sounded like what living in a big city would be like. They referenced the past, borrowing musically from everything from nursery rhymes to sixties pop, and creating an almost chant-like effect at times, but also remained somehow futuristic and timeless. I still have yet to hear a song I like more than Before We Begin, a swooning slice of warm retro-pop gorgeousness that never fails to give me slight butterflies in my stomach as it swirls around me.

Broadcast played at the Night & Day soon after I moved to Manchester in 2005, promoting the follow up to Haha Sound, Tender Buttons, a more straightforward, but still brilliant, pop record. Pathetically, as a first year I hadn’t yet made any friends who liked Broadcast and was too nervous to go to a gig alone, so had to wait until December 2009 to finally see Broadcast live, at the Deaf Institute, when they were promoting their last release, a mini-album with the Focus Group. It was everything I had expected — an enveloping combination of swirling visuals, captivating pop music and a mysterious stage presence — quite unlike any gig I had been to before or have been to since.

This fanzine is dedicated to Trish Keenan and the inspiration I found in Broadcast's music.

Modernist heroines — a collaborative callout, women we need you!

2011-01-20T19:14:00.010Z

The Shrieking Violet is delighted to be teaming up with Manchester Modernist Society and the Loiterers Resistance Movement to invite you to join us in a collaborative project promoting a century of Modernist women to coincide with the hundredth birthday celebrations of International Women's Day on March 8.

We are currently looking for expressions of interest around the theme of ten fabulous females strongly associated with the North West spanning the fields of invention, aviation, media, science, design and architecture in the twentieth century.

We aim to produce a publication and range of activities centred around the lives and careers of our ten local heroines in early March, and are looking for your creative responses. This can be (but is not limited to) an event, performance, piece of creative writing, interview or journalism. Our only stipulation is that the work be about one of our ten local heroines.

The Manchester Modernist Society exists to raise awareness and appreciation of Modern architecture & the urban environment and related modern art and design, in Manchester and the surrounding region, through walks, talks and creative collaborations.

The ten modernist heroines are:

1. Mitzi Solomon Cunliffe (January 1 1918 – December 30 2006) was an American sculptor who was a long resident in Didsbury. She was most famous for designing the golden trophy in the shape of a theatrical mask that would go on to represent the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and be presented as the BAFTA award. She also designed the mural on the Heaton Park Pumping Station.

2. Winifred Brown, Salfordian Flyer and, in her early 20s, winner of the Kings Cup (air race) in 1930.

3. Rachel Haugh co-established the architectural practice Ian Simpson Associates. She was born and brought up in Manchester and studied at Bath University School of Architecture. She is a founding partner and co-director of Ian Simpson Architects, a design-led architectural practice which was established in 1987 and employs around 50 people in offices in Manchester and London.

4. Susan Sutherland Isaacs (1885–1948) was a Bolton born educational psychologist and psychoanalyst. Educated at Manchester and Cambridge Universities, she published pioneer studies on the intellectual and social development of children and promoted the nursery school movement. For Isaacs developing a child’s independence, which is best achieved through play, was the best way for children to learn and the role of adults and early educators was to guide children's play. She was awarded a CBE in 1948.

5. Marie Stopes (15 October 1880 – 2 October 1958) was a noted palaeobotanist, campaigner for women's rights and pioneer in the field of family planning. She was the first woman member of faculty at Manchester University.

6. Professor Rosalie David is the world's leading expert on Egyptian mummies. She is Director of the Centre for Biomedical and Forensic Egyptology at the University of Manchester and has directed the Manchester Egyptian Mummy Research Project since 1973. This project has pioneered the 'Manchester Method' — the use of medical and scientific techniques to investigate ancient Egyptian mummies to detect evidence of disease and information about everyday life in ancient Egypt. She was the first woman professor in Egyptology in Britain, and the first to receive an OBE in recognition of her services in Egyptology.

7. Olive Shapley, (10 April 1910– 13 March 1999) was a British radio producer and broadcaster. In 1934 she began her career with the BBC as Children's Hour organiser with the responsibility of producing five hour-long programmes every week. These included at least two full-length live plays a week. After the war she became the third presenter of ‘Woman's Hour’, a programme with which she was associated for over twenty years, producing the programme between 1949 and 1953. Meanwhile, she began to develop a career as a presenter in the new television medium. In the mid-1960s her Manchester home became a refuge (as a charitable trust) for single mothers and later, in the late 1970s, for Vietnamese boat people.

8. Professor Doreen Massey is a Manchester born contemporary British social scientist and geographer. She has devoted her life to the subject, speaking passionately about the significance of geography and the 'politics of place' in a globalised world. Her work has had a profound influence on theorising around space and place and has taken the study of geography into new inter-disciplinary directions.

9. Mary Stott (18 July 1907 – 16 September 2002) was a British feminist and journalist, the first — and longest-serving — editor of the Guardian women's page. One of the great campaigning journalists of the 20th century, in her 15-year tenure from 1957 to 1972 she invented a platform for women's voices and concerns and used it to further such causes.

10. Linder Sterling studied graphic design at the Manchester School of Art from 1974-77 and played a vital part in the 1970s punk scene in Manchester, designing graphics for the Buzzcocks, Magazine and Factory Records. She remains a pivotal visual artist, performance artist and musician, whose work has been selected for the Tate Triennial.

Deadline for expression of interest is Friday 28 January — simply indicate your chosen Heroine and an outline of the type of work likely to be submitted.

Deadlines for final submission of work is Friday 18 February, to allow print and publicity in time for our March event on Sunday 6 March.

Please email info@manchestermodernistsociety.org in the first instance with your choice of Fabulous Female and a short summary of the idea you might wish to pursue.

Please pass the details onto anyone you think might be interested.