Gertrude Hermes’ Ordsall Peacock: a portal between Salford old and new

This winter, a large bronze peacock appeared in the grounds of Ordsall Hall in Salford, on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal. 

Whilst a peacock might seem an unusual sight in inner-city Salford, the sculpture has a long history in Ordsall and plays an important part in the local community’s sense of identity. 

The Ordsall peacock is the work of Gertrude Hermes, a major mid-twentieth century British artist who was elected to prestigious exhibiting society the Royal Academy. Although her name may not roll off the tongue as easily as that of her peers, such as Barbara Hepworth, Hermes’ work has attracted renewed art historical and public interest in recent years following an exhibition at the Hepworth in Wakefield in 2015. Working across industrial design, sculpture and finely detailed woodcuts and linocuts, Hermes drew animals and famous English landmarks such as Stonehenge. She also depicted elements of the natural world, such as rock formations and waterfalls, in stylised close-up. 

Like many artists of her generation, Hermes did not just create work for galleries but made pieces for public places. After the Second World War, her artworks were purchased for numerous schools and teacher training schemes around the country. She also helped select prints for the annual Pictures for Schools exhibitions, held in London between 1947 and 1969, which aimed to provide affordable artworks for educational buyers. 

Hermes’ peacock was installed at the new Ordsall Girls School in 1961, using money from the local authority and funds raised by pupils (another proposed facility, a swimming pool, was apparently too expensive). A frog was placed outside the boys’ school; its location is now unknown. 

Ordsall High no longer exists, and the Ordsall of the early 1960s is unrecognisable from the Ordsall of today. Then, it was a densely populated area of Victorian housing, built for workers at the nearby docks. By the mid-1970s, the majority of the old housing stock had been knocked down as part of a slum clearance programme, and many of the residents had been moved to new housing in areas further out of the city. In the 1960s, film-maker Mike Goodger documented the run-down conditions in which many residents lived, lacking in basic facilities, whilst the bittersweet super-8 footage of local newsagent Ralph Brookes captured the final days of life and established social relationships in the old streets. Medieval stately home Ordsall Hall, whose long and interesting history included a stint as a working men’s club for a nearby mill, also fell into a state of disrepair. 

Since then, the area has comprehensively rebuilt, at a far lower population density. The majority of homes are still socially owned, an increasing rarity following the right-to-buy policies initiated by Thatcher in the 1980s. Whilst the area is still home to families who remember the ‘old Ordsall’, the docks down the road are long gone and the site has been rebranded ‘MediaCity UK’. Manual work has been replaced with media and creative industry jobs for those with qualifications and connections, alongside a university campus, apartments, shopping outlet, bars and the Lowry arts centre. A place of industry has become a leisure destination for those with disposable income. Ordsall Hall is now a council-owned museum with a tranquil garden and even the once polluted waters of the ship canal are clean enough for swimming and watersports. 

Hermes’ peacock remained at Ordsall High until the school closed in 1988 and the site became part of Salford College. The peacock was subsequently moved to a Salford College site in another inner-city area, Charlestown, a couple of miles away. Here, it was unceremoniously sunk into concrete and languished in what Gail Skelly, a volunteer and director of Ordsall Community Arts (OCA), describes as “an inauspicious place, full of weeds”. In 2012, the peacock was put into storage at the OCA’s headquarters whilst a new location was sought. Spearheaded by local man George Tapp, the community embarked on a campaign to bring the peacock home.  

Enabled by Heritage Lottery Funding, OCA spent several years working with Noah Rose, an artist with a long track-record of working in public art focused on communities and heritage, both in the UK and internationally, who led on the restoration of the sculpture. In collaboration with consulting structural engineer Peter Hewitt, Noah also designed a new plinth in red sandstone, sourced from St Bees in Cumbria, for the grounds of Ordsall Hall. 

Shortly before the completion of the completion of the restoration process, I visited Noah at his studio in a former printing works in Salford, where he outlined some of the challenges of restoring the peacock and remedying the damage done when it was removed from public display. I watched as Noah carefully cleaned away residue left when the artwork was embedded in concrete and showed me a heavy-walled bronze tube designed to secure the sculpture in its new home. “It’s been a big honour and responsibility to restore an iconic bronze sculpture by such an important artist,” Noah told me. “I want to honour the work, and it’s daunting, but by using the right materials I’m hoping to give it the best possible resurrection.” 

Gail emphasises that the project hasn’t just been about bringing the sculpture back physically, but has sought to explore its social significance and celebrate the area’s shared history. “We just have to tell people the story and they are interested,” she says. “The peacock is quite famous around here and everyone over the age of thirty who grew up here remembers it. It was originally situated on a pedestrian through-way, so even people who didn’t go to the school had seen it. People would meet there for a fight, a fag or a photo. It was their peacock.”

Associated events have included school drama, a map, a film and a social history project to develop a personal timeline of Ordsall with long-term residents of the area. Gail has worked with young women from Salford Girls’ Club, using Hermes’ position as a woman artist – she notes that Ordsall is a community in which women are often the most active members – to reflect on their own lives and the challenges they face; in the 1960s, Hermes catalysed a rule change to allow women to attend Royal Academy dinners, following her exclusion solely on the basis of her gender. 

In 2018, OCA marked its fortieth birthday with a peacock-themed lantern parade. A group of peahens were created for the peacock and hundreds of children were brought together in the dark to imagine what Gail calls a “daft love story”. In spring 2019, the peacock was celebrated with a light installation at the alternative arts festival Not Quite Light, which took place across Salford. 

Salford continues to develop rapidly, particularly those areas within walking distance of Manchester city centre. Geographically relocated by estate agents to be part of ‘Manchester’, these areas are being built up with apartment blocks promoting aspirational city living, often funded through foreign investment. In spite of this, there is a huge gulf between the old and new populations. Whilst higher earners have taken advantage of the ability to commute in to MediaCity from Manchester and its surrounding towns, or live in Ordsall and use it as a convenient base for working and socialising in Manchester, longstanding communities have been hit hard by austerity policies and the loss of services and amenities. Existing residents are often isolated and disenfranchised. 

Another peacock sculpture by Hermes was listed for £95,000 at auction in 2015. At a time when local authorities continue to sell off assets such as publicly owned artworks, this must seem a huge amount of money in Salford, a city which, despite its proximity to the cultural attractions of Manchester and Salford Quays, has one of the lowest levels of engagement with the arts in the country. Gail acknowledges the difficult balancing act between “money we desperately need to spend” and “the value of public art, whether that’s financial or cultural”. 

In spite of this, there is a recognition that the peacock means a great deal to Ordsall. “People really feel personally for it,” reflects Gail. “It’s a real focal point.” Above all, she says, “It’s a symbol of resilience and toughness, a reminder of the past when so much has been lost. It’s a portal between the old and new areas.” 

Visit the peacock in the grounds of Ordsall Hall now: https://ordsallhall.com/ 

Watch a video about the peacock’s return to Salford online here.

A launch event and celebration will be held from 4-5pm on Thursday 17 February. 

An exhibition of material relating to the project will be held at St Clement’s Church, Ordsall. The exhibition launches from 1-3pm on Sunday 20 February and will be open to visit on Sundays from 1-3pm until Sunday 13 March. 

Archive photos courtesy Paul Blain/Ordsall High School.

Manchester: Something Rich and Strange

I'm pleased to be a contributor to a new book, Manchester: Something Rich and Strange (edited by Paul Dobraszczyk and Sarah Butler), published by Manchester University Press with a beautiful cover by Simon Buckley (Not Quite Light). Aiming to get under the skin of the city and offer alternative perspectives beyond the usual, tired narratives, writers, artists and academics have each taken a series of words as prompts for short essays. I have written about 'Newspaper', 'Loop', 'Co-operative', Sculpture' and 'Statue'. 

Manchester: Something Rich and Strange is currently available for the bargain price of £7.79 (usual price £12.99). Buy here.

Listen to a short extract of me reading from my piece about the Loop lines, former railway lines converted to walking and cycling routes.

Manchester University Press · Loop by Natalie Bradbury

I also recorded a short video on the Fallowfield Loop talking about my contribution.

Folkestone Warren sloe gin

Fight your way through tangles of brambles, nettles and blackthorn bushes, and keep your footing on the narrow, uneven paths that lead down to Folkestone’s Warren, and you’re rewarded with access to the town’s most attractive beach.

The Warren is a bay at the foot of the white cliffs, looking across to the low-lying coast of France on a clear day. Despite being geographically close, it feels a world away from the Folkestone’s most popular beach, Sunny Sands, where the raw bodied and raw faced holiday people observed in Ted Hughes’ poem Work and Play

Are laid out like wounded
Flat as in ovens
Roasting and basting
With faces of torment as space burns them blue.

Although out of town, the Warren is well worth the trip. As part of an exposed coastal landscape that has been remade by landslips over the years, the cliffs are shored up by a wide concrete apron constructed after the Second World War. When the tide is right, regular rows of concrete groynes create the impression of a series of private beaches, both separated from the promenade above and cut off by gently lapping waves to the side. At low tide, the concrete is coated in a springy carpet of vivid green moss that’s treacherous under foot. At high tide, fishermen cast their rods out to sea and concrete steps provide the perfect entry point for swimming in the English Channel, which turns a Mediterranean turquoise under the summer sun. In winter, when stormy grey waves slap unpredictably against the edge, it’s wise to keep your distance.

Although the Warren is home to a small campsite – and the occasional illicit camper and hermit residing in shacks built into the cliffs – it’s mercifully free of crowds. It’s overlooked only by a couple of Martello Towers, a lone clifftop café at Capel-le-Ferne and a clifftop artwork, Siren, by Marc Schmitz and Dolgor Ser-Od, inspired by the improbable early twentieth-century wartime technology of concrete listening ears, and installed as part of the 2017 Folkestone Triennial.

It wasn’t always this way. The Warren, which had a reputation as Folkestone’s ‘Little Switzerland’, was once a destination for daytrippers and pleasure seekers, served by its own train station.

The Warren is separated from touristy Sunny Sands by an expanse of rocks, popular with fossil hunters. Sifting idly through the beach’s mixture of sand and pebbles reveals its own treasures, though: pebbles made from brick in various shades of red and yellow, worn smooth over the years, and translucent, gem-like ‘sea glass’, delicately frosted ovals of white, green, brown and blue glass created from decades of discarded bottles being thrown around and ground down by the tide.

Follow the cliffs in the other direction, past Abbot’s Cliff nudist beach, and eventually you’ll reach the port of Dover. The Folkestone to Dover trainline, too, takes this route, through the cliffs and past the Warren. Though short, it’s a dramatic ride, as the train emerges suddenly alongside the sea. Although spectacular, the route has its perils. In December 2015, storm damage closed the trainline for a full nine months, a reminder that the conceit of man’s control over our island coastline is illusory at best, and that its shape, form and the nature of our relationship with it is something we should never take for granted.

Guest lecture, Bradford School of Art, Wednesday 31 January - Bradford’s brutalist masterpieces: William Mitchell’s murals in Bradford, Bingley and Ilkley

I'll be returning to Bradford School of Art on Wednesday 31 January to do another lecture in its Random Lecture series. The lectures take place at 12 noon; all welcome.

Bradford’s brutalist masterpieces: William Mitchell’s murals in Bradford, Bingley and Ilkley 

Born in 1925, the artist and industrial designer William Mitchell’s work can be seen in towns and cities around the world. However, it does not hang on the wall of art galleries, but is an integral part of the buildings in which it is found. These range from everyday places such as schools, libraries, pubs, subway underpasses and the foyers of post-war towerblocks, to flagship buildings like Harrods and the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King in Liverpool.

The talk will give an overview of Mitchell’s work and career, focusing in particular on three artworks by William Mitchell in the Bradford area which demonstrate his post-war work in municipal and civic contexts as well as for corporate and commercial clients. Using innovative techniques and working in media such as moulded concrete and fibreglass, all three murals are distinctively of Mitchell’s style, yet take different stylistic approaches, from abstracted pattern-making to incorporating elements of the history of the area in which they are located.

It will explore a series of concrete murals in Bradford’s Kirkgate market, built in 1973 to replace a previous Victorian market, and carried out by Mitchell or one of his associates; thirteen fibreglass panels, commissioned for the former Bradford and Bingley Building Society headquarters in Bingley in the early 1970s and depicting the architectural and engineering landmarks of the area; and a large mural for the Ilkley Wool Secretariat, completed in 1968, which explores the history of wool manufacture locally.

These case studies will be used to highlight wider changes in attitudes towards post-war architecture, and the ways in which these types of artworks are regarded: whilst a new home has been sought in recent years for the Bingley murals, which were removed as the highly unpopular building in which they were situated was demolished, Mitchell’s Ilkley relief has been widely feted and was celebrated with Grade II listing by Historic England in 2015.

Fallowfield Loop damson gin

In the 1960s, Dr Beeching paved the way for the reduction of the British rail network, closing small village stations and branch lines and catalysing the ascendancy of the motorcar as the dominant mode of transport in Britain*.

Some of long-closed lines are now reopening, after decades dormant. Others, their tracks removed permanently and their station buildings now converted into shops and supermarket cafes (as is the case with the former suburban Manchester stations of Levenshulme and Fallowfield), offer cyclists miles of dedicated bike path free from the traffic and aggressive motoring that increasingly chokes our towns and cities.

Manchester’s Fallowfield Loop stretches around eight miles, looping around the south and east of the city. Beginning in inner-city Openshaw in east Manchester and ending in leafy Chorlton in south Manchester, it undulates through the former industrial dormitories of Gorton and Levenshulme, passes picturesque Debdale Reservoir, skirts the boundary of Stockport at Reddish, and cuts through studenty Fallowfield and leafy Whalley Range.

The Loop has the feel of a linear park, offering a backdoor view of the city and its patchwork of official and unofficial green spaces. The Loop itself is an underacknowledged green space. In spring and summer it’s overgrown with branches forming a green tunnel, although in autumn the slipperiness of the accumulated layers of leaves can be treacherous. In winter, the foliage drops right back to reveal numerous back gardens, allotments, recreation grounds, school playing fields, overgrown brownfield sites and industrial land reclaimed as country parks. It links up with other traffic-free routes, too, from the Ashton Canal, with its miles of recently resurfaced towpath, to former branch canals such as the Stockport canal.

The Fallowfield Loop has become a place of community activism and communal litter-picks. It’s also a place of memorial, to young people who have killed themselves. Recently, it’s become a site of protest, with large EU flags unfurled unmissably from road and railway bridges; when removed, they reappear again soon afterwards, imported en masse from China. Pro-EU graffiti sprayed along the path places the UK at the heart of the EU, and the Manchester bee motif is placed centrally within the circle of stars that represent the EU member states; it’s a reminder that Manchester, along with the neighbouring local authorities of Stockport and Trafford, which the Loop passes close-by, voted remain in the EU referendum, in common with several other northern cities. It’s also a place for creativity, from street art murals celebrating the city’s architecture, to hand-written personal declarations (and accusations – ‘Louis K has a tiny penis’). It’s a place to encounter culture, from bicycle theatre troupes offering outdoor Shakespeare performances to public artworks sponsored by the cycle charity Sustrans, which document and draw attention to the flora and fauna of the route. It’s a place of learning and instruction, for small children to gain confidence and practise their bike skills away from the road. It’s also a place for family time: on father’s day, it’s noticeable how the number of men with small children increases.

Not all is benign – once or twice a year the ambush of women or opportunistic robberies make the deadlines, and mounted police undertake regular patrols. However, generally it’s a place of conviviality and sharing: if a cyclist stops at the side of the path, the next to pass will stop to see if all’s okay, and offer help fixing a chain or a spare inner tube.

Although cyclists benefit the most from a safe cycling environment uninterrupted by the frequent stops and starts of traffic lights, the Fallowfield Loop is also well-used by walkers, joggers, dogwalkers, students, and schoolchildren on their way to and from school, as well as shoppers just getting from A to B. It’s a meeting place, too, particularly for groups of teenagers.

These looplines are also fruitful places for the urban forager. Depending on the season, edible mushrooms, horseradish, strawberries, raspberries, cherries, plums, damsons, sloes and apples can all be found along the Loop, whilst in late-summer individuals and groups of people of all ages gather with an assortment of receptacles, from large yoghurt tubs to seaside buckets, Tupperware tubs and carrier bags, to gather blackberries, and offer hints on the best spots.

This year’s damsons were picked along the Fallowfield Loop, in a year that was unusually fallow for apples, yet plums and damsons of varying hues were in abundance.

* For a more detailed account of cuts to train services in Manchester see https://mancunian1001.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/the-reshaping-of-our-railways-1-before-beeching.

Guest lecture, Bradford School of Art, 15 November: 'The Campus as Art Gallery: The Past, Present and Future of Educational Art Collections'

I will be doing a guest lecture at Bradford School of Art at 12 noon on Wednesday 15 November, drawing on an emerging interest in further/higher educational art collections, which has arisen from my PhD research into Pictures for Schools and post-war art education. The lecture, which takes place as part of the 'Random Lecture series', is free and all are welcome.

The Campus as Art Gallery: The Past, Present and Future of Educational Art Collections

Like many institutions, universities and colleges often publicly display portraits of grandees such as chancellors and vice-chancellors in order to convey a sense of tradition, heritage and prestige. Less common but more interesting are those further and higher education establishments which have sought to display works of modern art around campus, turning the educational environment into a gallery space. Universities that have chosen to collect and display contemporary art range from modern, post-war universities, where brutalist 1960s architecture is offset by landscaped grounds filled with sculpture by artists such as Henry Moore, to redbrick Victorian universities, to former technical colleges which attained university status in the 1960s. Here (primarily) paintings were purchased for display in communal areas such as corridors and lecture rooms, as well as more privately in staff offices. Between the 1940s and the 1960s, many teacher training colleges also became enthusiastic buyers of contemporary art as part of a broader culture of artistic patronage among educational establishments such as schools, and art became a part of the training context for a future generation of educators.

Some educational establishments continue to take pride in these collections, make a point of promoting public awareness and access, and continue to actively acquire work. In other cases artworks have been lost, faded into the background or become hidden in the everyday fabric of the institution as universities and colleges have merged, been expanded, modernised and redeveloped over time. This has been due to insufficient documentation and knowledge about the optimum conditions for the display of artworks, a lack of dedicated resource and staff time, or a lack of planning around care and maintenance for the future.

This lecture will explore the historical establishment and development of some of these educational art collections in colleges and universities in the twentieth century. It will explore their perceived educational impact and appeal, the types of artworks that were considered to be of value and use for display in educational settings, and what this says about changing ideas about the nature and purpose of education. It will ask what an educational art collection might look like now and what it might add to the educational experience of today’s students.

Folkestone Triennial: a town transformed by art?

“It’s the best job in the world,” enthuses Folkestone Triennial curator Lewis Biggs, as he bounds along the Leas promenade in a straw hat and tropical shirt. The Victorian seaside splendour of the Leas, lined with grand hotels and mansion blocks, is one of the locations currently displaying new artworks for the fourth instalment of the town’s triennial. Some require the viewer to look hard to spot them – David Shrigley and Camille Biddell recreated one of the Leas’ traditional, ornate lampposts from memory and installed it on the Leas, where it differs only slightly in height and colour from those around it – whereas Richard Woods’ brightly coloured holiday chalets stand out garishly around the town. His fantasy structures float in the harbour and perch on the top of the cliffs, aiming to highlight the impact of second home ownership on the south east’s overheated property market. 

Across the town, the triennial opens up new spaces to residents and visitors alike. This includes a former Baptist burial ground, hidden among a huge redbrick railway viaduct and tall, austere rows of terraces. Accessed via a steep row of steps, it hosts sensor-activated sound compositions by Emily Peasgood. Antony Gormley invites visitors to descend into the dank, cavernous space under the Harbour Arm, where one of his characteristic figures surveys the dramatic white cliffs of Dover and the passing of cross-channel traffic. Hoycheong Wong makes the invisible visible, giving a new façade to an otherwise anonymous Islamic cultural centre, which for 28 years has served the area’s 300 Muslims from a nondescript industrial building. Other pieces blur the boundaries between the private and the public, as in Amalia Pica’s seashell sculptures, positioned in people’s front windows, which reference souvenirs, kitsch and collecting. Other work literally illuminates, in the case of a lamppost in the dingy market square, powered by an experimental mushroom battery, installed by Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas. Some of the work highlights familiar locations or landmarks. Alex Hartley’s 'Wall' appears to balance precariously at the edge of the white cliffs, constantly at risk of erosion. Other artists bring attention to aspects of the town’s history and economy, as in Jonathan Wright’s small-scale replicas of Folkestone’s fishing fleet – only ten of which remain in operation – developed in collaboration with local fishermen and suspended on posts around the town. Lubaina Himid, meanwhile, suggests an alternative history in her beachfront jelly mould pavilion, that encourages us to think about the links between leisure and pleasure, slavery and sugar.

This is Biggs’ second triennial – he took over from Andrea Schlieker for the 2014 edition – and it’s clear that he considers it a job for life. His enthusiasm stems partly from the opportunities offered by Folkestone’s architecture and geography – “I’m obsessed with art and place,” he explains. “They are constructed in the same way – through material and stories.” The process of choosing work for the triennial starts, Biggs explains, “with a list of places I want to illuminate”.

In large part, too, Biggs is driven by working “in a town small enough to see a difference”. As much as the excitement of opening up places and bringing artists to work in the town, Biggs is interested in urbanism, civic life, democracy and the long-term effect of the triennial. “It’s really important that art is seen as part of life,” says Biggs. “It’s the glue between people in society.” He explains: “I believe that if we get better at constructing art then we get better at constructing place.”

Biggs’ concern with place-making and transformation is shared by Alastair Upton, Chief Executive of the Creative Foundation. The Creative Foundation was formed in 2002 by the philanthropist Roger De Haan, founder of Saga, a major local employer based in nearby Sandgate (De Haan is still chair of the Creative Foundation). The Creative Foundation set out to explore the potential for creative-led regeneration in a town that had “lost its economic purpose” following the decline of tourism in the second half of the twentieth century and the loss of its channel crossing in 2000. For Upton, the raison d'être of the Creative Foundation, which he joined in 2011, is to ask: “How can creative activities make Folkestone a better place to live, work, study and visit?” The answer, for Upton, is by creating a place that has “interesting architecture, buildings and things going on – a cultural life”. 

Both Upton and Biggs previously worked in Liverpool, Biggs as curator of Liverpool Biennial from 2000-2011, before which he led Tate Liverpool, and Upton as Director of the Bluecoat in Liverpool. Upton explains that “historically all the stories about Liverpool were negative”. Liverpool’s designation as the Capital of Culture in 2008 was an opportunity to change the way the city was perceived, both by residents and by outsiders. “The defensive pride that people felt has became positive,” says Upton. 

Biggs, too, explains that he learnt a lot in Liverpool: “I found that I needed to relearn and think again, because art and audiences behave differently in and outside of the institution. In the gallery, the primary reference is always to other art – you are always working in the parameters of art history and it is circular, as it appeals to people who are already interested in art.”

Having seen how art can change places in Liverpool, Upton and Biggs share a sense that there is potential to “make more of a difference” in Folkestone, a medium-sized town of around 50,000 people. In the nine years since the first Folkestone Triennial took place in 2008 the town has undeniably undergone something of a transformation. When the work of the Foundation started, the town had been subject to decades of decline. Like town centres across the country, the high street has been in a sorry state for years: one of the largest retailers, M&S, abandoned the town in 2006, leaving empty shops in its wake. Although community arts company Strange Cargo was long-established in the town, there was little in the way of contemporary art of national or international quality in Kent. For many years the Metropole Gallery, founded in 1961 with the support of the critic and broadcaster Sir Kenneth Clark – a resident of Saltwood Castle in nearby Hythe – brought a varied programme of changing exhibitions by emerging and established artists to the town. However, constrained by its base in an old-fashioned Victorian building dominated by parquet floors, large windows and wooden panelling, it finally wound down in 2008.

One catalyst for the revival of the Folkestone’s fortunes has been the opening of the high-speed train route from London. In 2007, the Kent coast was connected to St Pancras by high-speed train: the journey from Folkestone to London, which previously took around an hour and fifty minutes, can now be done in under an hour. This has had the effect of bringing the Kent coast closer to London; it has also prompted an influx of incomers, including artists, attracted by cheaper property and a better quality of life, still within commuting distance of the capital.

The cultural offering in the county, too, has improved dramatically in the past five to ten years, with the opening of the Turner Contemporary in Margate in 2011 and the Beaney in Canterbury in 2012 (as well as the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings, East Sussex in 2012), as well as new music venues along the coast, from Ramsgate Music Hall to Dover’s new Booking Hall venue.

However, Upton sees the Creative Foundation as offering an alternative to the “concept or consumption-led” gallery model, which relies on a landmark building to create a trickle-down effect in the town’s economy. Instead, Upton sees a need to “make a place for people to make”, believing that it offers a “firmer base for development” and a “change that brings the whole economy with it”. The Creative Foundation started this process by “making a place for artists to live and work, a production base”. It bought, did up and hired out ninety buildings in a derelict and unloved area of town; these spaces are now at full capacity.

Today, the old town is almost unrecognisable. In the picturesque old high street, derelict shops have been smartened up and painted bright colours. The cobbled streets are now lined with coffee shops, small galleries and boutiques. The triennial is just one aspect of this transformation. Alongside the triennial is an established fringe festival, and independent galleries and artist spaces proliferate in the old town. These include the Brewery Tap, which showcases work by artists and academics from the University of the Creative Arts. Folkestone Museum has recently reopened in a new space in the former town hall, telling the stories from the town’s natural and archaeological history, as well as hosting changing exhibitions.

One of the biggest transformations of all has been the reopening of the Harbour Arm, in a run-down part of town that few had any reason to venture into following the demolition of the Rotunda amusement park and the closure of the ferry crossing. Until recently, the Harbour Arm station connected Folkestone to the continent via the Orient Express; although trains no longer run there, it’s been reinvented as a leisure destination, with pop-up bars and food stalls in the former station buildings. Snaking dramatically out into the sea, it offers views out to France and the white cliffs of Dover in one direction, and around the bay to Dungeness power station in the other.

For Upton, another of the big success stories is the Quarterhouse, which hosts gigs, film screenings, comedy and spoken word and other events. Unlike many arts venues, whose subsidised programme is patronised mainly by those in the upper socioeconomic groups, he says its audience represents a very similar demographic to that of the town. Upton also emphasises the Foundation’s work with young people. For example, “every single child” from the town’s schools visits Folkestone Book Festival, there is a drop-in arts club, and there are opportunities for work experience.

There’s still work to be done, for example in promoting and developing jobs and livelihoods for local people in the creative industries. There are opportunities for further connections to be made with projects exploring digital futures. There’s also a need for the art scene to be more visible in between triennials, and for Folkestone to be linked up more with other cultural initiatives across the South East: neighbouring East Sussex, separated from Folkestone by Romney Marsh, now has a Coastal Cultural Trail connecting up the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne, the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea and the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings.

The main challenge now, though, says Upton, is “How do you make it inclusive? How do you make sure it remains for everyone?” Upton regards the changes that have taken place so far as “rebalancing” as much as “gentrification”, but the town will change considerably again over the next ten years, as a large area surrounding the harbour area is redeveloped with a much-discussed and long-stalled residential and commercial development. The challenge, says Upton, is that, “as Folkestone changes we’ve got to make sure artists are involved in the very fabric of the town and how it sees itself”. As Biggs puts it: “Folkestone is changing at such a rate. We need feedback between development and the arts. People are now in conversation.”

Upton highlights that “lots of artists in the triennial describe themselves as socially engaged”, and some of the most interesting work at the triennial is that which encourages interaction, or provides spaces for people to come together to talk, think and play. This ranges from Sol Calero’s brightly-painted and participatory 'Casa Anacaona' beach pavilion, which is filled with movable furniture and acts as a social space for young people, to Bob and Roberta Smith’s ‘Folkestone is an art school’, which is working with ten local young people as well as celebrating the artistic activity that already goes on in the area: as Biggs explains, “Folkestone is an art school already – you need to change your attitude so you can see it”. A new ‘Urban Room’ in the recently restored former Customs House at the Harbour Arm houses a library of books about the history of the town, alongside texts on urbanism, art and citizenship, as well as maps and drawings showing the ways the town’s landscape and its uses have changed over time. It’s a place not just to learn about the past, but to add to, to imagine and to discuss the future.

Folkestone Triennial: Double Edge takes place at various venues in Folkestone from Saturday 2 September until Sunday 5 November. For more information, including locations, opening times and the accompanying programme of events visit www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk.

Review: Last and First Men, Manchester International Festival

Deep in the former Yugloslavia are a series of strange, silent monuments known as spomeniks. Out of scale to their surroundings, many are remote, hidden and accessible only on foot. Commemorating long-forgotten battles and scenes of atrocity, they’ve been brought back into view for glossy, coffee table consumption by photographer Jan Kempenaers, who invites us to revel in their strangeness and unfamiliarity in picture book form as part of the aestheticisation of modern ruins. 

Unlike many monuments, these huge concrete sculptures are not representational, and are deliberately devoid of any religious associations. Instead, they as act as viewing points for the landscape, framing the sun, clouds and stars, or tower over it, remote and untouchable, arms outstretched as if about to take flight. Distanced from politics, memory and culture, this leaves room for imagination, as Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson demonstrates in Last and First Men, which revisits the spomeniks to construct new stories, narratives and associations. Taking its title from Olaf Stapledon’s 1930 sci-fi book, Jóhannsson uses the last two chapters as the basis for a dystopian tale that explores what it means to be human, how we communicate through physical and cultural distances, and the rise and fall of civilisations.

Last and First Men is primarily a film work, using black and white 16mm film to document the spomeniks and their relation to earth, landscape, light and sky. Often, our view is partial, abstracted and deliberately disoriented – close-up the sculptures could just as easily be fossils, ancient rock forms, rock carvings or primitive totems. There’s something of Paul Nash about the way Jóhannsson presents them; suggesting organic forms such as wood, seeds and bones, they take on the anthropomorphic qualities of surrealism.

Jóhannsson is well-known for his work scoring films and his soundtrack, performed by the BBC Philharmonic, is a minimal and slow-moving exploration of the landscape on screen. It roves not just through space but through time, suggesting ageing, loss and decay. The familiar textures and instrumentation of the orchestra lend themselves to this grandiose tale told on a vast scale. Jóhannsson's score is at once heroic, romantic and fragile, conjuring the drama of entering into a battle – against the passage of time, against the inevitable entropy of the universe – that’s already lost.

Taken by themselves, the visuals have a formality that reads like a slideshow or set of textbook illustrations, freed from their captions, but it’s Tilda Swinton’s calm, authoritative narration that binds Last and First Men together. Swinton imbues it with the air of a nature documentary or anthropological report, but Jóhannsson’s orchestral soundtrack restores a sense of humanity, communality and emotion to these man-made monoliths in a way that's rooted in the enveloping, escapist fantasy of the sci-fi genre.

The Turnpike, Leigh: A New(/Old) Contemporary Art Gallery for Greater Manchester

In 1971, the mill and mining town of Leigh, Lancashire, located astride the Leeds-Liverpool canal between the two great metropolises of Manchester and Liverpool, hosted an exhibition of modern sculptures by Henry Moore. The likes of Moore’s abstract forms, in materials such as bronze and marble, had never been seen in the town before. Moore’s was the inaugural show at the Turnpike Gallery, in a striking and architecturally innovative modernist building that combined an open-plan library space on ground level with a purpose-built gallery on the upper floor. Like many civic buildings of the time, it incorporated a specially commissioned mural: a large, abstract concrete relief by the industrial designer William Mitchell, in his signature style, mounted on the front of the building. “You can see aspiration in it, bravery and forward-thinking at a hard time for the town,” explains Arts Manager Helen Stalker. “People are astonished when they find out there is a mural on the front by the same artist who designed the doors for Liverpool Catholic Cathedral."

The Turnpike encapsulates the ethos of the post-war period. The two and a half decades that followed the end of the Second World War have been characterised in popular discourse as an era of optimism, when initiatives were put in place to develop the welfare state, expand and modernise the education system, rebuild British towns and cities, and bring art and culture to a wider section of the population. Despite continuing hardships and financial difficulties faced by local and national government after the war, new cultural venues were developed regionally and nationally, and the arts were foregrounded in plans for a better, more democratic and more equal Britain. Many large-scale sculptures were placed in public spaces such as parks, schools and housing estates – including work by Henry Moore, celebrated as perhaps the most important sculptor of the twentieth century. Yorkshire born and bred, Moore was the son of a coal miner and shared these post-war aspirations not just to beautify everyday environments, but to bring art of an exceptional quality to ‘the people’.

The Turnpike caught the tail end of this wave of optimism and renewal. In Leigh and the surrounding area at that time, the last of the pits were closing down – leading Arts Manager Helen Stalker to wonder how such a bold cultural gesture was received. Nonetheless, from Moore’s opening exhibition in 1971 the Turnpike sustained that calibre right up until its last exhibition, by abstract painter Gillian Ayres, in 2013.

In 2013, as part of nationwide programmes of cuts, Wigan Borough Council pulled all funding for the Turnpike and made all staff redundant, moving away from local authority control towards relying on local art groups. This story is not unique to Wigan, but continues to be repeated all over the country. Many of the institutions of the welfare state, established in the post-war years, have been dismantled in the succeeding decades, and replaced by either profit-making private sector bodies or volunteers, a process that has accelerated in recent years. Culture, it seems, is a particularly easy target.

Faced with a lack of money, the Turnpike gallery was run on “tea and coffee sales”. Helen Stalker, then Fine Art Curator at Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, who lives down the road in Lowton, had been a regular visitor to exhibitions at the Turnpike and observed what happened to it over the next couple of years. “It went through lots of manifestations about what it would become”, explains Helen. “It became full of pictures of Johnny Depp and numerous African sunsets!”

After thinking “I’d love to get my hands on it,” Helen got her chance early in 2016, when she applied for a two-year post as Arts Manager, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. Helen joined the Turnpike in March 2016 after ten years at the Whitworth and five years at Tate Liverpool. Before that, she worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. “It’s an incredible learning curve,” admits Helen. “I’ve come from a well-funded bubble of a fantastic, feminist, forward-thinking organisation but I’m getting a better understanding of the real world climate of arts venues. It’s been a missed opportunity for a fly-on-the-wall documentary!”

The scale of the challenge became apparent within days of Helen starting her new job. The problems were partly financial, partly physical and partly infrastructural – but also to do with attitudes. “The gallery is as it was in 1971,” explains Helen. “It’s a very precious space but it’s been neglected, misunderstood and not considered so we have to fight for it. Lots of people are sniffy and snigger about it – it’s a lump of concrete in the middle of the beautiful town hall and parish church. It needs a wash. It is full of moths and smells funny when you walk in – it’s not been looked after in the ways it should have been. It’s not moved with the times – for example the ceiling cracks when there are gigs.” Nonetheless, she sees great potential: “The bare bones are there and it’s gorgeous when you look up at the concrete ceilings. We need to refocus people’s eyes on it. The Turnpike is a great space and a great venue and I want to bring that level of quality back.”

Currently, the Turnpike is in transition. The gallery itself is closed to the public, but walk up the stairs and you’re greeted by 1970s screenprints by Ron Kitaj and Patrick Caulfield. Helen has got these prints out of storage from the Wigan and Leigh art collection, formerly based at Drumcroon in Wigan, an art education centre which closed due to cuts in 2011 and has now been demolished.

In January a new independent organisation takes over the Turnpike, with a new board of trustees from across the arts, business and marketing. “We are aiming to be more ambitious, to have more outreach and to bring a creative environment back in,” explains Helen. “It needs real impact and serious change. I’d like a creative hub with the community at the heart, which is both shaped by the town and shapes the town, a coming together and connection point which is cross-collaborative, where people can be inspired by each other.”

Initially Helen is developing a three-year exploratory programme. Operating in such straitened circumstances it will, of necessity, be enabled by strategic alliances – including partnerships with the Jerwood Foundation, Liverpool Biennial and Impressions Gallery in Bradford – as well as by nurturing friendships with local organisations and institutions.

In January (14 January-12 March), the Turnpike will be the only northern venue for the Jerwood Drawing Prize, an annual touring show that challenges and expands expectations and understandings of what it means to draw. Helen sees it as an opportunity to hold a celebration, talk to audiences, engage schools and host drawing workshops. Instead of a holding a private view for dignitaries, Helen is keen that schools will be the first to see the exhibition, and children will take part in a “Jerwood within a Jerwood”, making their own decisions about the winners.

In June, the Turnpike will be one of several North West galleries (others include Touchstones, Rochdale and Bury Art Museum) to select work and build a programme from the 2016 Liverpool Biennial as part of its “really exciting” strategic touring fund, which has been established to develop audiences. The idea is that rather than being “parachuted in”, the selected artist comes and engages with the town, for example by working with local teens.

Helen has chosen to show the video work Dream English Kid by Mark Leckey, who grew up in Ellesmere Port, Merseyside “peering into the city”. Incorporating footage of a Joy Division gig he attended as a young man, the film – like his rave and Northern Soul tribute, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore – explores individual and collective experiences and memory. For the Turnpike incarnation of the work, Helen hopes to draw on the Leigh Rock Festival of 1979, which was organised by Tony Wilson and Bill Drummond due to its location in between Manchester and Liverpool, and played host to bands including Joy Division, OMD and the Teardrop Explodes. “Bus strikes meant only about 200 people went, but it’s achieved mythical status,” explains Helen.

In November the Turnpike will show new and existing work by Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson, including their 2014 installation Song for Coal, originally shown at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and drawing on the material fabric of Leigh by using coal taken from the area in new works. Manchester artist Mary Griffiths will also reference the heritage of the town, from mining and industry to engineering, at an exhibition in 2018.

Another plan for 2017 is for an open call photography competition responding to, reinventing and offering a new vision of George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier, corresponding with its eightieth anniversary “People are still quite bitter about it around here,” explains Helen. “They want to shake off the book’s legacy.”

The changing exhibitions will be complemented by a multi-purpose studio space, and the Turnpike’s flat roof will be put to use as a Shrangi-La-themed terrace, in reference to Leigh-born James Hilton, who coined the term in his 1933 novel Lost Horizon. Eventually the roof could even be extended upwards into a theatre, as originally planned when the building was designed.

The Turnpike’s new programme is part of a bigger ambition to develop a cultural strategy and voice for Wigan. “There is an uneven playing field in the area; access to culture is really low down on the priority list,” explains Helen. “Wigan is a huge borough but it’s not got the riches of Manchester. It’s got next to nothing for its size. The local authority in Manchester understands that the arts play a vital role in the city, but Wigan has a wobbly infrastructure for the arts with nothing underneath it.”

Helen is mindful of challenges in Leigh, such as underinvestment, above-average rates of drug addiction, alcoholism, self-harm and mental health problems, and low numbers of school-ready five-year-olds. Another issue is isolation and disengagement that goes far beyond the arts. “There are pockets where people of all ages don’t leave their estate,” Helen explains. “They shop there, they go to school there, all their family are there – it’s about coaxing them out.” The reinvention of the Turnpike, therefore, is “not just about having a nice art gallery in town”, but about systematic changes.

One core part of the gallery’s target audience will be schools; there are three schools in walking distance of the Turnpike. “Regional and local artists have told me that the place made them artists when they were children; we need to develop a culturally aware generation with a voice and raise aspirations for young people,” explains Helen. “We need to bring art and culture of an exceptional standard to them so they understand what it is and that they’re entitled to it – why shouldn’t they have it on their doorstep? People been infantilised and not empowered enough. I want to get people to demand better quality, to open up opportunities.”

To support this, Helen is taking part in the Cultural Educational Leadership programme, a new scheme from Curious Minds with support from the Arts Council. She is being trained as a school governor in order to establish how schools work and what they need to address, from understanding how to reduce the attainment gap, to seeking solutions to the awkward transition between primary and secondary school. As well as running enrichment days and advocating for the arts and education, Helens hopes to extend the school day by offering access to the arts after school.

Despite some scepticism about the demand for contemporary art in the town – Leigh and Wigan are “flashing bright red on the Arts Council map of lack of engagement,” says Helen – she sees the sell-out success of the Z-arts production Sponge at the Turnpike, where 70 per cent of families who attended had never been to the theatre before, as proof “that there is a huge hunger for it, and not just for watercolour landscapes!”

Helen hopes the Turnpike will be a catalyst for taking art out into the town, into its empty buildings and shops. Meanwhile, the town hall has received money from the Heritage Lottery Fund to develop a heritage centre and another cultural venue will be opening nearby. Castlefield’s Gallery's New Art Spaces supports local artists and this year’s Wigan Arts Festival, founded in 2015 as “a provocation and a way of taking control”, will be expanded into the Wigan and Leigh Arts Festival. “There’s some agitation about the town, and art and culture are the catalyst,” says Helen. “Once we’ve got over the barriers at the Turnpike we can really have some fun with it!”

With the reopening of the Turnpike Gallery in 2017, the people of Wigan, Leigh and Greater Manchester will gain a new place to encounter challenging and exciting contemporary art, in one of the region’s architectural hidden gems: here’s to the building’s next 46 years.

To keep up-to-date with news and exhibitions, visit www.theturnpike.org.uk, and follow the Turnpike on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TurnpikeGallery and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/turnpikeleigh.

The Shrieking Violet at Manchester & Salford Anarchist Bookfair, Islington Mill, Saturday 10 December

The Shrieking Violet will be sharing a table with small press Fold at this year's Manchester & Salford Anarchist bookfair.

The bookfair will take place at Islington Mill, Salford, from 10am-7pm on Saturday 10 December.

A limited edition black and white reprint of He's Leaving Home: The Shrieking Violet Guide to Hearty Vegetarian Cooking on a Budget will be available, as well as the Shrieking Violet Guide to the Public Art of Central Salford.

Either publication would make an ideal Christmas present (to buy direct send £4 to Natalie.rose.bradbury@googlemail.com via Paypal with your address). Feedback on the first (sold out) print run of He's Leaving Home included:

"The cookbook is great! Cheap, vegetarian and and all simple/practical. I was surprised how many recipes you included also." James, Berlin
"Brilliant present, thanks!" Ed, Kent
"Just used your recipe for roast potatoes, was delicious - used the rosemary we found last night on a bike ride near Salford Quays. Can't wait to try the baked beans pie! Could I order one of your recipe books for my friend please? she's vegan too and is moving back to Canada soon so would make a great leaving present to remind her of English food!" Rae, Salford

Fold will be selling intelligent, thoughtful pocket-sized publications bringing together essay on topical political and cultural issues, by authors including Steve Hanson and JD Taylor.

For more information about stallholders and talks visit http://bookfair.org.uk.

William Mitchell in Harlow: chapter in Modern Futures book

I've written a shortish reflection on my pilgrimage to the 'sculpture town' of Harlow, a mid-twentieth century new town in Essex, earlier this year, focusing on the redeveloped Water Gardens in the town centre and the architectural sculptor William Mitchell's gargoyle fountains, as a chapter for the new Modern Futures book.

Modern Futures, which is published by Uniformbooks, is edited by Hannah Neate and Ruth Craggs and is an outcome of the Modern Futures research network, which brought together academics, writers, artists, photographers and practitioners for a series of events and workshops around the country exploring questions around changing perceptions of the experience, appreciation and preservation of modern architecture. The book brings together contributions prompted, explored and developed through these events, as well as reflections from a few familiar projects from Manchester such as Angela Connelly and Matthew Steele's Sacred Suburbs survey and Manchester Modernist Society.

The book can be purchased online for £12 at www.colinsackett.co.uk/modernfutures.php.

An informal launch for the book, featuring brief introductions to the chapters by some of the contributors, will be held at King's College London on Wednesday 16 November from 6.15pm-8pm. The event is free and can be booked at www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/modern-futures-book-launch-tickets-28757715100.

Diagonal Noise exhibition, Castlefield Gallery: read the Shrieking Violet in the reading area

A small selection of past issues of the Shrieking Violet will be available to read and browse in the reading area of new exhibition Diagonal Noise, which opens at Castlefield Gallery on Thursday 26 May (exhibition continues until 17 July).

The exhibition brings together five artists based in Belgium, Tiago Duarte, Joke Van den Heuvel, Vijai Patchineelam, Adrien Tirtiaux and Floris Vanhoof, to exhibit existing, new and site-specific work.

Diagonal Noise will also include a reading area displaying publications by Posture Editions (Ghent, Belgium) and the exhibiting artists, alongside publications by artists and organisations based in and around Greater Manchester, including the Shrieking Violet.

In addition, a brand new, limited edition print copy of The Shrieking Violet Guide to the Public Art of Central Salford will be available to buy at the Gallery for £2.

For more information about the exhibition and accompanying events visit www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk/event/diagonal-noise.

The Shrieking Violet guide to the public art of central Salford

This guide was created as a tour for a group of human geography undergraduates in November 2015. This tour aims to offer a brief introduction to the historical context and development of public art, and some of the debates, concerns and issues surrounding it, asking questions such as ‘What is public art?’ and ‘What form does it take?’.

The guide takes as its starting point the post-war era, widely regarded a time artworks began to step down from the gallery plinth to be installed in public places and buildings, though many of them used the same form and materials, and relied on the same assumed distance between artwork and viewer, and framework of interpretation, as artworks which might be seen in a traditional institutional setting. It concludes in the present-day. The guide moves from a presentation of object-based artworks to highlighting artworks which are ephemeral, activity and performance-based, and may leave the viewer with little or nothing to look at on a permanent basis, but nonetheless contain the potential to transform the way their participants think about and experience the city, and interact with certain spaces and situations. On its way, the guide takes in artworks which aim to engage with communities and local people, as well as artworks linked with specific places and pieces linked with wider agendas of tourism and regeneration. 

It was assumed that students had little, if any, familiarity with the area, so this publication also acts as an introduction to an area of Salford which has undergone several phases of development, decline and renewal and is currently undergoing transformation and attempted gentrification at an accelerated pace. It starts at the University of Salford, progressing down the Crescent and Chapel Street. This guide draws on a number of sources, including original interviews undertaken with artists, curators and others involved in public art in the area and published elsewhere, including on this blog.

Thanks to those who came on the tour and interacted with, discussed and commented on the content. Read online: