Final Badge

Hi all,

I have had such a wonderful time in LS9. I have met some amazing charaters and I feel like I have gotten a good idea about the area, previously know as 'The Banks' by the first Irish settlers who took over the area fro the eary 1900's.
When I first came to visit the area around Burmantoffs and I found a place neglected. Residents were fearful of bored and menacing youths. Rubbish was dumped in wasteland where businesses had once been. There was just a sence of sadness and hopelessness.
Whilst researching for the project a sense of mischieve came over me and I built a fairy ring from the rubbish lying around. I was helped by a local resident and our work was inspected by three passers by. It resulted in smiley faces for all five participants. I have no idea how many people will have noticed it but half of it still survives.
Fairy rings occur naturally in woodland areas where a circle of mushrooms grow. In ancient myths and legends the fairies would meet at the fairy ring at midnight and dance and sing. They are seen as a mystical place, but a place full of joy and hope and healing. This is why I have decided to use the above image for my badge design.

There is more info about m research on my blog.

Any comments are welcome. Thanx

John in LS8

Hello everyone, here's John Kenneth Hall's post in response to LS8. Blog problems...so I'm putting it up!

I don't often get sent to the suburbs to work, although
I regularly get told that the wealthier bits of anywhere are often the most culturally barren.
This is because by "culture" people usually mean "what everybody does as a group" rather than what individuals do, and in places where there is no obvious centre to the community theres nowhere to watch em doing anything. Also, you get very little arts investment in wealthier places because they cant fulfil the criteria, not enough outward signs of deprivation they can afford to go and find it, don't need it bringing to them etc although everyone might be inwardly screaming with boredom and desperate to take part in something.
Or not. There's always some sort of network, it might be anything from the PTA to a vigilante Committee, they just aren't always evident to the average bloke wandering around in the rain with a camera. And maybe that why people who can afford the suburbs choose to stay there. They like the quiet. They don't need to borrow any sugar, but they know where they could if they did.

These are sweeping assumptions of course, based on not very much. Decisions and actions are often based either on generalisations about places or individuals, or on simple readings of complex situations. Entire Regeneration programmes often seem to reflect little other than someone's determination to find something to nail a pet project to.

So given that on the one hand Ive only got a bit of time for visits, and (as one of my fellow monitors said) I don't want to just fleece the net for ideas I thought Id embrace generalisation, and spend a day or two wandering around Roundhay while only engaging with the surface. Maybe you don't have to knock on any doors. Maybe you can learn something about a place from what's between it and you.

I wasn't going to try to get inside people's houses , there's no obvious community centre apart from the library, and the few pubs I looked at didn't have much to set them apart from anything else in any other suburb..

There's plenty of estate agents on Wetherby Road. I took some of their blurbs. So Ive got a nice collection of Leeds 8 Interiors, and the first series ( I usually work in sets of three) was "Washing Machines You Probably Cant Afford."
Took some photos of initials carved into trees , some plastic bags roosting in trees on Wetherby Road.
Eventually I turn down a leafy lane, which is Lidgett Park Road, a narrow road, nice houses, very green in the wet. Quiet, really nice. There'll be security cameras too, but I couldn't see any. There's no-one about. Its a work day. A bit of traffic.
Started counting the Neighbourhood Watch signs, there's quite a few.
Neighbourhood Watch started up in Cheshire in the 80's, with a village full of people keeping an eye on each others houses. I took three photos of damaged ones; one a bit corroded, the other two broken and hanging off. Bad weather, vandals, who knows. I reckon one of these signs might be an 80's original, and worthy of commemoration. I wandered up and down this street for about an hour. Took loads of pictures in front of people's houses.
Then I went to Harehills for dinner, looked at the pictures; two of them were useless..so I went back, wandered the street for another hour, more pictures.

There's a few people in their gardens now. People moving around indoors, looking out onto the street...

4 0'clockish. Suddenly there are people about. A few people are coming home from work, kids coming home from school..No one says anything, no-one seems to mind. Good.
Then its quiet again. Take a couple more pictures of old footprints in cement, lichen on fences and lampposts, and have a slow walk around the park and back to Wetherby Road and make my assumptions as I ride the bus back into Leeds.

Tall white male in his late forties. Wearing a bright blue waterproof . Face concealed under hood. Rucksack with things sticking out of it. Wandering around in a residential Neighbourhood Watch area, Carrying a fire-damaged suggestion box from the burned out Caff in the Park. Taking loads and loads of photos from all angles, in the rain.

Maybe they had a look, did a ring-round, decided he's no trouble.
Confident and secure under the neglected signs, it's as though the neighbourhood wasn't watching at all.

Allotments

Dear All

Here is my proposed artwork. The flat colours are the 5mm fold either side.
Im not saying anymore because im looking for honest, un-directed response at this point.

All the best

Si

Black Bench Awful Music

Just a quick post to get some feedback on the progession of my artwork.
The focus of the work is the investment in business over the investment in people in LS11. The main spur of this is the Holbeck Urban Village project, something aspirational and economy focused glossing over elements of the area its proposal prefers not to mention. Using text from both their vision of the postcode and mine, i narrowed down to twelve phrases which i hope communicate potential and actual experience, and like the idea of two sets of two badges which compliment one another (25 each of four designs). In this manner, you afford collectors a lucky dip, letting them select which phrase they identify with or would like to wear based upon the semiotic they apply to the objects message. I particularly relish the word Allotments which i have come to consider as a project title, a nice similie for the inspiration of this visual output.

I had envisaged bold black type on white badges, leaving the actual text to be ambiguous as to its subject, but having drawn this up i worry whether it is too disconnected from its origins. The second mock up illustrates the pairing of a photographic image with a phrase, but in this instance i fear that the recipient is completely led to your conclusion, something i dont like to do in my work.
In summation, is the former concept accessible enough without appearing too minimal?

With regards locations i would like 50 badges each to be distributed from both the Round Foundry Media Centre in Holbeck and the Public Library at Hugh Gaiskell School in Beeston. Both retain the function of being an open centre for information and learning, both geographically are in the heart of and should reach a specific 'average' audience for that district and (for me, most importantly) architecturally, both individually and collectively emobdy an immaculate metaphor for the central motif of this work.

Si

Badge piece

Hello everybody

Amelia from Monitor asked me to tell you all about the piece I am making for the badge project. Unlike the rest of you I am not making one badge design but making 100 separate designs that will make a ten by ten badge picture. Monitor asked me to do this because of my previous use with badges in my practice. The idea is that my piece will be hung up in a venue and visitors can come and pick a badge and take it away so that the piece slowly disassembles itself.

I came up to Leeds last weekend amd took photos and talked to people. I had a great time in Headingley. I am now making the badges and it is a big job. I hope that the piece will work.

I also hope that everything is going well for everybody else

Good luck

Helen

Badge designs...

Well... with the deadline drawing nearer I thought I'd canvas some opinions on a few designs.

My areas to research were Kirkstall and Burley and I made a couple of research visits last week. I lived in various areas of Leeds during my student life, including Burley, and it's been great to get back there and wander the streets as part of this project - as with lots of areas of Leeds the already dense student population has increased dramatically in Burley and Kirkstall.

The stand-out aspect of my research was Kirkstall Abbey - a fantastic historical site which I, like many Leeds students, largely overlooked when living in the area. The Abbey has undergone some major renovations and has a new visitors centre in a restored original outbuilding (in actual fact is was the toilet block for the monks) containing artefacts from the Abbey throughout the ages. On the day I visited the Abbey, during the school Easter holidays, it was great to see families, students and couples using the grounds for picnics, sunbathing and games in the unseasonally warm April sunshine.

For anyone visiting Kirkstall and Burley the Abbey is undoubtedly the central attraction and as such I have based my designs on symbols, shapes and patterns found within the grounds. I often feature simple graphic elements in my work and these were in no short supply at the Abbey with leaded glass, iron gates, recovered floor tiles and decorative iron handles and locks. I've created a number of badges and have ended up with 3 I'd like to show here for feedback. Each is an amalgamation of various elements with colours inspired from the past and present of the Abbey.


Let me know what you all think.

Mike

Dear Artists

We would like to know any ideas that you might have about where your badges could be distributed from. You may already have a specific place, talked to someone or have no idea. If you could email us or post ideas on the blog so we can follow it up ASAP. Or let us know a good area or type of venue to start from. We've come up with a system to ensure proper distribution at the venues, so now we need to know where they are going or where is appropriate to approach.

Many thanks, all of us at Monitor

Notes

Tuesday 10th and Wednesday 11th saw my second visit to my designated district, Beeston and Holbeck.

With the deadline approaching, i returned with cameras and pens and an open mind to try to demistify what the media makes of LS11. The only thing Beeston is famous for in the press is its connections to 7/7, which immediately projects a negative image on the community and, as they tend to, the news likes to make issue of racial and religious tension and the potential backlash such reportage inevitably insites. I grew up in Cleveland, a region synonymous with redundant industry, high unemployment and an exemplorary record for negative social statistics. Racial integration simply does not exist and prejudice is generally speaking still acceptable. I studied in Leeds at university and lived in Woodhouse for a year, then Hyde Park and Burley for two and a half more and loved it - a wonderful model for social harmony on the whole.

I found the reality of Beeston to be somewhat as reported, starting out at Cross Flats park and traveling the expanse of the postcode limits through Cottingley and Beeston Hill. In places, i felt a very honest sense of being intimidated. My impression is of back to back red brick housing, tight alleys and overcrowding in places. I know this is perhaps the norm for most average to poor towns and villages, it wasnt the kind of place you felt secure pulling out a DV cam or even a sketch book in parts. I kept gravitating to the green spaces, the clearings amongst the brick. These are so obviously important and yet so commodified in town planning, not particularly profitable. We all want greenspace in our backyards, we go to parks and woodland to recreate, we return to the ground when were gone and adorn memorial gardens with photographs and flowers. There is an intrinsic relationship with nature and the desire to be aligned with it, perhaps the over populating of residential space and no real sense of valuing escape doesnt solely breed but certainly helps to nurture a sense of individual, human depreciation? Is it that this oppressive social climate becomes a vehicle for disaffected groups to place blame on others, is it a far more primal urge to feel free or at least valued than just your prefered system of belief?

Then we have Holbeck. Experiencing a rapid regeneration and expansion programme - Holbeck Urban Village - this area essentially starts from the rear of the train station and granary wharf and touches borders with Beeston just this side of the M621. It is a thriving business district, vast sections of redundant industry and units being leveled to make way for expensive flats, impressive and beautitul modern buildings made of glass and steel, old insutrial rennovation projects, architects and design offices, media centres. In short, it is being set up as the professional and economic centre, a flagship for the success of Leeds' business enterprise. Conversely, it is a prominant red light district which comes alive in the late afternoon, presumely accomodating for and feeding from the offices and professionals on their way home. I dont intentionally go searching for the underbelly, it really is that blatant! And as an artist i really love this motif of glossing over those elements which dont look so good in the brochure. Im sure all elements of the professional trades are booming down there.

Im not trying to get ideas above my station here, but i desparately didnt want to tackle the surface issues that anyone could google and make a badge about. I really want to know what you all think about my experiences. Im not setting out to be awkward and to look for negative elements but when there is no denying that they exist and that there is such a grossly dis-proportionate investment in quality of status over quality of life, what do you do? The directional problem is that the intention of the Badge Project is to illustrate reasons for the end user to realise and engage with more than just the city centre, so presumably it is a positive image we need to be projecting...
Apologies for the length of this diatribe.
Looking forward to some thoughts.

Si

Artwork dimensions

The deadline is looming....(quite exciting for us to see the work!)

Please note, the final badges will be 25mm in diameter but ideally you should send us a circular image 35mm in diameter. The 5mm at each edge will wrap around the sides of the badge so the image/vital information should be within the 25mm. This will show on the front. I have e-mailed you each a template which might make formatting this easier.

Please submit an image at least 300dpi and in JPEG format. If you are having any problems getting your image in this format then let me know and I will help.

Amelia

Blogs, Blogs, Blogs

Louise and Rebecca have been charting their progress on individual blogs. Click on their names in the right hand menu and you will be given the option to view these blogs too.

Kirkstall Abbey

I headed over to Kirkstall yesterday afternoon for some research photography and managed to spend most of it in the Abbey. There's a new information centre opened up in a beautifully restored section of the Abbey containing many artefacts and information snippets.

Next up is a trip back to look at the rest of Kirkstall and Burley. For now though here are a few pics from the visit...

LS10 Hunslet, Belle Isle, Middleton. LS11 Holbeck and Beeston

Many apologies to Alex who I misinformed that Holbeck was in LS10. Thankfully we realised yesterday and looked around the correct areas.

Simon, hopefully you've noticed from your map but Holbeck is actually in LS11 along with Beeston.

Amelia

Research...

Hi All,

It's great to read about all the excellent research going on for the project. It sounds like there's some really interesting ideas developing out there. I'll be visiting my designated areas of Burley and Kirkstall this afternoon with my trusty digicam for some photo research. I'll keep you all posted.

Mike

Leeds zoo

Hi everybody

Firstly thanks to Si for his intriguing images of subterranean Hyde Park. I love stuff like that. I have posted a comment to you Si so please keep in touch.

Also thanks to the anonymous person who left the comment. I will indeed check out this place.

I have another site to share with everybody thanks to Kevin McGowan who was a student at Leeds uni and who will be showing me round LS6 next weekend. The site: http://www.secretleeds.com/forum/Messages.aspx?ThreadID=114&StartAtMessage=0&#665

is an interesting mix of images and info about Leeds. I think the info about the bear pit is particularly interesting and lets be honest rather shameful by modern day standards.

Please check it out and let me know what you think

Have fun

Helen

Am I too old for blogs? LS7 finally contributes.

Hello All,

Finally I figure out how to work this blog. You think you are street wise, you've mastered the mobile phone, the email, microsoft office etc and then comes the blog. At 27, am I past it?

Anyhow I hope all your research is going well? Mine has been focused on LS7, Chapeltown and Chapel Allerton. An interesting area but one that suits my practice very well. I made a last minute decision to go to a house party in Leeds on Saturday evening with a friend of mine and used the Sunday to do a little research. Lovely long car journey in a Volvo from London. Service station coffee and a packet of flying saucer sweets is always a treat. Good to be back in Leeds again though. I haven't been there since my friends graduated from uni couple of years and forgot how much fun the place is to go out and about in.

Most of my ideas were focused on Little London, a housing estate, and Sheepscar, the main junction out of the area, which can be found to the south of my designated area. I am particularly interested in Little London. If any of you know have any weird and unusual facts about the building that would be wonderful.

Have a good day.

Adam

LS6 Subterranea

Hi Helen

I noticed you drew the LS6 postcode.
As my final major at uni i conducted a project on the underground spaces of Britain and discovered that leeds is rich with hidden structures.
There is a comprehensive WW2 bunker directly beneath Hyde Park which is only accessible from one inconspicuous point. As a component of my final piece, i orchestrated an audio performance in there at 3am one morning, building a custom PA which we could fit through the tiny entrance and then smuggled a selected audience inside and bombarded them with a disorientating soundscape.

Funnily enough, i invited one of the organisers from Situation Leeds and was politely declined on account of the all matt black print on matt black stock invites being 'intimidating'...

I can mail you some pics if its any use, the tunnels which connect Leeds Uni to the canal end of the city are another unspoken gem.

Si

No bingo!

Hi all,

I missed the bingo. Maybe this week it will happen.

In the meantime I have found a new playground for me and the fairies, David believes, do you?

Hi everyone,

Good to read about all your ideas and research so far. I'm intrigued to see the different ways ideas will eventually get turned into badges - whether it will be finding an image that seems to epitomise an idea or, as Alex suggested, having the way the badge is produced be important.

It's come up in discussion with Louise that the location the badge is available from could be important too. This might give another aspect to its meaning.

Re: the 07/07 bombers. As far as I can recall one of them came from Holbeck, 2 or 3 from Beeston and at least one more from Burley. Holbeck and Beeston adjoin each other - I'm not sure where the exact boundary is but I think it might be the M621 that splits them.

Rebecca, how did the bingo go?

Amelia.