Lie of the Land
Event Information
Description
In Certain Places invite you to take part in Lie of the Land - a day of artworks, presentations and conversations about our relationship to the land. Drawing on research undertaken by artists in The Expanded City programme, the symposium will explore how our everyday lives are shaped by the ownership, management and development of land.
The symposium will take place at Bartle Hall, Preston. A bus will collect participants from Preston Railway Station, and return there following the event. The day will feature talks by Peter Hetherington, journalist and author of the book Whose Land is Our Land: The use and abuse of Britain's forgotten acres, and Julia Heslop, a Newcastle-based artist whose self-build housing project, Protohome (2016), examined participatory alternatives to mainstream housing provision.
The event will include a bus tour to sites in and around Preston, where some of The Expanded City artists will present their research into issues of housing, cycling infrastructre and the changing landscape. We will also visit Notes from a Precarious Landscape, an exhibition hosted on a new housing development by Ian Nesbitt and Ruth Levene, which explores the city through the lens of the people who live and work there.
Tickets are £10 and include a sit-down lunch and bus travel. A limited number of free tickets are also available for self employed artists, students and Preston residents. Please email info@incertainplaces.org to reserve a free place.
About the Expanded City
The Expanded City is a three-year programme of artistic research, interventions and events, designed to inform a series of planned infrastructure projects on the outskirts of Preston. Part of Preston’s ‘City Deal’ – a central government initiative which aims to encourage economic growth by addressing strategic infrastructure challenges – the scheme includes the creation of over 17,000 houses as well as new roads and amenities.
Following an invitation by Preston City Council to contribute to their plans, In Certain Places has been working with artists Gavin Renshaw, Emily Speed, Olivia Keith, Lauren Velvick, Ian Nesbitt and Ruth Levene, and multi-disciplinary design group The Decorators to explore the existing characteristics of the development areas, raise questions and offer suggestions for the future of these places. The Lie of the Land symposium will present some of the artists’ key insights and observations, providing a snapshot of the project to date, and encourage discussion about wider issues of urban planning and policy.
Click here to read The Expanded City blog.
Programme:
09.00: Bus pick up at Preston Railway Station
10.00: Welcome and presentation of The Expanded City research by In Certain Places
10.30: 'Protohome' talk by Julia Heslop
11.00: Break
11.15: 'Whose Land is Our Land?' talk by Peter Hetherington
11.45: Open discussion
12.15: Lunch
13.30: Coach tour, with visits to The Expanded City sites and Notes from a Precarious Landscape exhibition
16.00: Finish and return to Preston Railway Station
Speakers:
Peter Hetherington is a journalist and author, who writes regularly for Society Guardian on communities and regeneration. His book Whose land is our land?: The Use and Abuse of Britain's Forgotten Acres, published in 2015 by Policy Press, argues that Britain, particularly England, needs an active land policy to protect against record land price increases that threaten food security and housing provision for Britain’s expanding population. He is the former Manchester-based northern editor of The Guardian, and a trustee and former chair of the Town and Country Planning Association.
Julia Heslop is an artist and writer. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Architecture at Newcastle University. The potentials for deep participation in (re)creating the urban realm, and in particular housing, are at the centre of her research and practice. Her practice often takes the form of large scale architectural installations in urban space and she often works in collaborative, slow ways with groups and communities. In so doing she uses her practice to ask important questions regarding land and property ownership, housing precarity, urban planning and local democracy.
Artists:
Ian Nesbitt’s socially engaged practice spans documentary film, cinema activism, co-production and community organising. It focuses on exploring peripheral territories and working innovatively with marginal communities. He is interested in uncovering ‘wild’ systems and initiating rogue networks within the managed structures and manufactured communities that are handed down to us. His projects are largely collaborative, working with both artists and non-artists.
Ruth Levene’s work attempts to reveal systems that are often hidden but that shape our everyday lives. She questions our relationship to those systems and how they, in turn, impact and disconnect us from nature and the natural resources we rely upon. She has been exhibiting her artwork since she completed her MSc from Duncan of Jordonstone in 2001 and recently completed a research residency in The Faculty of Engineering, University of Sheffield.
Lauren Velvick is a writer, artist and curator based in Manchester. She is currently Co-Director of the Exhibition Centre for the Life and Use of Books, and Programme Co-ordinator at Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool. She is a regular contributor to national and local arts publications including Art Monthly, The Skinny, The Double Negative and This Is Tomorrow and is a Contributing Editor of Corridor8.
Gavin Renshaw’s practice is concerned with topography, local histories and the ability to interact and respond to the city, predominantly in regard to its architectural infrastructure. Often associating with Outsider art and graffiti culture, he explores the topophilia associated with place in an attempt to strike an unspoken dialogue between the established and the divergent. This analysis can take the form of photography, painting, map-making or print.
Olivia Keith is concerned by the loss of cultural diversity in the face of globalization, and strives to accentuate elements of intangible cultural heritage, traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants. She is interested in that which is easily overlooked as common and everyday; the way people do things, the flavour of their words, the power of place names, the ever-shifting uses and significance of weeds.
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