Collective Voices Highlight the Creative Value of Urban Green Spaces
by Kathy Jackson
This year's Turner Prize list of nominees, for the first time in the prize's history, consists entirely of 'artist collectives'. The nominees have been praised for working 'closely and continuously with communities across the breadth of the UK to inspire social change through art' and for demonstrating 'solidarity and community' in response to the pandemic. The prize rightly recognises the power that collective voices have to inspire change and to open up conversations through creating socially-conscious art which is embedded in local communities.
This practice is reflected in the work of Urban Wilderness's 'Wastelands 2020' project which, over the last year, has brought together a range of artists and practitioners to creatively respond to urban green spaces within Stoke-on-Trent and its surrounding areas. Places which, prior to the first lockdown of the pandemic, could be used for festivals, group picknicks and sport. The project invited five individual artists, small arts organisations and existing 'artist collectives' (Kwanzaa Collective UK, Potboiler Theatre, Adina Lawrence, David Bethell and Becki Kremer) to ponder:
'What happens to [...] green spaces if you put additional value on them? If you bring them into focus and use, if you occupy [them] with bodies and interrogate their possibilities? Our movements were regulated in a way that was unfamiliar, and our habitual actions changed overnight. We were encouraged as individuals to use our local green spaces for solitary daily exercise. What happened? '.
What emerged from the 'Wastelands 2020' project, were collective creative voices that challenged local people to creatively engage with and to get out into the green spaces on their door steps. They were given the opportunity to use art as a vehicle through which to see the world from other people's points of view and to find connection. Whilst for the artists and contributors that came together to take part in the project, they were given the scope to think about how their individual and cultural responses to the urban spaces around them had developed and changed. They also discovered how the spaces could provide support for their mental health and healing for themselves and others. Below I will explore how this played out for two commissions in the 'Wastelands 2020' project: Kwanzaa Collective UK and David Bethell.
Kwanzaa Collective UK: Taking up Space
One of the five commissions from the Urban Wilderness 'Wastelands' project was 'Taking up Space' by Kwanzaa Collective UK. They are a consortium of artists, activists, and academics of colour, based in Staffordshire. Identifying collectively in order to generate moments of agency, allyship, and dialogue through the lens of the global black experience. Through creativity, collective activism and collaboration they aim to amplify the voices of black and brown people. In spring 2020, lead artist on Kwanzaa Collective UK's 'Taking up Space' commission, poet Gabriella Gay, invited local black women from Staffordshire to walk with her in local green spaces.
Before lockdown, Gabriella noted that she used to 'really romanticise walking' and that it was something that she did when her car was having an MOT. In fact, it was such a remarkable occurrence for her that she would 'document it' and talk about it to her friends – who where regular walkers – as if it was something 'amazing'.
However, during lockdown it became a practice that felt like a 'survival' mechanism whilst at the same time supporting her mental health. This has been a common experience for many during lockdown – walking has offered a small amount of respite and freedom during a time of unprecedented restriction.
A further development for Gabriella was that she used walking in green spaces as a way to connect with others. Before lockdown, the majority of her walks were done alone, but during the spring of 2020 she walked often with her family and friends and later with her walking group of black females. It was during these walks that she started 'asking lots of black females in Staffordshire how they experienced walking'. These discussions formed the basis for the poetry that she created as part of the 'Wastelands 2020' commission. She describes her experience of listening to the stories as 'eye-opening':
For us to all be in the same space walking, not only just like as a group, but as a group of black females'. [It has been] a really great experience, so it's been interesting to [...] listen in to everyone's different cultural understandings of green spaces.
The walks gave Grabriella the unique opportunity to capture within her poetry the lived experiences of black females and to give an account of their cultural understandings of green spaces.
However, as Gabriella is working as part of an artistic collective, the commission did not stop after the creation of her poetry. The stories that she curated were then simultaneously shared with three Caribean dancer artists: Caroline Muraldo, Shona Muraldo-Parks, Shanice Harris as well as choreographer Caroline Muraldo. The dances that they derived from the stories were rehearsed independently and then performed and filmed in Hanley Park in Stoke-on-Trent. The collaboration didn't end there, as the film which captures the dance and poetry was made by Cynthia Coady and music was composed for it by Paul Rogerson and Tony Reid. Claire Reynolds from Restoke was also on hand throughout the project to offer support and advice. This project then is a true coming together of creative voices.
Gabriella commented that she valued having the conversations with local black females, in the knowledge that 'their walking experience [… was] going to be explored through, not only just my poetry, but through dance and then through film'. For Gabriella, this is an 'amazing way to work. There is something really powerful in discovering things together, there's something really lovely in that'.
This process will continue as communities see the work online and respond to the experiences of all of the artists involved in the project. They may then go on to re-create the steps of Kwanzaa Collective UK in local green spaces and think about their own experiences of walking.
David Bethell: The Weight of Things
A second commission from Urban Wilderness's 'Wastelands' project was 'The Weight of Things' by David Bethell. David is a Stoke-on-Trent-based artist who is known for his wooden sculptures. These 'constructed objects often represent makeshift machines or contraptions', which test the artist, performer or viewer to 'go beyond their own capabilities'. He is particularly interested in the limitations of 'space' and 'materials' and has an 'ambition to do something beyond [a work's] own expectation'. These characteristics can be seen in 'The Weight of Things', a work which manipulates space and material (polystyrene, kiln-dried sand, fibre-glass, paint, wood and perspex) to create an illusion of a floating rock which appears to hover above a lake. This impossible object was installed at Pool 3 in Keele Woods, Newcastle-under-Lyme in November 2020. Mally Mallinson provided artist support on the project, Ross Ankers advised on structural design and further support was given by ARB Tree Care Ltd and Easy Composites Ltd. It was a very convincing illusion and a brilliant talking point for visitors to Keele.
David had just come out of hospital when lockdown hit in March 2020 and he spent much of the initial phase of lockdown at home recovering. However as restrictions loosened, visiting green spaces become a 'kind of escape' and an opportunity to support his 'recovery' and 'healing'. The artist loves the outdoors: he has worked as a part-time tree surgeon and does a lot of running. As part of his walks and runs, David visited local parks and The Roaches. He recalls seeing many stones and rocks and he wanted to make something that responded to an environment in which 'the government were sending out lots of guidelines and everyone wasn't really sure about what was going on. So everything was not clear'. The rock in 'The Weight of Things' is based upon the rocks at The Roaches as well as Rene Magritte’s 1953 painting Clear Ideas. David further noted that he:
wanted to offer a bit of hope but a bit of uncertainty and that's kind of [...] where we are at the moment. When people see the rock hovering over the water – so it looks like it's just floating, defying gravity – they will get a sense of hope, a sense of yeah, we can get through this.
Those members of the local community that came to see the work will have been able to make up their own minds about whether they see hope or uncertainty in the rock or perhaps something completely different. Regardless of their opinions there is value in coming together to have these conversations.
Final Thoughts
Through the collective voices of Kwanzaa Collective UK, Potboiler Theatre, Adina Lawrence, David Bethell and Becki Kremer, Urban Wilderness's 'Wastelands 2020' project has created a platform through which communities can come together within urban green spaces to share common experiences and to learn from others. Kwanzaa Collective UK's piece, 'Taking up Space' enables communities to engage with the lived experiences of black females who have walked in the same spaces as them through poetry, dance and film. Whilst David Bethell's 'The Weight of Things', challenges communities to come together to respond to the simultaneous uncertainty and hope of the pandemic by presenting them with a floating object which makes the impossible seem possible.
The conversation between artists and communities through art in our local green spaces continues. In May 2021, Urban Wilderness opened applications for a new 'Wastelands' project entitled 'Public Art Now', which calls for artists to respond to what public art can be in a post-pandemic world. They also held an online symposium to discuss the topic on 10th June 2021. It will be interesting to see how the discussion develops.
Kathy Jackson is a writer and researcher based in Newcastle-under-Lyme. Her passion for the arts and culture started at a young age with family trips to the New Vic Theatre in Basford to see their Christmas productions. She's been a fan of theatre, literature and art ever since. Kathy had the opportunity to combine a few of her interests when she wrote her PhD thesis on cultural interactions between the Pre-Raphaelite group and Working-Class poets in the Nineteenth Century. She is currently working on her first poetry collection. When not reading or writing, she can be found on Twitter @drkathyjackson