Imagined Village: August 2016

Wednesday, 24 August 2016

Home Town

The Imagined Village is an idea - a vision - a utopia that keeps surfacing in many ways. A theme that really does inspire me. Recently everything I have done relates in some way to this theme even though I have worked on other peoples projects 'The Imagined Village' some how underpins everything I do.

So I thought it a good idea just to put some of that work here on this blog. This blog should show work on that theme and become a storage area for ideas and work on the theme until it finds its way into a funded project.

Home Town is a cardboard installation about what home is explored by families in Canterbury. I have worked with Animate Arts Company to build this cardboard neighbourhood and one of my roles in this included street names and signage. The display is over the Kent University campus site for the Duration of the Boing Festival 2016.

But the Country Cottage is one of series of 9 houses and is the one I have had the most involvement in making. Working with adults, children and other artists to make..... it become a special house with history and character, but modern technologies inside.

An imaginary house part of an imaginary village

Thatched Country Cottage made with families to a workshop at the Gulbenkian Theatre.

inside is a cardboard kitchen

oven close up with chequered tiling

every village needs a Post Office

Imagined Village

A community project led by two local artists (Rob Turner and Karen Simpson), which will look at the history and heritage of Studd Hill/Hampton in Herne Bay on the North Kent Coast and the sister estate of Jaywick in Essex. The two communities were built at the same time by the same developer but have had different unfolding fortunes over the passage of time.

We aim to look into local history and explore the folk art culture that exists at both locations, through a series of community workshops, open exhibitions, writing and history projects. The start of the story begins with the Hampton oyster fishing community in the1860's who had their houses taken by the sea, the result of rapid coastal erosion between 1909 -1911.