Lancashire to Lahore - Exhibition 1

An international exchange of original postcard artworks between communities in Lancashire, UK, and Lahore, Pakistan

Lancashire to Lahore 15 - Publication 'INSPIRE'

Through a series of skills-based workshops, cultural sharing and the development of an understanding of socially engaged arts practice, the project culminated in a three- day arts exhibition and symposium called ‘International Networks & Local Landscapes’. With delegates from Pakistan, London and Texas the three-day event included an art exhibition ‘Right Here – Right Now’, a presentation at UCLan and a symposium in a derelict mill in East Lancashire

Reg Bradley

The aspirations underpinning projects of local regeneration are many and varied. Revitalisation can signal the attraction of mobile capital, economic revival and increased social capital amongst a community who,swelled up with newfound pride, become civically engaged. Each local place has its own idiosyncrasies and regardless of how regeneration schemes play out in areas such as Bradley in Nelson, they do share one commonality. This commonality lies in the rhetoric which is mobilised in the promotion of such regeneration agendas, one of strengthening, or in some cases creating, a ‘sense of place’. But what is sense of place and how is it constructed

INSPIRE

Through a series of skills-based workshops, cultural sharing and the development of an understanding of socially engaged arts practice, the project culminated in a three- day arts exhibition and symposium called ‘International Networks & Local Landscapes’. With delegates from Pakistan, London and Texas the three-day event included an art exhibition ‘Right Here – Right Now’, a presentation at UCLan and a symposium in a derelict mill in East Lancashire

Social art as material and process: Towards a new method and ethos for social art

This thesis presents an argument for the existence of unidentified materials utilised by social artists, including chance and often serendipitous encounters with people, environment, and place, which play a critical role in social art. I emphasise the need for a new ethical-social aesthetic model founded on a more comprehensive understanding of the materiality that comprises social art. My contribution to the field reveals the potential of such materiality in the three new artworks and developing a model of creative participatory approaches to art-making. By recognising this potential of seemingly insignificant things and ephemera, I explore a new model of aesthetics within my social art practice that influences the direction of the creative process and, ultimately, the form of the artworks. Through a closer examination of the nuances of social art practice, this thesis presents a fresh perspective on the potential of social art materials. This thesis investigates a new aesthetic in social art practice rooted in a more productive relationship between hylomorphic and morphogenetic qualities (as discussed by Tim Ingold, 2013). To accomplish this, I draw upon Grant Kester's dialogical aesthetics (2004), Tim Ingold's binary approaches to making (2013), Erin Manning's potential of minor gestures (2016), and Yuriko Saito's familiar aesthetics (2017). To undertake this exploration, I reflect on and analyse field notes and personal diary entries from my involvement in creating three new social artworks (two interactive sculptures and a film) 'The Gentlemen's Wardrobe' (2016), 'Time Machine' (2017) and '[birdsong]' (film, 2019). Additionally, I conduct participatory observation in two internationally recognised social art projects: Rick Lowe's Project Row Houses, Texas (1995 - ongoing) and Suzanne Lacy's ‘Shapes of Water - Sounds of Hope’ (2016 - 17) in my local neighbourhood of Pendle, Lancashire

Brief Encounters: A Walk Around Canterbury with an Old Polaroid Camera and Some Out of Date Film

In The Critique of Everyday Life (Vol. II) Henri Lefebvre distinguishes moments from the everyday, and suggests that the precursors to such moments “are there in embryonic form, but it is difficult to make them out with any clarity.”1 Lefebvre’s “moments” hold value and spring forth from everyday life only to fail, ultimately fading away and returning us back to everyday-ness. It is the embryos of those moments that I am interested in revealing for this short paper. Using an extract from my personal journal, made while the experience was still fresh in my mind, and together with samples of instant photographs, I will attempt to pin down some of the “partial moments” I encountered during a walk around Canterbury in Kent

Lancashire to Lahore 3 - Publication 'Lahore - Chandigarh'

A 'strait' road is an artificial line. William Titley's photographs take us through the meanderings of city spaces where people carve out roads of humanity in an organic, self-organising weaving and bobbing to and fro, at once directed yet directionless, an interconnected mass of relationships that meet, connect and are gone again, on another thread of the urban complex, still joined but elsewhere

Lancashire to Lahore

INSPIRE : International Strategic Partnerships in Research and Education The product of a month long residency at The National College of Arts (Lahore) in 2008 (funded by the Juliet Gomperts Trust in collaboration with The Beaconshouse National University (Lahore). The project exchanged artworks on the theme of 'This is England' and 'This is Pakistan', and was exghibited in both countries at academic and local community venues

Creative Relations

Through reporting about a project with male home carers, I’m going to present some of the interactions which took place between myself (as the artist) and the participants as we got to know each other, and became part of each other’s lives. The text takes the form of a series of extracts taken directly from my own personal journals followed by a commentary on each. These have been selected to highlight the similarities between Ingold’s descriptions of creativity and Kester’s model for a dialogical aesthetic, which highlights key points in the engagement processes of a socially engaged artist. These reflective notes, made while the experiences were still fresh in my mind, help to illustrate the impact not only on the participants but also upon the artist as a participant in the social process