Output details

Colouredge

‘Colouredge’ is a public art project commissioned by a local committee. It constitutes an evolutionary stage of an ongoing practice investigating the potential for edited colour sets, abstracted from landscape observations, to relate place-identity. A series of sited investigations by Haywood and Kennedy have taken place over the past 12 years, now presented as a growing project archive given the title ‘Colourground’. ‘Colouredge’ is one instance, begun in 2011 and continuing, that references a town and district environment on the edge of the Lancashire Pennines. Colour analysis of the physical landscape provided the source data from which a heavily selected indicative colour key could be refined. The project has engaged with prosumer communities who have actively influenced the editorial process and others who have adopted the swatch to influence their own cultural production as; retailers, manufacturers, creative businesses or artisans. Product prototyping has included: household paints, hand-dyed woven cotton, bespoke fashion tailoring, soft furnishings, local interest books, colour walk guides and education packs for local schools. The palette becomes a source of fresh cultural enterprise, locally made; linking artistic enquiry to place-making through networked interactions.

‘Colouredge’ was presented at Touchstone’s Gallery by invitation of the curator in 2012. The practice approach has been presented in full papers at the 6th and 8th International Conferences on the Arts in Society, 2011 and 2013. The project was the basis of a successful Erasmus funded Intensive Programme, ‘Green and Brown’, that started in 2013 involving 4 Art and Design academies; Macerata, Cluj-Napoca, Rennes and Salford.

Kennedy and Haywood’s creative collaboration is progressing through a Technology Enterprise Fellowship at Edinburgh University.

The output is presented via portfolio, which should be viewed in order to gain a proper understanding of the research.