Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Cumbria
Historico-Naturalis et Archaeologica ex Dale Street
A project that resulted in several related outcomes including art-work and book. It extended our model of collaborative practice to include the residents of a Lancaster Street. The project investigates themes arising from issues concerning the local, the quotidian and interpretation mediated through affect, dialogue, context and the object.
This collecting and archival project referenced White’s Natural History of Selborne. This text became a model and point of departure in the exploration of such subjects as natural history, history and archaeology, located in the context of a Lancaster street. The selection of this particular residential street, itself a mirror of contemporary social complexity since its beginnings in the nineteenth century, meant that the strategies developed for the project also created opportunities for a small community to interact.
Material that formed the collections was readily available to the community and helped to promote participation in the project. In extending the collaborative partnership to include our local community, the project, supported by the University, Lancaster City and the Storey Gallery amongst others, became much more inclusive. It was deliberately local and localized as a strategy for exploring significances within the ordinary world that we inhabit. The enquiry explores the quotidian as significant elements in our daily experience.
The art-work as an archive also becomes a record of a particular time and place in the life of a provincial city street. This was disseminated in a variety of different contexts: within the city itself, digitally, with other regional, national and international communities and with different audiences ranging from the participants themselves (1st audience), to the art, science, literary and academic communities. These audiences are augmented via the published outcomes, which were disseminated beyond the initial context after it was first shown publically at the Conference for International Visual Sociologists in 2009.
