me and the MAs all trundled, carefully, in the blizzard of snow yesterday (sorry...just picked the wrong day I suppose!) down the hill from Leeds Uni to Pavilion, the contemporay art space in 'Holbeck Urban Village' (now that's got to be an oxymoron?)....
We had a chat with Gill Howard (ex Leeds MA!) about the role that Pavilion plays as catalyst for 'emerging' artists...it was really interesting I thought, to hear about the relationships between Government (quango) funding (Arts Council primarily), and the 'idea' of Culture...and especially revealing, I thought, given the location of Pavilion in a space of urban regeneration...... Such projects have been driven, to a large extent, by 'expert' reports such as Lord Rogers' 'Towards an Urban Renaissance' in the late '90s....unfortunately, we ran out of time (and it was too cold and snowy) to take a walk around and see the extent to which society was being 'healed' through the organic development of past-and-present architectural form......but we're going to discuss these interesting urban spaces next week (hopefully).. Anyway, what we found interesting (maybe it was just me?) was how 'difficult' these spaces are to get to, but maybe that's because they have been partly 'forgotten' in the memory of the city?...it's strange that they seem to be part of the city, and yet not part of the city....ah...that brings us back to Heterotopias!
Mark
Blizzard?! Not for us gritty Northerners (who had the good sense to wear hats). It was a visit that threw up a lot of interesting (and contentious) questions, one of which being the use of public funding. Although the card-carrying leftie in me would defend this situation, there has been some discussion about the imposition of 'culture' upon communities who didn't ask for it. Grayson Perry makes some uncomfortably articulate arguments in this direction. I'm sure a Conservative government would revert to the kind of social Darwinism that would see these kinds of spaces fail financially. There is also the Janus of gentrification to contend with. On a more positive note, it was heartening to see that socially-engaged, critically-aware people are active in places like this.
ReplyDeleteFab Rebecca...I love the notion of Janus....what does Grayson Perry say?, sounds interesting....
ReplyDeletemark
Here's what Grayson has to say on the matter, intriguing to note how he was asked to curate an exhibition from the Arts Council collection ('Unpopular Cultures' 2008) after having been so critical of their policies. A case of keeping your enemies close?
ReplyDelete'You can take a chav to water, but you can't make him think':
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/article628373.ece
'Save us from Angels':
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/save-us-from-angels-says-grayson-perry-453500.html