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