Culture-led Urban Regeneration vs Heritage Degeneration



You may have noticed the opening of the Hepworth, Wakefield, last month...yet another Culture-led Urban regeneration project.  These projects seem to be consistently appearing lately....and whilst there is some debate about whether these projects do, in fact, regenerate an area in the ways that the planners and designers suggest (and hope) - in the sense that economic regeneration is not necessarily synchronic with social regeneration (at least not for 'everyone' I suppose...and that's the point!)...they do open up an evolving landscape of opportunities and possibilities. 
However, at the same time as these spectular events are happening in one part of Wakefield, the possible closure of the heritage/education museum at Clarke Hall remains a possibility....I wondered what you thought about this 'in with the new'......'out with the old' dynamic?...seems curious?

Clark Hall, Wakefield

Mark



Hepworth, Wakefield
photo copyright Chipperfield Architects



Visions of the Future Roundtable Discussion

Saturday, 4th June 2011, 2-4pm

In connection with the special display on science fiction art entitled ‘Visions of the Future: the Art of Science Fiction’, the Gallery hosts a Roundtable discussion, which brings together group of people working in different fields with a shared interest and enthusiasm for science fiction.

Participating panellists include Dr Richard Brown, Reader in Modern and Contemporary Literature from the English Department at Leeds and Dr Samuel Francis, whose first book, 'The Psychological Fictions of J.G. Ballard', will be published by in November by Continuum Books. They will be joined by Andy Hedgecock, co-editor of Interzone, Britain’s longest running science fiction magazine, and Chris Pak, PhD researcher at the University of Liverpool. The roundtable is moderated by Liz Stainforth.

Free event, all welcome.
Refreshments will be available after the event.

Spot the Differences!

Bloomsbury time at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery this weekend:

Saturday, 28 May 2011, 2-4pm

The Gallery’s newest acquisition, the delicate still life by Duncan Grant is being restored to finally reunite with Vanessa Bell’s ‘Triple Alliance’ (1914) displayed in the Gallery.

The art of Bloomsbury would not be the same without romance... The Gallery's newest acquisition, 'A Still Life, Asheham House' by Duncan Grant is being restored to finally reunite with Vanessa Bell's almost identical still life displayed in the Gallery.

SEE IT
Spot the differences! The two artists (and lovers) created their respective collages in the same room and of the same objects. It is a rare privilege to be able to see them side by side during the conservation phase.

HEAR IT
Curator Layla Bloom's short introduction to the artists and the their works in the context of the Bloomsbury group and their experiments with new media.

DO IT
The talk will be followed by a creative art workshop facilitated by mixed media artist Amy Balderston.
Amy will provide collage materials and explain techniques of building layers and materials in mixed media art.
The workshop will suit all ages.

This is a free workshop, but places are limited so please book your place in advance by e-mailing Zsuzsa at libzmp@leeds.ac.uk or by phone (0113) 34 32777.
You can also book online at http://bloomsburycollage.eventbrite.com.

Call for Papers

Art versus Industry?

Leeds City Museum, 23 and 24 March 2012

This two-day international and transdisciplinary conference aims to re-evaluate the intersections between the visual arts and industry in Britain during the long nineteenth century.

The complexity and variety of nineteenth-century industrial culture and responses to it remain under appreciated. The idea that an ‘industrial culture’ might have existed in nineteenth-century Britain seemed paradoxical in the wake of Raymond Williams’ Culture and Society 1780-1950 (1958) and Martin Wiener’s English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit (1981). Both suggested a seemingly non-negotiable opposition between culture and industry. They privileged the writings of John Ruskin, and later William Morris, which resisted the incursion of mechanised production into the sphere of the fine and applied arts.

‘Art versus industry?’ invites papers that look beyond Ruskin and Morris to modify these characterisations. Recent studies of nineteenth-century literary culture have identified the development of a pro-industrial rhetoric in the early nineteenth century. How was this articulated in the visual arts? Debates over design reform in particular suggest the permeable boundaries between the artist, designer, artisan and operative, matched by a taxonomic conflation of art with design. Meanwhile, the prospect of widening the franchise of ‘taste’ often correlated with the embrace of new industrial technologies, as much as with the repudiation of them. ‘Art versus industry?’ seeks to uncover the complexities of the nineteenth-century ‘industrial culture’. Topics for discussion might include, but are not limited to:

• Exhibitions and the display of science and art
• Taste formation and circulation
• The role of the periodical press and print culture
• Industrial art collectors and collections
• The education of the artist and artisan
• Material processes and conditions of production; deskilling and reskilling
• The principles and practice of design
• Historiographic approaches to the debate
• Mechanics’ Institutions and the ideology of self-improvement
• Centralisation and regional specificity
• The impact of trans-national communication and manufacture upon art or upon concepts of national style
• New reproductive technologies and art

Confirmed speakers include Dr. Tom Gretton (University College London), Dr. Steve Edwards (Open University), Dr. Mervyn Romans (independent), Dr. Colin Trodd (University of Manchester) and Dr. Lara Kriegel (Indiana University).

Please email a title, 300 word abstract and CV to Rebecca Wade (r.j.wade@leeds.ac.uk) by 17 June 2011. For further information, visit the blog here.

Heritage-led urban regeneration

Thanks Rebecca for the interesting post (below) on the proposals for the 'restoration' of the Kirkgate Cloth Hall and restoration and regeneration of the Kirkgate area in Leeds - I noticed that there have also been a few reports on the local TV news recently. 
The Kirkgate Character Area Management Plan is indeed a fascinating document (see Rebecca's link below), one that maps out the objectives of the proposals, although I agree with Rebecca that despite the detail in the plan, the purposes of the restorations etc are not actually that clear.  The project seems to be an attempt to restore/preserve some of the undoubtedly important historic fabric of Leeds, but there's an implicit notion that restoring the Cloth Hall and reinstating historic shop fronts in Kirkgate would be enough to breath life back to the area? 
    I was struck that in the plans there also did not seem to be any proposals for the role that good contemporary design plays in the regeneration plans - i.e. the role of the 'present' just as much as the role of the 'past' in regeneration.  The most successful regeneration projects seem to be able to balance these issues - in Bruges, for example, the historic fabric is obviously highly significant, and is privileged, but it is also clear that even with such a rich historical fabric the contemporary plays a significant complementary role, and there is no fear of the 'modern'.

Bruges

Bruges

Maybe within the the Kirkgate scheme there could also be a space for some challenging contemporary architecture too?...and maybe then the regeneration can, Janus-like, speak to those with interest in the past and the present?

Mark

Leeds 'Character Area' Kirkgate Regeneration

There have recently been some interesting developments towards the regeneration of an area of Leeds city centre. The Lower Kirkgate Townscape Heritage Initiative Scheme has defined a 'character area' that includes Kirkstall Market, the Corn Exchange, the First and Third White Cloth Halls, the Assembly Rooms and St Peter's Parish Church. Some preliminary work has already begun with the demolition of the later infill and west wing of the First White Cloth Hall [see below]. There seems to be a plan to reconstruct the building with some materials conserved from the damaged areas, although it remains unclear to what purpose.

The Kirkgate Character Area Management Plan is a particularly interesting read [it really is - to me at least!], as a document that necessarily has to negotiate historical research, the disparate interests of cultural and commercial stakeholders and the bureaucratic apparatus of local government. The online public consultation is open until 20 May.

Encountering the Contemporary

Ragley Hall

Nick's post..'Engaging, Creating; Artist and Maker Residencies in Public Spaces', (and Rebecca's comment) - (see below), raise some interesting points concerning the relationships between the past and the present - and the complexity of of this dynamic.  I'm reminded of a couple of 'encounters' I had recently...one at Ragley Hall, in the Midlands, where the late 17th century house is surrounded by rolling parkland which is also

Contemporary Sculpture at Ragley Hall

dotted with contemporary artwork...
 Although I'm not aware that any of the 'traditional' visitors made adverse comments?...and I know that English Heritage are also introducing contemporary art into their interpretation strategies....another example is perhaps more interesting, to me anyway, with my interest in the art market & museums (not as strange a conjunction as one would think of course!);

 

Sotheby's at Sudeley Castle

This is the move by Sotheby's to sell contemporary artworks against the landscape (literally and symbolically I think) of 'heritage'.  Sotheby's 'Selling Exhibition' at Sudeley Castle (shown here) also clearly demonstrates that these fascinating developments are moving into other areas of consumption....Maybe the 'zietgiest' is the present-in-the-past-in-the-present...and maybe that's a kind of eternal zietgiest...if there can be such a thing!

Mark