incertainplaces

This podcast features video footage from 30 November 2005.

“The public spaces of the city should bring together the micro and the macro, the everyday and the spectacular, the inside and the outside, work and leisure, the durable and the ephemeral . . . they should be situated between the practised, the conceived and the imagined. In this kind of city, not knowing allows the city to become familiar yet strange, comforting yet challenging, safe yet exhilarating, a catalyst to thoughts and actions.”

Iain Borden is Head of the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where he is Professor of Architecture and Urban Culture. An architectural historian and urban commentator, his wide-ranging interests have lead to publications on critical theory and architectural historical methodology, boundaries and surveillance, Henri Lefebvre and Georg Simmel, film and architecture, gender and architecture, body spaces and the experience of space. His books include Manual: the Architecture and Office of Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (2003), Skateboarding Space and the City (2001) and The Unknown City (2001). Iain has also been working on a history of automobile driving and urban experience.

Credits: Prof. Iain Borden

This talk was commissioned by Preston’s public art initiative In Certain Places. For more information please visit www.incertainplaces.org

This podcast features video footage from a talk by Local Historian Dr. David Hunt on 23rd November 2005.

David Hunt was born in Preston in 1955. He studied Economic and Social history at Dundee, before taking an MA in Archaeology at Durham and returning to Dundee to study a PH.D in prehistoric archaeology. As curator of the small community museum at Leyland in 1982, he began to research and lecture on the history of the district with particular reference to the cotton industry. A series of local studies began with the ‘History of Leyland’ (1990), Preston (sponsored by the Borough Council for the 1992 Guild), and Walton-le-Dale (1997). From 1996-2002 he was the first Visiting Fellow in Local & Regional History at the University of Central Lancashire.

Previous publications include, ‘Preston: Centuries of Change’ (2003) and ‘The Wharncliffe Guide to the Local History of Preston’ (2005) and ‘Power, Politics and the People, A Social History of Preston North End FC’ (2000).

Credits: Dr. David Hunt

This talk was commissioned by Preston’s public art initiative In Certain Places. For more information please visit www.incertainplaces.org

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This is an audio podcast of an art show on local radio station Preston FM which featured In Certain Places’ latest commission In The Shops Now! The feature was broadcast on the 10th and 16th August 2009.

Throughout July 2009, artists Martin Hamblen, Teresa and Dominique Hodgson-Holt and Leo Fitzmaurice created new artworks in three empty shops in Preston’s St. John’s shopping centre, as part of the In Certain Places artist-in-residence scheme In The Shops Now!

In The Shops Now! was developed in partnership with the St. John’s centre to explore creative uses for empty shops and offer shoppers the chance to experience the creation of new artworks, chat to the artists and get involved in unusual activities in a familiar environment.

The completed artworks were on display in St. John’s centre from 30th July - 27th August 2009.

For more information about In The Shops Now! and In Certain Places please visit www.incertainplaces.org

For more information about Preston FM go to www.preston.fm

Credits: Preston FM (in particular Mike Cracknell)

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This video podcast shows footage from 6th December 2006 when Melissa Mean from Demos presented her most recent work at the University of Central Lancashire for In Certain Places.

Melissa runs the Cities Programme at Demos, where she leads a variety of projects on public space, creativity, and the future of cities.

Projects that Melissa has been involved with include:

-Glasgow 2020: a major mass imagination project which explores non-institutional approaches to city development.

-Mass Participation 2012: a feasibility study investigating how communities across the whole of the UK can meaningfully participate in the London Olympics and win a sustainable local legacy.

-Extended Malls: looking at how and if out of town shopping centres (often seen as the bogey-men of urban renewal) can yet become spaces of civic and social value. Melissa has worked with a wide range of cities and local authorities across the UK and internationally.

Previous to joining Demos Melissa was Government Affairs Officer for the RSPB where she worked on climate change, transport and urban policy. Melissa also spent time in Washington DC working for Public Citizen on environmental justice and consumer rights issues.

Credits: Melissa Mean

For more information about demos please visit www.demos.co.uk

To view the Demos ‘People Make Places’ report by Melissa Mean and Charlie Tims published in 2005 which features Preston, please go to www.demos.co.uk/publications/peoplemakeplacesbook

This talk was commissioned by Preston’s public art initiative In Certain Places. For more information please visit www.incertainplaces.org

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This video podcast shows footage from 22nd November 2006 when artist John Newling presented his most recent work at the University of Central Lancashire for In Certain Places.

John Newling is a British artist with an international reputation and has installed works across Europe and the USA. Over the decades he has produced large scale works within the public domain such as major commissions for The Post Office and The Inland Revenue and his many exhibitions include a retrospective at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. In 2006, Newling won the Rouse Kent Public Art Award for his work ‘Chatham Vines’, in which he grew grape vines along the central aisle of a disused church.

John Newling is based in Nottingham where he is currently Professor of Installation Sculpture at The Nottingham Trent University. At the time of this lecture, he was working on The Preston Markets Mystery Project, a commission for In Certain Places .

Credits: John Newling

For more information about John Newling and the Preston Market Mystery Project please visit www.john-newling.com and www.lossofmystery.com

This talk was commissioned by Preston’s public art initiative In Certain Places. For more information please visit www.incertainplaces.org

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This video podcast shows footage from 10th May 2006 when Katherine Clark from muf (a collaborative practice of art and architecture committed to public realm projects) presented three projects that are both strategic investigations and proposals for change. In each project the analysis of the existing social conditions are in themselves creative acts that seek to momentarily transform a situation in order to make space for mutual speculation.

‘The legacy of conceptual art has enabled artists to refine modes of practice that can, at the same time be speculative critical investigations and creative interventions. Within the process of urban regeneration, the artist is therefore able to map the existing territory and to exhume the hidden or potential values a community may bring to the identity of new places or revision of old ones.’

Credits: Katherine Clarke

For more information about muf please visit http://www.muf.co.uk/

This talk was commissioned by Preston’s public art initiative In Certain Places. For more information please visit www.incertainplaces.org

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This video podcast shows footage from 3rd May 2006 when Dr. Monica Degen (Cultural Sociologist, Brunel University) presented her research on Barcelona.

Barcelona is famously claimed to be at the forefront of urban design after having radically transformed its urban landscape in the 1990s. As cities around the globe are re-designed and re-generated, new public spaces are emerging which foster a distinct urban aesthetic. By focusing on the transformation of el Raval in Barcelona from red light district into a cultural quarter, Monica Degen discussed an important yet neglected aspect in the analysis of urban change in the late 20^th century, namely the significance of the senses in the constitution of urban life. She argued that urban regeneration is ‘made effective’ through the organisation of the senses, both in terms of the definitions of the problems in specific places and in terms of the proposed, and actual solutions to these problems. Examining regeneration as a lived and embodied experience helps to answer questions such as: what happens to public life when public spaces are restructured? How do people, whether it is residents, visitors or workers experience regeneration in their daily lives? What are the tensions between official views of the regeneration and lived reality?

This research was published in 2008. The book is titled ‘Sensing Cities: Regenerating Public Life in Barcelona and Manchester’ (Routledge)

Credits: Dr. Monica Degen

This talk was commissioned by Preston’s public art initiative In Certain Places. For more information please visit www.incertainplaces.org

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This video podcast shows footage from 26th April 2006 when Guy Rubin (formerly Senior Researcher in the Local and Regional Economies Team at the new economics foundation) presented the findings of two surveys carried out by the nef; Ghost Town Britain and Clone Town Britain.

Ghost Town Britain highlighted the loss of Britain’s local shops and services and the emergence of ghost towns and communities with few or no services left.

Clone Town Britain: the loss of local identity on the nation’s high streets looked at how Britain’s once distinctive and attractive towns appeared to be losing the diversity of shops and services that their characters were built on. The report charted some of the wider forces that were creating homogenised high streets, as well as evidence from around the world of the growing backlash against them.

The presentation also suggested alternatives and policy prescriptions that promote diversity and local identity which is particularly interesting in the context of today’s constantly changing high street.

Credits: Guy Rubin, the new economics foundation http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/

This talk was commissioned by Preston’s public art initiative In Certain Places. For more information please visit www.incertainplaces.org

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This video podcast shows footage from Thursday 6th November 2008 when artist Becky Shaw presented the starting points, experiences and conclusions of Local Colour in a free event held at the University of Central Lancashire.

Shoppers in Preston city centre were offered the opportunity to own an exclusive limited edition artwork for free, as part of Local Colour - a commission by Preston’s public art scheme, In Certain Places. Local Colour was developed especially for Preston’s high street, by national artist, Becky Shaw. Over the summer months of June, July and August 2008, Becky photographed every item of women’s clothing on display in all of Preston’s shop windows. These photographs were then arranged to form a series of charts which map the ‘local colour’ of Preston’s high street and mirror the changing colours, textures and patterns as Spring/Summer moves into Autumn/Winter.

The charts were then reproduced as a set of three special limited-edition art prints, which were made available free of charge to shoppers who purchased any items from selected independent fashion shops in Preston throughout August to November 2008.

Credits: Becky Shaw, Kevin Mahy

In Certain Places is supported by the Arts Council England Northwest, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Lancashire County Council and PROJECT (Cabe/Arts & Business)

For more information please visit www.incertainplaces.org