Yourarms! Nurope Presentation Notes

INTRODUCTION AND PAST WORK We are artists who work in Leeds in the North of England. We live in an area of Bradford called Saltaire that was purposely built as a workers village for what was once the biggest textiles mill in Europe. We would like to present to you a project that we have been working on that attempts to create a dialogue between these places in Yorkshire and in Biella. First though, we would like to give you some background information to provide context for our actions. We met when we were both exhibiting in a group show called ‘Republic’ for the Situation Leeds 05 art in the public realm festival. The ‘Republic’ exhibition took place in a new artist’s studio complex which had been created by refurbishing an old social club in an area of East Leeds. The area, called Burmantofts’ is now one of the poorer areas in Leeds since the decline of its local industry and the work made for the ‘republic’ exhibition was in response to the festival and the area. Andy built a 15-foot high replica of an old industrial chimney in Leeds made from 5000 card bricks each of which he made by hand. It took 4-months working 9 - 5 and on the last night of the exhibition he cut it to pieces with a saw. It was an artwork that intended to explore notions of work, play and the labour invested and present in the cities architecture. Yvonne presented two projects. The first was ‘resourceCITE’ which is an archive of documentation of site and context-responsive art projects intended to act as an access point for visitors to the festival who were unfamiliar with this form of artwork. The archive is formed through open submissions, meaning anyone can contribute to the archive as long as it meets the criteria of ‘site and context responsive’ and the contents is arranged by city. The archive is portable and always growing, it has been displayed in exhibitions in Liverpool and Newcastle. The second project was more in response to the area. Whilst the other artists, including Andy, were making work ‘about’ the surrounding area (called ‘Burmantofts’) Yvonne’s project was to take people on a guided walk of the area. This involved locals and people that had come for the exhibition and interesting, unplanned conversations and knowledge-sharing occurred during the walk. The feedback received, even from the locals, said that it had helped them look at an area in a different way. Following the festival we have both continue to work on separate projects. Andy took influence from the direct nature of the walk around Burmantofts and stopped making labour-intensive artworks for galleries in favour of telling people about the chimney through newspapers. This took a lot less time and reached thousands more people. Also, Yvonne works as curator of a gallery linked with the Grand Theatre in Leeds and in the collective ‘Polka Flock’ and Andy works as part of the art events and publications collective ‘Black Dogs’ and as a teacher at the art college and universities in Leeds. UNIDEE RESIDENCY Between July and October 2006 we shared a residency place on the Unidee programme at Cittadellarte in Biella. We had proposed to work on a project that would investigate the social development of Biella. We hypothesised that because Biella was a textiles town that it may share similar histories to Leeds and Bradford, and that also it would be interesting to find out if, because of this history, the character of the people was similar.

We carried out research in parallel between Biella and Yorkshire (with Andy sometimes being in Bradford whilst Yvonne was in Italy). In Yorkshire we had already been looking at textiles and industrial museums as this was part of Yvonne’s dissertation, and as we mentioned at the beginning, we live in the ‘living museum’ of Saltaire, which UNESCO granted World Heritage Site status a few years ago. During our research we found that many of the parallels that we predicted to have existed were indeed apparent. All places were at some point ‘Wool capitals of the world’. We found stories that the first ever textiles machines used in the Biellese factories were actually smuggled from Yorkshire and that the architecture is shared (many factories from the English Industrial Revolution were built to an Italianate style and Biella has its ‘Manchesterian’ architecture and English gardens). We found examples of humanitarian entrepreneurs or Industrial paternalists in Italy that were mirrors of Saltaire (Olivetti and Ivrea or Crespi and Crespi d’Adda), and were surprised to find that the similarities between Biella and Bradford were reflected in their geographical location to transport routes for big cities (that is, they have much more accessible towns near by). There were many more examples of these parallels but the main differences that we noted were in the size of the places (although they both have relatively small city centres and large ‘provinces’ the population of Leeds is 700,000 and 500,000 for Bradford, with Biella much smaller at around 200,000 for the whole area) and also that, whereas the decline of industry had fully occurred in Yorkshire by the 1980’s, this decline in Biella was only just being fully acknowledged and adjusted for. We made a visual timeline of these parallel histories for people to examine. We also realised then that this shared history presented the opportunity for people in Biella to maybe benefit from a dialogue with people in Yorkshire. We were very interested in the people of the area because it is the people and not just the historical facts that make up a place (we had been reading books and talking to relatives in north of England about stories from the textiles mills to the present day). So, although Yorkshire and Biella may have shared similar working and industrial histories, the people’s lives outside of work could be very different. However, what we found through conversations with people was that the people of Biella share a stereotype to that of Yorkshire men and women - that they work hard and like to be known by their work. Initially to find out more about this, we set up a questionnaire about people’s attitudes to work and leisure. We decided that we could find out more about the people in Yorkshire and Biella by asking them questions about what work they do, what they do in their spare time, what was important in their lives, what they would do if they didn’t have to work etc. and that it might be interesting to compare these results or use them as the starting point for a dialogue between the two places. In Yorkshire we were able to get local newspapers to write articles about the project and include information about the questionnaire. Fabrizzio did an outstanding job in Biella by getting the local newspaper to print a full-page article and include the questionnaire. We also made an online version of the questionnaire for people to fill in. We then organised to use the exhibition at the end of the Unidee residency as an opportunity to collect more responses to the questionnaire.

Alongside all the research and information we had gathered during the project so far, we made an interactive vending machine to encourage visitors to engage with the questions. The machine worked by people first answering one of the questions about work or leisure on a piece of paper, folding it up and putting it in a ball, putting the ball in the machine and pulling a lever which would give you a previous user’s answer. These pieces of paper with answers were then immediately displayed in an installation with all the other pictures and information. To encourage people more, we offered free Menebrea and some Yorkshire cheese to people who contributed as a nod to the alternative, non-textile industries of the areas. At the exhibition people had a good time and read the answers and maybe learnt a little more about each other. Similarly the people who answered the questionnaire in the newspaper or online told us that it was an interesting (sometimes depressing!) experience to scrutinise their lives in such detail, and that it made them think about their future more carefully. Although it might be expected that we would have tried to collect, collate and analyse all the results it became clear to us that it would not have meant anything other than anecdotal information. It is not our interest to ‘prove’ anything statistically (we prefer to leave that impossible task to the local authorities) and as shown earlier in our other projects we like to operate at the level of the ‘experience and the individual’ rather than make our projects sound like they have a bigger impact than they actually do, or hold greater importance. CONTINUATION OF YOUR ARMS When we returned to Yorkshire we decided to reassess how we could create this dialogue between Biella, Bradford and Leeds and how we could find out more about the current state of affairs. It had been mentioned that if we were able to start a dialogue between individuals then the most effective dialogue that could take place person to person would be between officials, policy makers, local authority staff, councillors etc. This way the dialogue may have some wider real effect. So, we began to gather information about Leeds and Bradford that could give outsiders some insight into the different paths they have chosen out of industry and what people think of the two cities. It is important to mention that Leeds is seen as a very rich and successful city and is referred to as the ‘Capital of the North’ (which it rivals Manchester and Newcastle for), whereas as Bradford is often seen as the poorer, depressing small town that has experienced a lot of racial and economic problems. Having recently moved to Bradford we found that, to us, Bradford had a much nicer feel and a much stronger connection to its heritage than Leeds. We wanted to explore this from different angles and present it in a way so it wasn’t just our two voices, so we made some interviews to form a 20-minute film as a presentation of our research. The people we interviewed included people involved in Council initiatives for Leeds (the senior officer for the ‘Arts and Regeneration’ team and a member of ‘Construction Leeds’ who are in charge of mediating between the construction companies and the residents of areas that are undergoing regeneration) and also community/voluntary resource centres or organisations (‘Oblong’ resource centre in Leeds and ‘Artworks’ community art group in Bradford) and we asked them about what they thought of their present environments and futures in Yorkshire, and their experiences of Leeds and Bradford (as many people,

like us, have lived in both). (PLAY FILM) FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS FOR YOUR ARMS! The research that we did for the presentation film, and the books that we read about post-industrial economies all pointed towards the direction that the dialogue that we could facilitate may be very useful. The future that we see for people in Leeds is maybe not as secure as it would like. There are many problems with the identity of the area and although there are attempts being made to address this they are coming a little too late. Bradford on the other hand has taken a slower approach that builds on (rather than tries to escape from) its past and which may see it reap benefits later on. It is the activity and the links in the community that give people the adaptability they need to survive in the current changeable economy. People now need lots of different skills and imagination to benefit in the era of ‘Cognitive capitalism’ or “culture industry’, and this requires a confidence in the people. What we have noticed with Bradford is that the communities possess a pride that has arisen from their own redefinition and shift in perspective rather than a sudden influx of money or imported industry. The huge level of unemployment, poverty and racial tensions has necessitated this, but it is evident nonetheless. Leeds’ good financial fortune has meant it can overlook the lack of unification and disengagement in its communities, apparent either through wealthy suburbanites interested in shopping and city centre living who treat their detached homes as isolated sanctuaries, or the poorer communities who feel lost and anxious when the streets they have lived in for decades are now to be identified for regeneration or as the new ‘cultural quarter’. Biella could use these two ‘case studies’ to inform its policies, but more in keeping with our methods and beliefs is that the dialogues that can occur (at the level of individuals) will be of equal or greater benefit. A redefinition of identity cannot be forced upon people, it must happen naturally, but this is not to say we also cannot make attempts to facilitate this redefinition or attempt to create environments, which spark and sustain a change. METHODS In Leeds in May, there will be the second ‘Situation Leeds’ art in the public realm festival. We have received some funding to develop the Your Arms! project for this and we intend to focus our attention on Beeston and Holbeck in Leeds until this time. Holbeck and Beeston is an area of Leeds that has been branded for the new Leeds Cultural Quarter, a change that has been met with some animosity by the locals. We will use this opportunity to practically apply some methods that we think will be of use to stimulating a dialogue between Leeds, Bradford and Biella and as a first step towards this. Our primary method will be Picture-book making workshops with the residents of the area and visitors for the festival. We envisage a workshop where we guide the attendees through different processes for making visual representations about aspects of their lives – what their history is, what their job is, what they like to do with their time, what their aspirations are and so on. This will result in a number of images that the participant can

then turn into a book. We hope to make copies of these books and use them as rewards or starting points for the next Book-making workshop held in a different area (in Leeds, Bradford or Biella). Following our intervention, we hope that members of the communities involved go on to lead similar workshops. Another related method, which is more permanent and operates in our absence, is to install interactive vending machines (similar to the one used at the Unidee exhibition but bigger and less likely to break) on streets, shops or public areas. The vending machines would invite the user to draw a picture on a subject of their choice (these subjects form the categories of the vending machine) and in return for their contribution they receive a previous user’s contribution. Periodically these machines can be emptied of their contents, documented and used as the ‘starter stock’ for a machine in a different community. We are also intending to document the drawings made by workshop attendees and machine-users to form a website, which could be contributed to by anyone in those communities and therefore form not only an archive of the visual conversation but also a virtual dialogue between the communities. In all cases it is important for us to initiate the dialogue through visual means to help reduce the language barrier and create ease of access, but obviously it should not be restricted to this. We also intend to use the festival as a good opportunity to invite officials from Biella to travel over in order to have discussions with their equivalents in Leeds and Bradford and to see how the area is first hand and form their own opinions and ideas. Following the festival we may like to (depending on what we learn from this experience) apply these same methods between Leeds, Bradford and Biella. We see an outline of the potential benefits for the three areas as follows: POTENTIAL BENEFITS FOR BRADFORD

•THE REEVALUATION AND REDEFINITION OF WEALTH •TO HELP HEAL OLD WOUNDS - TO MAKE USE OF NEGATIVE EXPERIENCES •TO INSTIL CONFIDENCE IN THE AREA POTENTIAL BENEFITS FOR LEEDS

•TO HELP IMPROVE RELATIONS OR CONNECTIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES WITHIN LEEDS

•TO HELP REKINDLE A SENSE OF IDENTITY •TO ENCOURAGE CRITICAL REFLECTION ON THE ACCEPTED PRINCIPLES OF THE CITY POTENTIAL BENEFITS FOR BIELLA

•TO PROVIDE INSIGHT INTO POSSIBLE FUTURES AVAILABLE POST-INDUSTRY •TO HELP REDUCE ANXIETY OF RESIDENTS AND WIDER COMMUNITY •TO HELP (RE)DEFINE IDENTITY OF COMMUNITY IN NEW OR FORGOTTEN WAYS

A further potential benefit for Biella revolves around the inspiration it could take from community and cultural activity in Leeds and Bradford. Biella is a province where the people have been characterised for a long time by its manufacturing history. There may now only be a fine line that divides the need for facilitation or activation of this kind of ‘people-production’ using existing cultural activity as a catalyst and the need for importation of culture and identity. However in our experience and from talking to community arts groups in Yorkshire and elsewhere, all communities have some form of activity in their spare time - whether it be dancing clubs, rotary club meetings, games, aperitivos, kids hanging outside ice cream shops, football or drinking (very popular in Yorkshire). The challenge is to help the individuals involved in these activities re-evaluate the role these actions have in forming their identity, or instil excitement by helping them develop new versions of these activities that they feel more ownership of and that are open to more people. In Bradford there are many festivals that use the multi-cultural nature of the city as a point of departure - dance and music festivals that celebrate the Asian, West Indian and Yorkshire culture together by involving the young people of the area and world food markets in the city centre and in the villages of the province. In Leeds similar festivals are organised by the council but tend to be focused in one particular area of Leeds rather than being used to unite the different areas, an area that they are trying to address now. This multi-cultural identity is obviously fairly new and might not be seen as a ‘true local identity’ in the same way that its textiles-past may exhume but Bradford has had to respond to the fact that it’s local identity is ever changing. Leeds on the other hand seems to be struggling to find any identity in its past, or in its present situation (due to its history of ever changing industry and migratory population) and can be cynically viewed as looking to import its identity or reinvent itself to fit current economic fashions, treating cultural industries the same way it did the financial services: “Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester have Cultural Quarters and therefore we must have one too.” It is the role of a conscientious local authority to help develop and sustain activity that will help the community redefine its own identity and to have the courage to entrust the form of these community activities to the community themselves. This is the only true method that breeds real participation, engagement and ownership and will create a community capable of adapting to situations whether of good or bad fortune. The people’s redefinition of wealth is a much more achievable goal than the province’s guaranteed monetary wealth. These goals should be seen as of equal importance and the attention, funding and resources dedicated to them should reflect this.