there is beauty in the city : the conversation - #11

Number 11...

For six days a week, this space comprises one of the city centre's 20+ car parks. Empty spaces designed to make money for the council at the expense of those wishing to use the city centre. The over-provision of car parks in relation to the amount of people who wish to use them means that many of these spaces remain largely empty. Empty spaces consisting of a series of marked, car-size empty spaces.

Every sunday, the council allows this car park to be used as the location for the Stoke-on-Trent City Centre Car Boot Sale. For £8.00 you can hire a space to park your car and sell possessions from the boot. The space is transformed into a bustling hubbub, as throngs of the city residents descend to grab a bargain, or to recycle the unwanted parts of others' lives.

august's beauty in the city visit - birmingham

Following recent postings on the idea of a country's second city, what criteria it comprises and why certain cities have struggled to fulfil the role, i headed to Birmingham to spend the day, not only spreading the word about the project, but focussing on its potential as the U.K.'s second city.

previous polls have deemed Manchester to hold this status despite Birmingham having more than double the amount of people. It is often suggested that a city's cultural state is the most important factor in acquiring the second city tag, something that Manchester, with its music and art scenes as well as its two top football teams has claimed for years.

I identified several art spaces in Birmingham ( the Museum and Art Gallery, the Ikon, the R.S.B.A, Eastside Projects, Grand Union, Vivid and the Barber Institute of Fine Arts )and set out to visit them all certain that Birmingham couldn't be the cultural wasteland it is often portrayed.

in the event, I struggled. I had no directions, nor smartphone and so I had to rely on a combination of the city's signage and the olden days method of asking people!

the centre of Birmingham is full of blue civic signs for pedestrians. at any one time there are 3 or 4 in your eyeline. i tried to find some of my art space destinations via these signs but there was no mention of any of them. it struck me, however, that the contents of these signs gave a real insight into what the civic authority deem to be the most important components of the city. So I set myself an hour, of noting down the contents of each sign i came across.

 In the event, I noted the contents of 35 pedestrian signs and found that the most signed destination was for shopping with 51references- mainly under the description of "central shopping area" but also the bullring shopping centre and central market areas. The second most popular was the city's transport hubs, particularly its three stations, referred to 43 times. I did find my way to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery thanks to the 7 signs directing to it.

showing the 15 most popular pedestrian destinations in Birmingham City Centre

The poll i had carried out before my trip, asking which factor was most important in the determination of a second city had failed to offer shopping as an option, yet it was quickly clear to me that not only did the city's signage deem it to be most important, but so did its people.

In the process of asking directions to the six art spaces i'd yet to discover, i also took the opportunity to find out where the city's beautiful spots were. The result was that i failed to get to the Ikon, the RBSA as nobody I asked had heard of them. The Barber Institute was too far out to walk.

However, I was given directions to Digbeth, just a 10 minute walk from the centre and told that the area was becoming the city's de facto "cultural quarter". I found Eastside, Vivid and Grand Union within 2 minutes walk of each other, though the latter two were obviously between exhibitions and were closed.

I was also told about a wall made out of cars and was told by one respondant that this would be his choice for his favourite sight in birmingham. The wall fronts a car park, on the same road as Eastside Projects and claimed the day's title of there is beauty in the city.

lynn friedman - san francisco, usa

here is my brand new Public Bike.  It's sitting in my living room next to the window so I can

admire it whenever I want. It's so beautiful.  And it's helping me be more beautiful and appreciate more beauty. I'm riding through golden gate park, getting exercise, meeting people, photographing  things you wouldn't see driving by. I feel free and youthful.

there is beauty in the city : city visit to birmingham

During the post made to announce last month's Manchester visit, i made reference to the idea of the England's second city and posited that in many peoples eyes, and particularly in cultural terms, Manchester is the holder of that title over its more populous rival Birmingham.

In population terms, the figures speak for themselves - 2006 estimates put the population of;
Birmingham at 1,006,500 within the broader West Midlands conurbation totalling 2,284,093 and
Manchester at 452,000 within Greater Manchester which totalled 2,240,230.

But for the debate as to which claims the second city status to have raged for so long means that factors other than population obviously come into play - including geography, economic contribution, educational establishments,  "knowledge and transport infrastructure" and, most contentiously, cultural. It is this "cultural" area which often leads to Manchester's elevation to the second city status, but with no real hard facts underlying it. It has almost become an accepted truth that Birmingham is a cultural wasteland and Manchester is a Western Bohemia. Whilst it maybe fair to say that behind every generalisation lies a modicum of fact the truth is rarely so polarised.

And so it with this in mind that we here at There is Beauty in the City will head to Birmingham and take a walk around its cultural beacons, in search of England's undoubted second most populous city's beauty. In the meantime...some Birmingham facts -

It's council motto is Global City Local Heart
There are over 8,000 acres (3,237 ha) of parkland open spaces in Birmingham. In fact Birmingham has more trees than Paris, more miles of canals than Venice and more parks than any other European City.
Birmingham is the UK’s largest manufacturing and engineering centre and accounts for 25% of the country’s exports.
Birmingham is the home of the Balti curry.
Britains first ever 4 wheel petrol driven car was made in Birmingham by Frederick Lanchester in 1895
Major John Hall Edwards took the first x-ray photo in Birmingham in 1896
Birmingham has six twin cities

• Chicago, Illinois, United States
• Frankfurt am Main, Germany^[187]
• Johannesburg, South Africa
• Leipzig, Germany^[188]
• Lyon, France^[189]
• Milan, Italy

and finally, the following, all creatives, all hail from Birmingham

• Albert Austin – (Silent film star)
• Pato Banton – (Reggae artist)
• Blaze Bayley – (Musician - former vocalist of Wolfsbane and Iron Maiden)
• Sir Michael Balcon – (Film director)
• Alfred Bird – (Inventor of custard powder)
• Justin Broadrick – (Musician - Godflesh)
• Geezer Butler – bassist of (Black Sabbath)
• Pogus Caesar – (TV Director and Photographer)
• John Cadbury – (Founder of the Cadbury chocolate company)
• Ali Campbell and Robin Campbell – (Musician, UB40)
• Barbara Cartland – (Novelist)
• Jasper Carrott – (Comedian)
• Lisa Clayton – (Solo yachtswoman)
• David Cox – (Artist)
• Cat Deeley – (Television presenter)
• Oscar Deutsch – (Founder of the Odeon Cinemas chain)
• Hunt Emerson – (Cartoonist)
• Mick St Clair – (Pinjabi DJ/Producer)
• Ian Emes – (animator)
• Frederick Roland Emett – (Cartoonist, artist and kinetic sculptor)
• Niki Evans – (Singer)
• Trevor Eve – (Actor)
• Sid Field – (Comedian)
• Sir Francis Galton – (Scientist, founder of eugenics)
• Roland Gift – (Actor and musician - Fine Young Cannibals)
• Mark "Barney" Greenway –(Musician - Napalm Death)
• Rob Halford – (Musician - Judas Priest)
• Charlie Hall – (Actor - most famous for his work with Laurel and Hardy)
• John Hampson – (novelist)
• Tony Hancock – (Comedian and actor)
• Mr Hudson – (singer)
• Raymond Huntley – (Actor)
• Tony Iommi – guitarist of (Black Sabbath)
• Jamelia – (R&B singer))
• Edward Burne-Jones – (Pre-Raphaelite painter)
• Albert William Ketèlbey – (Composer)
• Denny Laine – (Paul McCartney and Wings)
• Jeff Lynne – (Musician; co-founder of the Electric Light Orchestra)
• Eric Maschwitz – (lyricist)
• Nick Mason – (Musician - Pink Floyd; did not reside in Birmingham)
• Zena McNally – (Singer - Mis-Teeq)
• Shazia Mirza – (Comedian)
• Henry Vollam Morton – (Journalist and travel writer)
• Constance Naden – (Poet & Philosopher)
• Ozzy Osbourne – singer of (Black Sabbath)
• Carl Palmer – (Musician - Emerson, Lake & Palmer)
• John Poole – (Sculptor)
• Enoch Powell – (Politician, poet and classical scholar)
• Michael Pinder – (Musician - The Moody Blues)
• Nick Rhodes – (Musician - Duran Duran)
• Pat Roach – (Actor and wrestler)
• Sax Rohmer – (Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward) – (novelist)
• Martin Shaw – (actor)
• Sukshinder Shinda – (English born Punjabi music producer and artist)
• John Taylor – (Musician - Duran Duran)
• Roger Taylor – (Musician - Duran Duran)
• Bill Ward – drummer of (Black Sabbath)
• Willard Wigan – (Sculptor)
• Toyah Willcox – (Singer, actress and television presenter)
• Steve Winwood – (Musician—solo artist and co-founder, Traffic)
• Chris Wood – (Musician; co-founder, Traffic)
• Roy Wood – (Musician - co-founder of the Electric Light Orchestra)

there is beauty in the city : the conversation - #10

this is the tenth installment in the ongoing cross-city conversation between there is beauty's glen stoker and bilbao photographer igor calvo of ph'a'ke. 

#10 - a reply from igor...

In conversation # 9, Glen reflected on the failure of many urban policies and the stubbornness of local governments and authorities to tell people where it may or may not walk, move, go…and he was absolutely right.

Not so long ago, the council inaugurated a new plaza/square “in the middle of a roundabout" in the center of Bilbao. Being the chosen site for the plaza/square already controversial (a place of relaxation surrounded by traffic), its design, with the benches looking at the road and the citizens who would seat in them breathing the bad fumes from the vehicles surround, seems like nonsense.

On the day of its “opening”, many were the citizens of Bilbao who came to show their disagreement with the design of the new plaza/square and, above all, to request the change of the benches location; so that, at least, they would look towards the centre of the plaza/square instead of facing the road. The city council shook its head with signs of disapproval, emphasizing how whimsical were their fellow citizens and, making a great exercise of kindness, moved "some" of the benches as citizens demanded.

Thus, Bilbao has gained a place that makes traffic to flow easier through the center of the city, but the council has wasted another chance to make the city more friendly for its citizens and pedestrians. All that, thanks to public money of course, on account of the same taxpayers who requested its modification.

there is beauty in the city - july visit to manchester

Saturday's visit to the Burlington Fine Arts Club in Manchester, saw us looking to create a small map of Manchester beauty. We all have our own idea of what constitutes beauty and similarly the things we find attractive or noteworthy about cities is a very subjective idea too. 


We chose the Burlington as our venue as they were holding their closing event, after a month of providing  local creatives with a space to exhibit, establish networks, discuss ideas and an opportunity to engage in Manchester’s grass routes contemporary art scene, and this promised a good range of interested parties to engage with us.

We produced a basic questionnaire which asked 4 questions;

1. What is your favourite thing about cities?
2. What is your favourite thing about Manchester?
3. Where is the beauty in Manchester?
4. Please direct us, in words or with a map, to this beautiful place.

 Once completed, the participant was then invited to place an umbrella ( a slightly cheeky nod to Manchester's famed inclement weather) in our specially produced city map. In return, they were offered a magnet pack. We're really looking forward to seeing the photographic responses.

 

A big thanks to everyone who took part on the day and engaged with us. we now have a much clearer idea of where to find beauty in Manchester. here's a selection of responses and some examples of creative direction giving...

Mr. Smith's dream

Thomas's Chop House

the old brewery building

there is beauty at the Burlington

This month's beauty field trip sees Manchester in the spotlight.

The Burlington Fine Arts Club, a pop up social space running parallel with the events of the Manchester International Festival,  aims to give local independent creatives a space to exhibit, to establish networks, discuss ideas and an opportunity to engage in Manchester’s grass routes contemporary art scene. Find out more here.

We'll be setting up a stand at the club on Saturday from 3pm and hoping to find a cultural map of the city's beauty.

sarah gee - jingdezhen, china

Jingdezhen is ceramic paradise, where even lamp posts and rubbish bins are made of porcelain. Tradition is still very important: brightly glazed BIG urns abound, and rickshaws are used to transport unfired pieces from workshop to public kilns.
 

Jane Howie - Manchester, UK

Thanks to Jane for these Mancunian images, taken whilst visiting Manchester International Festival.

there is beauty in the city:bilbao - draws to a close

After an exhausting 6 months, the trans-national exercise in urban beauty intervention has come to an end. Ph'a'ke's Igor Calvo and Susana Martínez Ximénez have ensured that the Anna Francis' project which started here in Stoke-on-Trent as a small but beautiful part of the city's 2008 Axis Festival, will live long in the memories of the hundreds of Bilbaoans who contributed to or viewed the project or even stumbled across a placed magnet as the project took the city by storm this spring and summer.

Here, in Igor's words, is a summation of the project.

There is Beauty in the City:Bilbao has been a wonderful project, born of the collaboration between the on line art gallery PhotoArte Komite in Bilbao and There is Beauty in the City in the United Kingdom (thank you so much Glen and Anna); a project which has managed that nearly 200 people (including participants, collaborators and organizers) had been involved in this non to profit project to perform a relational experience, a journey through the beauty of the city that has led to the creation of a choral art work  and, above all, of a very special map of the beauty of Bilbao, made up of 141 photographs of many other interventions, and 21 interviews collected in video.

More than 150 points of Bilbao which have been intervened by its citizens, reassessed to show the immense beauty the city hoarded; all this, only armed with a magnet and a camera. Thus, we have had the chance to discover many other faces of Bilbao, some less well known, others, sadly, in the process of disappearing and which, thanks to the citizens of Bilbao, will no longer be forgotten.

An art work of incalculable value, as the contributions of the participants in the project are priceless.

And also a big effort, the one made by the organization to carry out an exhibition that not only would reward the efforts of everyone participating in the project, but could be enjoyed by all the citizens of Bilbao and all the people who would come to Sala Rekalde, a great art gallery committed to contemporary art in the heart of the city. Thank you very much Alicia (managing director of Sala Rekalde).

The visits to the exhibition did nothing but increase the success of the project and its impact among the citizens of Bilbao. A huge success also due to the work of communication made by the department of culture of the city council of Bilbao, who contributed so much to disseminate the project.

But the trip of There is beauty in the city: Bilbao did not end after the exhibition at Sala Rekalde. Such was the interest generated by the project that the organization decided to extend the journey of There is Beauty in the City: Bilbao.

In this new adventure, we had the invaluable help of Ziortza Etxabe, from Eutokia, who involved in this project to ZAWP's Oihane Korres and Manu Gómez from hAcería. What is more, as a wonderful finale to the project, There is Beauty in the City: Bilbao will be exhibited at the Bilbao Museum of Art Reproductions until the next 17^th of july, in which it will share space with the Aphrodite of Milo amongst many other distinguished residents of so much beauty, thanks to the invaluable collaboration of Saioa Barrenetxea and Itziar Markija (the ones in charge of the Bilbao Museum of Artistic Reproductions).

The intention of those collaborations was to involve as many people and take the beauty map of Bilbao to many areas of the city as possible.

There is Beauty in the City: Bilbao has collected 140 interventions, in addition to 21 interviews, in which so many citizens of Bilbao have shown us those parts of the city where they have found beauty. There are many different views and notions of what is beautiful in the city, many areas of our city re-evaluated and re-valued thanks to Bilbao citizens. It was natural then, that the exhibition of the project will not remain just at a certain point of Bilbao and would leave the city center to take and spread the beauty to other areas away from the city centre, unfortunately, less favored by the urban development of Bilbao in recent decades.

Some of which have also been intervened by the citizens of Bilbao, who have wanted to show the beauty that is often found in those places that keep unnoticed or are less recognized by the human tide that floods along the city of Bilbao.

Therefore, There is Beauty in the City: Bilbao departed from Sala Rekalde, at the heart of the city, to reach Bolueta, Zorrozaurre and Bilbao la Vieja.

"After speaking several times with Photoarte Komite about the project of THERE IS BEAUTY IN THE CITY: BILBAO, and after taking part in the initiative in one of the interviews with the creative industries in our environment with the urban garden that we are doing in EUTOKIA as image, we decided to go further and made a proposal.
Being aware of the interest of the project: enhancement of our people, our environment, as well as another way of setting up, understanding, viewing and/or enjoying our citizen cartography, we decided to contact Joxean Sáez de Ocariz (EUTOKIA Project Coordinator) and assign the EUTOKIA headquarters in Boluetabarri to show the Map of the Beauty of Bilbao "

Ziortza Etxabe

"ZAWP Bilbao is a project located in La Ribera de Deusto-Zorrotzaurre within the context of urban transformation that will occur in the coming years in the area. ZAWP Bilbao claims to be the artistic look, innovative and creative of this process of urban transformation and, in turn, make this area a new standard of creativity and innovation. In this sense, it is interesting to bring to our environment the exhibition There is Beauty in the City: Bilbao, where the citizens of Bilbao themselves have photographed their special areas of the city. Among them, La Ribera de Deusto-Zorrozaurre has not gone unnoticed, as this post-industrial area, unknown to many citizens of Bilbao, has a surprising charm that never fails to impress any passerby to walk along the banks of the river "

Ohiana Korres.

Finally, There is Beauty in the City: Bilbao arrived to Bilbao la Vieja. Thanks to Saioa and Itziar the project has not only had the possibility of be exhibited at the Bilbao Museum of Art Reproductions, but also they have made it more accessible to all people by canceling the entrance fee to the museum during the exhibition of There is Beauty in the City.

Born at the beginnings of the last century, the Bilbao Museum of Art Reproductions is one of those "hidden treasures" among the museums of Bilbao and of which all the citizens of Bilbao should be proud. One of the few European museums (and it is not chauvinism) that can show off of having sculptures cast directly from the original works from the Vatican Museums, the Academy of Florence, the Berlin Museum, the Louvre, the British Museum ... The 28^th June, at the Bilbao Museum of Artistic Reproductions, the Map of Beauty of Bilbao will be the guest of such a famous hosts as the Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Aphrodite of Milo....and this time it is a bilbainada.

In this new set up, the exhibition adds two new creations related to the museum and two beauty icons of all time: The Aphrodite of Milos and the Apollo Belvedere.
Visitors will be able to admire the sculpture of Aphrodite of Milos, also known as Venus de Milo, one of the statues representing the Hellenistic period and whose original is in the Louvre in Paris. Besides, the Museum contributes with two photographs: one of Apollo Belvedere and another of one of the angels located next to the windows of the apse. In both cases, like the other photographs of the project, with a magnet that read "There is beauty in the city."

From the 17^th July onwards, There is Beauty in the City: Bilbao will leave the city, the three photographs produced to show the process of transformation in which the city is immersed will be delivered to its only possible owners: Elena, Rodrigo, and Erika, who intervened these urban areas and showed us the beauty they contained; and all the graphics, maps, pictures and other items that have been part of the exhibition will be removed.

However, this will not be the last journey of There is Beauty in the City: Bilbao. The video made up with all the submitted photographs of the 140 interventions will continue surfing the Internet to the more distant places we could imagine. And most importantly, we sincerely hope that There is Beauty in the City: Bilbao had contributed to add many people from Bilbao to the list of collaborators in the overall project of There Beauty in the City, so that they continue finding, intervening, showing and spreading the beauty armed with a camera and a magnet.

Farewell.

there is beauty in the city : the conversation - #9

Whilst on a walk of Stoke-on-Trent's ring road, looking at the way citizens are officially guided around their city spaces, I was drawn to this urban phenomenon, known colloquially as a "lazy line".

 In the last post in our conversation, Igor's depiction of Arriaga Square, showed how a city space is appropriated by its citizens for a use other than that imagined by the planners, politicians and authorities in general.

This image shows the formation of a shortcut from the pathway up a bank towards a large shopping centre. The authorities have repeatedly tried to dissuade the city's inhabitants to take this route, but have been repeatedly ignored and, over many years, a new, democratic, popular walkway has formed.

Cities are often full of these popularly formed objections to the inadequacies of urban plans, though it is very rare for the authorities to admit their error and formalise these shortcuts or "lazy lines" into properly constructed pedestrian routes.

Manuel Boado - bilbao, spain

My favorite part of Bilbao is one of the walls of the Guggenheim Museum which I call the fire by their shape.

Mi rincón favorito de Bilbao es una de las paredes del museo Guggenheim que yo le llamo la chimenea por su forma.

there is beauty in the city:bilbao - the video

As part of the bilbao exhibition last week, a looped film of all 140 or so images was shown on a huge 10 foot screen. here, for your delectation and delight, is the film.

vince o'toole - lisbon, portugal

three photos, two taken from the hilltop overlooking the city, the other was on the side of a tramline.