MAKING OUR FUTURES: THE ART OF SUSTAINABLE LIVING

Urban Research Collective have been invited to take part in the first phase of MAKING OUR FUTURES: THE ART OF SUSTAINABLE LIVING, a research project between MIRIAD and Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Art (CAFA), devised by David Haley and Dr. Tongyu Zhou.  The project builds on MIRIAD’s links with CAFA, and is looking to develop a research network pulling in support from local partners including Manchester City Council’s Head of Environmental Strategy, Richard Sharland and Urban Research Collective. This mirrors similar collaborations being set up in Beijing.

The project begins with a lecture by Professor Lu Shengzhong, Director of the Experimental Arts Department,  CAFA, Beijing, at MMU on Wednesday 27 January 2010.

The project has already been quoted as an example of good practice at the ‘First ASEFUAN Dialogue on Climate Change‘ in Madrid last week and will be next week at the ‘Culture | Futures‘ conference, contributing to COP 15 in Copenhagen.  The project, also, prompted ASEF to commission David Haley and an Indian theatre artist to write a discussion document, ‘The Art of Sustainable Living‘ as the catalyst for twelve notable thinkers, practitioners and activists from Europe and Asian in the Creative and Cultural Industries to consider the social and environmental challenges of the 21st Century.

Black Country Creative Advantage

I’ve just returned from two days at the Black Country Creative Advantage seminar run by Monika Vykoukal of the University of Wolverhampton. The project, based in West Bromwich, probes the murky waters of arts and culture-led regeneration and the seminar brought together around 30 experts in the field including artists, activists, researchers, academics and architects. It was an amazing couple of days and I just want to share a few links to the work featured in the seminar.

The seminar started rather appropriately in the controversial Public with a talk by author Anna Minton. Her book, Ground Control, Fear and Happiness in the Twenty-First Century City is what I call the Penguin Guide to the Neo-liberal City. It outlines the wholesale sell off of our cities into the hands of private companies and illustrates how changes made in the name of cleanliness and safety have actually made people more fearful and less happy.

There were over a dozen presentations at the seminar and they were all excellent but the ones I would pick out were:

Landscape architect Heather Ring talking about the pitfalls and contradictions of reclaiming space in central London using guerrilla gardening tactics. What happens when the developers love your edginess but activists don’t want to know?

Neil Gray from Variant Magazine on how Richard Florida‘s neoliberal-friendly Creative Class theory has taken hold in the UK. Is it possible for every city in the UK to be a hub for the creative industries? Seemingly so. At £70k a shot Richard could be holding forth in a town hall near you!

Academic Felicity Painter outlined in graphic detail the disaster that is The Public. A prime example of culture-led regeneration: hire a big name architect, build a flash arts centre hey presto, an end to poverty. The Public has bankrupted two community arts organisations so far and may event take the local council with it.

Denna Jones had some interesting things to say about homesteading.

Susan Fitzpatrick who has been researching Liverpool’s Capital of Culture introduced us to Deleuze’s theory of political events; ‘if an event fails to be revolutionary did it even happen at all?’ Read more here.

Anna Francis is an artist from Stoke who has taken Polish tourists on spoof walking tours of regeneration sites.

Artist Kerry Morrison showed some alarming slides from Lancashire displaying the ‘flattened sites’ left by stalled regeneration schemes. Apparently authorities are keen to communicate that regeneration has not stopped but ‘slowed down’. That’s OK then.

…and I asked the question, “If the credit crunch has destroyed the economic model for regeneration because developers can no longer access easy credit, what follows next?” Answers on a postcard please.

There were loads of other great presentations too!

Keep an eye out on the Black Country Creative Advantage site, more events and projects coming next year…

Urban Research Collective launch

Urban Research Collective is a new social enterprise based in Manchester  which seeks to use research as a tool for social change. URC addresses issues of inequality, participation in local governance, transport and environmental change.

We believe cities hold the key to our future and that an urgent need exists to re-imagine the role of urban areas in a world increasingly affected by economic, environmental and political crises.

We would like to invite you to our launch event:
7.30pm-9.30pm on Wednesday 25th November 2009 at OpenSpace, 41 Old Birley Street, Hulme, Manchester.

We are looking for partnership organisations so please come along if you are seeking an innovative approach to deliver a new research project.

We are also looking for potential members of the collective, so come along if you are a researcher and want to work with us on projects or initiate a new one.

Many thanks to the Centre For Democratic Policy Making for their support.

PS Places are limited so please RSVP by Wednesday 18th November – urbanresearchcollective@gmail.com

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Urban Research Collective

c/o OpenSpace
Unit 1, 41 Old Birley Street,
Manchester M15 5RF

0161 20 999 41

Collapsing The Gap

Collapsing The Gap is a collection of six essays examining the increasingly complex relationship between culture and regeneration. Each essay is produced as an A2 poster with an accompanying artist image. Essays by Colette Bailey, Claire Fox, Carolyn Hassan, Peter Jenkinson, Simon Poulter and Tom Trevor. Artist images by Rowena Easton, Wei Ern Ong, Leo Fitzmaurice, Freee, Joe Magee and Simon Poulter.

http://www.viral.info/ctg/ctg.htm