This year has been a year of exploration. We have seen artist Jean McEwan creatively consult with residents and communities in Kirklees in support of the developing Kirklees Council Public Art Policy. We have worked with partners on a wider initiative funded through the High Street Innovation fund and the Town centre Team, a fund that has supported numerous creative interventions and projects in Huddersfield.
And for us, this has brought about the commissioning of Bread Art Collective to deliver a number of creative projects for Huddersfield that captures the imagination, reimagines the town and explores what it has to offer.
“When creating new work, it’s essential that it reflects something of the place where it is located so that it resonates with the people who engage with and encounter it. Encountering something unexpected creates the opportunity to engage in and capture spontaneous reaction and revealing dialogue about the places we go and the spaces we inhabit” David Boultbee from Bread Art Collective.
Through the commission, Bread Art Collective delivered a two smaller scale research projects: Musical Threads and Mirror Cart.
You can read a short blog from David Boultbee about each of the research projects below.
Davie Boultbee's blog:
The first research project, Musical Threads was a performance developed with composer Eve Harrison that explored Huddersfield’s textile and cultural heritage and present.
Our narrative explored cultural roots, inevitably touched on the Luddites, but also emphasised the town’s modern textile links through the Textile Centre of Excellence. The topics were reflected in the music and movements of the performers.
On a sunny August day we moved through the town created sculptures along New Street, in the markets and malls and on the ring road.
See photos of Musical Threads at https://goo.gl/photos/R5xqoRWhsK52VMQj8
The second work, Mirror Cart, asked shoppers and passers-by to look a new at the town and its architecture. In a town centre we become so used to the ubiquity of street level, we forget that much of the history and narrative of a place is plain to see if we only slightly incline our heads.
The Mirror Cart explored Huddersfield from new angles and invited others to do the same.
David created a cart containing a panel of mirrors, each at a slightly different angle. Seeing somewhere in this almost disjointed way draws your attention to things that might otherwise go unnoticed, hidden in plain sight.
For two days in September Scott Farlow and David pulled their cart along every street in the town centre that we could find, resulting in many fascinating encounters with all who stopped by! We invited people to draw on our mirrors and took photographs of what they created. We filmed the mirror being towed through the market. Everyone asked what we were doing!
See photos of Mirror Cart at https://goo.gl/photos/kRhamqfZtnGdgarW6
So what next? Well following the research and reflections of this work, the final work will be developed to that will be fun, interactive and invite curiosity, that will engage people in both the final work and hopefully in its creation!
It may:
- include mirrors
- be mechanical
- be sited on the roof of the market
It’s too early to predict exactly how these elements will coalesce but in our experience, everything leads to somewhere.