Memory Place Change was a community-based project over 3 social housing sites in Liverpool funded by Liverpool Housing Action Trust
Designed in partnership with Liverpool Housing Action Trust, the project stretched over three multi-storey developments in Liverpool and aimed to address creatively, a range of relevant issues related to the concept of social housing – in particular the concept of rebuilding vanished communities.
The project was also being used to increase access and participation in the arts for a range of local people within each respective HAT area.
The project format involved a series of creative workshops with groups of tenants from each site. Led by a writer, the workshops explored local stories, myth and memory with a view to informing the creation of new pieces of public art work for each development. The final artworks were sited in communal spaces within each of the new developments. Tenants were invited to discuss the work with verd de gris and community development workers at regular informal sessions.
MEMORY PLACE CHANGE involved working directly with small groups of tenants from each of the 3 respective HAT developments. These groups were used as a way of generating ideas that could reach out into the wider communities within the high-rise blocks themselves.
In total, the project involved working with 300+ local tenants as well as engaging family members, caretakers, and HAT staff and support workers.
One of the projects took place in the Sefton Park area of the city: our main concern in producing the piece was finding a creative solution to the problem of successfully linking the people of five tower blocks spread over a relatively wide area.
How could we be sure that everyone in the five blocks would engage with our ideas and those of the Group on some level?
Our proposal was to create a series of dispensing machines each containing a series of collectible cards. The cards were designed on the theme memory, place and change and attempted to evoke the spirit of old collectible cards (e.g. cigarette cards). They include original photographs weaved together with excerpts from the work produced by the Group.
Each card in the series is also designed in a manner that prompts the visitor / tenant to visit the other blocks in the redevelopment i.e. there are 5 in the series: ‘COLLECT THEM ALL!’. The idea was that you would need to visit each block to do so.
At the end of the project the dispensing cabinets were housed in the elevator in each of the five blocks:
‘… for all that passes, passes by the elevator, and all that comes, comes by the elevator: letters, announcements of births, marriages, and deaths, furniture brought in or taken out by removers, the doctor called in for an emergency, the traveller returning from a long voyage. ItÕs because of that that the elevator remains an anonymous, cold and almost hostile place’. (Georges Perec, Life – a User’s Manual)
We hope people will continue to enjoy the work and will collect and swap the cards – just as they would have collected and swapped stories, thoughts and memories in the old neighbourhoods of Liverpool …