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Evidence for Review: SusanFitzpatrick p. 3 IntervIews conducted as a basIs for her forthcoming review of the investigation: Tim Collins, Andy Hewitt, Monika Vykoukal.

The End p. 16 Some answers, unresolved questions, still looking for the coal.

Colophon:

edItor: Monika Vykoukal contrIbutors to thIs Issue: Susan Fitzpatrick.contact: Monika Vykoukal, t 07967230880, e: movyk@thing.netGraphIc desIGn: Jens Strandberg and Pål Bylund.

INDEX Creative Report # 6 | April 9, 2011 | investigating regeneration through art

FOR OUR FINAL PUBLICATION, PREVIOUS REPORTS, AND MORE SEE: WWW.BLACKCOUNTRYCREATIVEADVANTAGE.ORG.

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These are ediTed transcripts of interviews with three of the key actors within Black Country creative advantage. The first is the result of two conversations with the project’s curator, Monika Vykoukal.

The firsT happened in October 2010 at the Market Stall in West Bromwich which was the central hub and contact point for residents of West Bromwich to encounter the work that had been collated. Maureen Neal, a resident of West Bromwich, passed by the stall during the interview to leave a sketch she had done of St Michaels and All Angels Church in West Bromwich High Street (the sketch is included in Creative Report #5). I have included some of her reflections on history and regeneration in the Black Country in the hope that they contextualise some of the discussion Monika and I had about the role of the market stall in the project.

The second of the interviews I did with Monika took place in December 2010 in Manchester. In addition to speaking to Monika, I interviewed Tim Collins, former Associate Dean at the School of Art & Design, University of Wolverhampton, initiator of Black Country creative advantage. And Andy Hewitt, artist and lecturer at the School of Art & Design. Whilst Tim left the University a few months after the start of the project, and Andy was there in the capacity of advisor, it is my hope that the inclusion of their thoughts provides some engaging context for the reader to think through the wider implications of the project.

i am currenTly a freelance researcher, I am interested in looking at how creativity is discursively constructed by different interest groups, particularly in the context of attempts to “regenerate” or otherwise re-imagine post-industrial place. My recent work has looked at the communicative ethics of the Liverpool Capital of Culture year. These interviews form part of a wider project which seeks to examine how the project constituted the public sphere. Manchester, England March 2011

Introductionby Susan Fitzpatrick

Coal Miners Pension Fund: Sandwell Centre, Mall 2 looking towards Queens Square, 5.5.1971.

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SF: This is a quote from the paper you wrote about your earlier project 3 Rivers 2nd Nature: ‘We were interested in how the regulatory interests defined the problems and their potential range of solutions.’(1) To what extent was West Bromwich understood as a problem?

TC: Problems are the domain of engineers, scientists, planners, architects, they solve problems. Artists are cultural practitioners, we prefer to think about opportunities and constraints that are present in any system, or place particularly as it undergoes change. [...] In my own artwork, we traditionally moved from the perspective of ‘What are the issues and the opportunities?’, ‘Are there latent opportunities that no-one is advocating for, or can we intervene, make a contribution to public perception and value, in a meaningful way?’.

As Associate Dean and the project lead at the time, going into West Bromwich to work with Longhouse/Multistory at the request of the British Arts Council, I had a clear sense that there was a lack of civic discourse about change; and the issues with The Public were well publicized. Here was a community in conflict over regeneration.The Director of Multistory, Emma Chetcuti, and the Longhouse Arts Manager Chloe Brown were great! Their organization was hived off from The Public. Longhouse/Multistory is the programmatic remnant of the internationally recognized Jubilee Arts which was led by Sylvia King, before she got involved with the regeneration project which became The Public.

It was clear coming in that we were going to be engaging systems, communities and interests that were embedded in complicated changes that weren’t satisfying anyone. The question in my mind was: Could we as artists, curators and researchers working within a university setting, allied with a key community partner, do something that had a mid- to long-term impact on a changing community, on a redeveloping community? Could we have a positive, creative effect on the people, the place and the things that define it? Within every redevelopment, there are opportunities and constraints. So what are the aesthetic opportunities that can be pursued, what can be enabled, who do we ally ourselves with? These are the key questions. We were very pleased when Monika agreed to come to the Midlands from Scotland; she showed a rigour and a depth of knowledge about theory and practice in regeneration.

So I wasn’t sure about the details of West Bromwich, but the fact that the university was to be partnered with an embedded organisation with a 20 year history, and we had the right research fellow told me there was good potential. I spent a bit of time with Monika when she first came, we realised that the discourse of development was hyper-fixated on the development product and redevelopment futures and most of the public realm results – and changes to the everyday life of people using the town centre weren’t effective. Although The Public intends to contribute to both public and private realm it is a complicated, maybe a conflicted, contribution. So there was potential in that place, with the Multistory/Longhouse relationship and Monika as our University researcher to do something good there.

TC: I was only minimally involved in the actual project, Monika came in from April, and I was out by July, so I was counting on Multistory to help embed her, and on Andy Hewitt to help mentor her. Monika had a lot on quickly, but she is amongst the best I know, she is very thoughtful and informed about public art, planning and

Tim Collins, Wolverhampton, November 2010

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regeneration. Whether there were some community people involved and some discussions, I’m not sure. These are key questions. [...]

TC: [...] The other thing is that getting a critical handle on this work is complicated, it’s very process oriented a traditional art object sits in the middle of a gallery ... you know where the art object is, you know what you are looking at, you know more or less what you are to experience and think about, you just kind of get on with it. But with this kind of work, it often has relatively invisible material boundaries, it has temporal boundaries that define social interaction, because it has occurred over an extended temporal period, is very hard to interrogate, so that creates a critical problem, for most art world people… In my own work I’ve looked at Grant Kester, he talks about dialogic art, indications of empathetic exchange, he talks about indications of social transformation. Suzanne Lacy is another artist who writes about public art. Suzanne talks about projects like this that are process oriented, the need for artists to state their intent, to actually tell you what you are looking at and what is the duration of what you are looking at and what did she intend to do. She interrogates the question of imagination, how do you evaluate the depth of imaginative engagement in the challenge at hand. At which point, after it’s all done, artist, critic and audience alike, you can come and say ‘ok, you intended this, this happened, is that good art or bad art, a relative success, a brilliant failure or simply off the mark?’ The best of the new critics give us pointers on how we might move the discourse about dialogic public practice forward. It’s an alternative to traditional aesthetics.

SF: What is strategic knowledge in West Bromwich?

TC: Strategic knowledge for me is either intellectual concepts, symbols or experiences that re-shape what we understand about places and things. Concepts inform perception this allows us to think about normative experience in new ways, with potential to affect value. [To quote] Paul Valéry, ‘To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.’ So, in a place like West Brom where the industrial past is so overwhelmingly strong; the questions are what is the idea, the concept, image or metaphor that is going to bring forward, or make a small contribution to a new reality? [...] I think the experimental team that was in place, there may be metaphors that have come out of this … I’ve read a lot on the website, but I haven’t been able to interrogate it to a level of detail. Monika’s presence is very personal, very one on one at that stall, and the question is whether there were enough public events where at least some of these metaphors could be tested. [...] Have any of Monika’s artworld relationships ‘stuck’ in West Bromwich? Was there a transfer of ideas and relationships that has a duration beyond the project?

I would argue that these social relationships are essential to the way that public artists work. There are structural approaches that have been outlined by people who talk about analogies and dominant metaphors, and getting them to work in new ways. The question is how do you make the leap? I think The Public, the building was intended to be a material manifestation of a new metaphor, a creative way. An amazing investment in art-infrastructure that should have/could have formalized creative work with people in a public setting. Monika’s work on Black Country creative advantage, was intended to focus energy back onto the place and the everyday life of the people of West Bromwich. (1) Racar Canadian Art Review 2010 Vol 35 no 1: 73- 85. For more information on the project see e.g. http://3r2n.collinsandgoto.com

[...]

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Andy Hewitt, Wolverhampton, January 2011

SF: If you could just talk through your involvement in Black Country creative advantage, were you involved before Monika was involved?

AH: No. The only reason I became involved was because Tim left, and they must have thought well, it was Tim’s project, he was very close to it, I didn’t have anything to do with it, so I think the idea must have come up because I’ve got some sort of similarities in terms of practices, and I’m the only person across the road who’s got this type of set of interests. So they asked me to provide some support otherwise it might be seen as: ‘Who else is she connected to in the school?’

SF: Right, so how did you feel about that at the time?

AH: I thought it was really exciting, because I’m interested in this type of practice and I think it should be more represented in terms of what goes on in the art world. In terms of the mentoring role, I didn’t see it as something, I was just there for advice, I think, and it became clear to me from early on that Monika had a plan about where she wanted to drive this to, which might have been different to what Tim originally thought because he’s got different interests, land art,

a set of strong environmental issues. But Monika soon made it clear that she was interested in a socio-political set of questions around culture-led regeneration. Really I’ve just been in the background I suppose, and if she needs any opinions on anything, I can provide that. I should say that the rest of the time, I’m an academic, I teach here 0.5, the other part of the week I’m doing my own practice [with Freee, the art collective of Dave Beech, Andy Hewitt and Mel Jordan], doing a PhD.

[...]

SF: You’ve seen the original Arts Council funding application. There are issues that might be interesting to reflect on from the point of view of your practice, that strike me about that document. Basically it seems that the original aims of the project were broadly speaking to address social and political issues, publicly, do you think that the project provided that forum? And who did it provide that forum for if it did achieve that?

AH: I think, it’s this idea about publics isn’t it, I mean, who is the public of anything? From my own experience trying to develop an audience, an interested audience around

anything we do, is a challenge. So I think in terms of access to the questions and access to Monika’s project, I thought it was a very, very open process, and I think that came down to her being there and manning that stall and making herself open to conversations. I mean, to create that sort of drop-in centre, it’s a real commitment and a terrifying thing to do, but its almost like a form of being, what’s the word, not vulnerable, but she sort of laid herself open in a very very public spirited sort of way, more so than you’d ever get to see any other sort of public official in town and of course that is going to happen if you set out to be a stall holder, in a generally very public space. [...] It’s only a particular community that visits that part of the market obviously. I mean, we are always going to find ways of finding weaknesses within any strategy to reach a big audience, but I think that is what she managed to do was to find a good strategy to do that, to see what happened. I don’t know what her expectations were about the ability to reach a lot of people, but I think she must have thought this was possibly the only way is to embed yourself in for a little bit and get to understand things from that sort of, prolonged research period. [...] In terms of being, it [the newsletter] being a forum, a

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space, a sphere, for critical discussion about what is going on in West Bromwich, again, I’m not 100% sure as yet ... takes place as to how much of the activity, the discussion was critical and how much of it was conversational and convivial.

SF: How did The Public figure in the project to your mind?

AH: I think it was a spectacle. It was always in everyone’s minds, all the artists would take a look at it and I think it was good that Monika decided to use it for the final symposium event, we were witness to its ineffectual space for having a discussion in because of all the noise from downstairs!

SF: So the final symposium was in there.

AH: And it did feel tragic. But there we were reflecting on the problems in one of the problems in West Bromwich!

SF: What about your perspective on it yourself?

AH: I think it was a mistake, and I think the hyperbole that culture can be this driver in regeneration is just one of those that took a grip early on with New Labour and I think that’s why people are so keen to use that as a way of trying to affect change in clearly very deprived areas.

SF: What about people’s views of art, non-artists’ views of art as a result of that building, how do you expect people to engage in art practice when that building is there, and that amount of money has been spent?

AH: If I lived in West Bromwich I would be furious about it. Whether you are an artist or a citizen, you’d be saying how could this have happened? What are they trying to do to us here? OK you could sort of say, well what they are trying to do is to put us on the map and bring in investment, it’s quite an expensive and clumsy way of doing it, and seemingly a waste of money. I don’t know what ordinary people think about what art is, but I think a lot of people still think it’s something that it is an exclusive type of activity and not for them. No matter what you do with it, so I think it can never be an effective way of trying to deal

with serious social economic issues because of the nonsense attached to art itself.

[...]

SF: Going back to Black Country creative advantage, could you comment on that initial aim of ‘the social and political impacts of research-based art practice extend into communities’. That’s what the original grant application sought to do with this project. Would you just reflect on whether or not that happened first of all with this project.

AH: I certainly think it did. I think Monika pulled out all the stops in terms of her visibility and her presence and her openness with this particular project. Maybe I should be more reflective on the idea of ‘being there’ because that’s not necessarily the be all and end all to this question is it, because presence, it can be a very passive thing as well, on a project. What I liked about it was that Monika was all the time trying to generate this public sphere around the debates, that for me is where it is really clear, and she was always looking to generate conversations with people about the set of problems in the town.

And I don’t think that happens very often with art projects, because they tend to be, sometimes they are a little bit too concerned with art interests. Monika comes from quite an activist base I think, she doesn’t get confused in terms of aesthetics, anything else, I think her interest in art is from a very critical perspective, so for me it is a really good example of what an artist can do, when given licence to be somewhere with some funding. She wasn’t looking to... she was open, she didn’t have answers, she was looking to ask questions and she was critical and at the same time she wasn’t trying to manage expectations and say how things should be and I think sometimes art agencies, commissioners, quangos whatever they may be, are sometimes have got or become very concerned about causing controversies and dissent, and I don’t think Monika was ever concerned about that, I think she saw it as her role as an artist or curator, to engage people in open critical discussion about things that need to be done, what needs to be done.

SF: With the Arts Council, the idea of constructing

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the identity of the audience, they seem to do that quite a lot, they seem to do that quite specifically in terms of age group, racial background, or age, class even, the degree to which people are already ‘involved’ in art, and will you reach those that aren’t ‘involved,’ and all that. Those categories are hugely problematic because you have made all sorts of assumptions before you have encountered anybody, about specific sets of people, and I agree with you, the project didn’t do that in any way, it didn’t say we are going to focus on this group of people, it was an open process, doesn’t that mean that it needs to be a low level presence that is perpetual?

AH: I think it would be good if it carried on, I suppose because we had a relationship with Multistory whereby Monika was working under their roof, and the supportive role they took with her, I guess there might have been some hope, and might still be hope that some of the things that we learn from the project could actually influence their programming. Or some of the activities that could be seen as absorbed by their organisation, that it effects their policy and programming, there might be room for it. But it’s not what you’re saying, which is a continued...

[...]

SF: It would be really nice if there was this critical curatorial person doing this kind of work all the time, but there seems to be a real conflict in that original Arts Council document. One of the questions in that document is how would your project compliment the policies of the local authority or other public organisation, if it is a project that seeks to pursue a model of radical democracy isn’t there a conflict there? I know you say certain things in a grant application, but there is a conflict there between all these arts organisations that are seeking to do all this rational work with the local authority and then all these critical voices who are happier to let things unfold over a really long space of time.

AH: Well, I mean I think that you’re right, what the University is able to do is to come in with a critical position through academic discourse, and that’s possibly where Emma Chetcuti and her team have their hands are tied, ‘cos they are much more dependent on funding sources and an ongoing

instrumental agenda for what arts and creative practice can do in those type of environments. They are perhaps tied to still quite dominant ideas about the function of art, which they possibly can’t veer too far from if they are to carry on doing what they are doing and employing people and those sorts of activities. I mean it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way, if some of these agencies were set up to do these sometimes problematic things with art, and the best hope that critical artists have got is to use them as platforms every now and again and to do something more critical with them and hopefully affect their output, use their funding, occupy that space. But I know Multistory and Longhouse have been very affected by cuts and things, they’ve really felt it, and they’ve had to reduce their staff enormously. So I think they are probably going through a review at the moment and rethinking what it is they do, and the questions that they need to be (answering), saying to potential funders what it is they are about.

[…]

SF: What did you do before the start of this project?

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MV: I was a curator at Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen. I’d been hired as assistant curator, and when I came into post in 2004 they failed to appoint a senior position and I was alone in the job for two years. And I always felt that there was this lack of someone in the organisation to share ideas, talk about exhibitions, give critical feedback to concepts and that sort of stuff. […] I was looking for more of a collective way of working and I was looking for people I could have discussions with around those things. I am also mostly interested in art in relation to the public sphere and broadly conceived of political issues and Peacock Visual Arts was moving to a capital building development. I am personally not convinced that having a huge flagship arts building is good in terms of urban development, or good in terms of the arts organisation or what I see as being potential for progressive cultural contexts so I wasn’t really interested in that...

I was never one of those people who was convinced that art has much social goodness in and of itself and that it can have a positive effect on an area or the people in that area. I was always very sceptical about that, and Tim was a total believer in that so, I thought it would be interesting to work for someone who was so convinced that art can make a difference to local people’s lives and it would be interesting to challenge my views by working with someone who has been working in that ... way for decades.

SF: Broadly speaking, can you talk more about what your interests and approach are?

MV: ... I would be very reluctant to make broad claims against any specific. First of all, I think that with any specific artwork you commission or make, – and I’m not someone who would make it, so I’m going to say commission – it’s about how that particular piece does or does not work; and what

kind of situation it is in and what is produced out of that, regardless of whether it works or fails on its own terms or not. But to start off with an ambition that is beyond the artwork and very generic in the sense of ‘this is going to encourage community cohesion,’ and then you have, I don’t know, an audio piece, or a walk, or a guerrilla gardening action, on a basic level, it doesn’t actually say anything about the artwork, it’s got a prescriptive attitude, it’s really on a very basic level at odds with the idea of doing something process-based.

And if you really want to empower the community (as it usually goes) even on the very limited terms of empowering people to participate in the arts as an equal partner more or less, although there is also a problem there I think, but then surely you can’t really say what the outcome of the piece will be before those people have had full involvement. So there are basic issue like that already.

I mean, it’s much bigger than that, and also, for me it’s about being honest about where you are coming from, and you need to have an interest within that. You know, if it’s ‘we’re doing this great thing for people out there’, who we’re defining in a very generic way, we’re not really recognising individual differences very much or where they might be coming from. It’s not very much of a dialogue. It doesn’t really say what I want to do, or what the artist wants to do, it doesn’t really say what other people, you know. [...]

SF: Going back to the beginning of the project, what did you think of Multistory?

MV: There was not that much on the website. The Longhouse series which is part of what Multistory do, the partner of this [project] is actually Longhouse, which is the part that is funded through a focus on artist’s development. [...] I had heard very good

Monika Vykoukal, October 2010, the stall at West Bromwich Market

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things about Longhouse and Multistory from a lot of people in the arts school in Aberdeen who worked in socially engaged arts, as well as from Tim. Basically, Longhouse had been doing art in public space engaging the local community since the early seventies, and Chloe Brown who is running the Longhouse project was on the interview panel when I applied for the job. The fact that Longhouse were locally rooted, and had been for a while, contributed to me wanting to do that job because I thought that this is part of their longer work, they will know people, they will have an idea of what’s going on. I assumed they will have an idea of what they wanted from me, because ... my impression was that this [project] must fit into their wider activity and their longer term plans.

[...]

SF: What did you think you could achieve at the beginning of the project and how has that changed?

MV: At the beginning I was trying to figure out what the set up was and I was under the impression that I would be working closely with Chloe in terms of developing a project, and that there would be other people at the University in the research group who would also give some input. I spent a few weeks reading documents and trying to map out the regeneration bodies in the area and also visiting places and visiting people. I had been given a spreadsheet of people to meet who were mainly working for different levels of the public sector. Eventually I had a meeting with people from Multistory and we had a plan with action points then, and I had conversations with Tim. It took me until June, July 2009 (to understand) that there was no... that I was sort of left to my own devices, it took me a while to figure that out. And it was also changing with Tim leaving, Tim had had some ideas with what he wanted to happen. So I was basically trying to understand what was expected of me and how people thought this would fit into what they were doing.

SF: Are you saying it took you six months to figure out what the aims of the project were?

MV: Well, the general thing that I had been given beforehand and that I responded to was about art in

relation to questions of democracy and the public interest and art that was sort of ‘in public’. Which I saw more as public in the sense of the public sphere, rather than just in the street, but that was fairly general. When I then arrived, and after the first meeting with Multistory it became clear that there was some ambition to have work take place in Wolverhampton and Walsall and West Bromwich.

The framework that I was given, that came from those meeting notes Tim gave me (when I arrived) was that it was fairly defined. They wanted to have three internationally established practitioners or groups to each mentor eight people for, I believe it was one month, or three months. It was significantly longer than the one week they had done previously, a format pretty much based on the Longhouse scheme, but more extensive. And that would be the first phase of something that would then be developed for after this project. And there would be a seminar which would be like a taster workshop done at the same time and take place in all three locations, which would be followed by a conference, bringing together all the different, what is commonly referred to as ‘stakeholders’... And then for the second year, for people to come for one month or more each, and make work, and that work would be displayed in some manner, in public space and then there would be a publication about it, and before the publication came out, there would be an ambition to seek more funding to continue the scheme.

That was what I was given when I first started, and I immediately had some things about it that I was keen to question, or understand why it was done in that way and what the ambition was. Some of those things I was wondering about were (...) the relationships of those different artists and the hierarchies in that, and everyone doing their own thing separately. For me there was a question over the relationship of doing something like this and then having attached a more sort of social goal in terms of positive impact on people’s lives and the regeneration processes and so on. […] I’m really interested in art as a space for discussion and broadly speaking, mutual learning, as a way to understand situations in different ways […] How far is it possible to proceed in a more public way in terms of the artwork being relevant, not necessarily

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nice or liked by people, but to be more intelligible and responsive to people and to really take it seriously that the primary audience is the people in the location and how can that work out? […]

SF: Do you think it is important with a town like this, post-industrial, economically deprived that it is important to have those conversations with each other?

MV: Well, important in what way? I do think it’s important, in a sense, especially in a place like this. [...] I think you need to fight for a certain level of having a public space, and people being able to have debate, it’s a constant struggle to maintain ... that. That’s really important to me [...] I think there is a need for more information, and I’m not saying that those discussions wouldn’t happen without me being there, but... [...] I feel like I can say ‘well this is what I am interested in’, if someone else is interested in that, and it is fairly specific, that’s the basis for engagement with the project. And it doesn’t really matter if it is the planning professor from Sheffield or the guy down the road who had his house CPO’ed. I’m not going to be talking about ‘cleaner safer streets’ ...

SF: So that’s become the focus. Do you feel like you were on your own as the researcher trying to figure out the massive complex of regeneration of West Bromwich, or, the other people that have come in, the film makers, the artists, do you feel they have helped you do the research? I know a huge amount of information has been generated.

MV: Well, I feel like I haven’t been able to process the information very much because there is a lot. I think it is too early to say how far this project succeeded or not.

[...]

[At this point in the interview, Maureen Neal, intercedes in the conversation]

MN: Sorry to interrupt. Now then, you are from Wolverhampton University?

MV: yeah

MN: So what are you doing?

MV: Well this is the end of a larger...

MN: No, I mean, what is it all in aid of?

MV: Its about the town centre, the regeneration.

MN: right well, I’ve got news for you, [ to SF] are you the writer?

MV: Well, she’s judging me!

MN: Well I’ve got information for the both of you. Not a lot of people know, I have particularly come in...

MV: Would you like to sit?

MN: No, No, you’re alright, you sit there. Now, I’m only an amateur artist, and I run a little paintbox group in Lodge Road Community Centre, on a Monday, its only a pound, and if there is anyone unemployed, they can come along, 10.45 to 12.45. Now I’ve got some very historic interesting information for you pair. First of all, that’s an angel I done for a relative of mine [referring to her sketchbook] out of my brain. The most important thing is this, I’ll come to it. Sorry to keep you.

Now then, I done this yesterday, this is St Michaels Roman Catholic Church, over the way from here, now did you know, that the late Princess Diane, her great great Uncle was the first Parish Priest of this church. Princess Diane’s trust has just given it a little bit of money to help with its restoration. I thought that be better than the ruddy Public and all the rest of it.

I’m originally from Birmingham, used to be a nurse... Very interesting for you really because the times that we are living in, and the depression that we are living in, you can see by the deprivation people are living in, but the Midlands has got a wealth of past historical things, and I think this needs to be brought to the fore, we’re not down in the floorboards yet.

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Between Birmingham and West Bromwich, they made from the eye of a needle to a great big tank, an army tank, now if you want more information, you can go to West Bromwich Library. The industry and the wealth of knowledge in these places, ok, we’ll go through them, there used to be Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds, used to make screws and bolts. There used to be Accles and Pollock, there was such a lot of industry. And where I came from, Saltney in Birmingham, there was Metro Cammell, used to make train engines, not the engines, the carriages, my late father used to be a maintenance electrician there. There used to be Morris Commercial, used to make cars, and all these things have gone, but you see, we need to start putting things back on the map, you see, surely to god we can come together and..

In West Bromwich, that Public there, that should have been used, whoever decided that, it should have been used to bring in manufacturing. There are companies in the region here that make microchips, all this needs to be put into an exhibition, a very big exhibition, for the Black Country, for the Midlands as a whole, and I think its about time, the powers that be, what do you call them?

SF: Local Government?

MN: Yes and no, I mean the manufacturing, we’re not dead yet!

SF: Do you mean to say to have a celebration, if you

MN: OK, I think there is a place down Smethwick, which I think the Council runs which gives a bit of history, but we need to have a ruddy exhibition, like at Bingley Hall in Birmingham long ago, I mean you don’t have to go all the way up to Birmingham Airport to the NEC [National Exhibition Centre], you could house an exhibition in that hole over there. A lot of people from West Bromwich don’t like it. I can see why, it cost millions of pounds, they could have done a building which they could have incorporated those splashes of paint, they could have used it as an art gallery, as a science museum, incorporating all what is good, and also maybe some sports facilities. But that is neither here nor there.

SF: So did the market stall idea come out of the sense that the project needed to progress in some way because you weren’t making those connections [with community groups]? What motivated you to do the market stall?

Save the Arts 11: Digbeth, 2010, poster by Mark Titchner, commissioned by Eastside Projects [see also http://savet-hearts-uk.blogspot.com]

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MV: One of the issues for me was the timing, that you didn’t really have time... It was only two years and there were certain formal things in my contract that had to be done, like the seminar, the conference. Internally, the staff were changing. When I started to work on the seminar it was not that I necessarily was totally convinced that this [market stall] was the ideal option, but I felt I had to do something and see what happens rather than just keep thinking it over by myself.

So the stall came out of the various ideas at the seminar, and it was about having a local presence and addressing the people who were there. So on the one hand, we could find out if there were more people who were interested in those questions, and also there could be some direct communication, I mean about regeneration in the area... The idea was to gather all kinds of information and to hand it out at the stall. Because I found it very difficult to figure out who was active, and what was happening, and I thought that it might be an experience other people had as well so that could be an attempt to start communication. It was situated there.

SF: What changed with the project after the stall? Did you feel that there was a success in terms of people would come and engage with the questions around regeneration?

MV: In terms of people being interested, it was a success. I feel strongly that for me it failed in terms of lack of resources, because I would have needed more people involved at the point of when people wanted something to actually get to any kind of next step. That didn’t happen, and I realised that it was very difficult for me. [...]

SF: You wanted to have a critical discussion about regeneration, and you wanted to that to be a public

discussion, for the project to basically bring about this sharing of knowledge about decisions that are made behind closed doors. To what extent did that happen, to what extent did you communicate that knowledge? And were people interested?

MV: All the material at the stall was compiled by me basically. Multistory gave me three documents, and all the other stuff was found in the council archive and so on, which also had a cost implication, and it took time, and it was then displayed at the stall. It was all focused on West Bromwich, and a lot of people were reading that or [in some cases] bringing their own information or sharing their impressions of what was happening, such as: ‘There was this consultation and they said they would knock down the houses, but they still haven’t and now I can’t sell it because people are not sure about it and the consultation is always really bad because you can’t connect to anyone else who might have the same concerns’. Things like that, and I noted them all down, but I guess it never really got beyond that on most levels. […]

I mean my idea about my role in the project […] usually I would say, the person who does this kind of engagement is the artist and not the curator, I am setting it up and helping out, but I’m not the person who is deciding individually, on my own, what direction things are taking. So I have been hoping that things would be slightly different. Mainly because I would be the only person who would be there for the whole duration, it became a durational project. The idea was that I would kind of be working in communication with and for the other people involved, to support the work they were doing properly together in a connected way. That did not happen […] So I was never sure, on the one hand I was very interested in this stuff, I really want to look into this, but then why would I do this? I don’t live here, I don’t know what the rest of the group would do with this stuff. […] For

Monika Vykoukal, December 2010, Manchester.

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instance one of the things that came up constantly was that there were a lot of meetings in the evening in terms of community consultation and so on, but I found it very hard to go to many of them. I think I would have found it easier if there had been more people involved, but to try and go alone to those meetings, after work, when you don’t live there and you don’t know anybody, it’s kind of hard. So that was the thing about my role. It just became quite difficult on various levels.

The other thing is that there was a question about selecting things, which I have been thinking about since, because a lot of the questions people asked were not really the kind of direction we had had in mind because they were more about local history or family history. The questions were strongly motivated by personal interest but were not really about any wider issues, like what happened to the lump of coal in the shopping centre that used to be exhibited there. But those were the people that came by regularly so it was very hard to not look into their questions. Because, the thing that you really worry about doing this kind of work is ... on the one hand they want people to participate, but then not really include what those participants want in a serious way so I felt if I didn’t look into those questions... [...]

SF: Were you expecting people who were coming into the market, did you expect them to be interested in questions of regeneration but they weren’t interested because they were more concerned about, for example, the lady who came up to us when I visited the stall, and she gave a very historic account of the businesses that were there in West Bromwich. So to what extent is it a problem that the public aren’t interested in the questions that the artists were interested in? These were about critiquing growth coalitions that make decisions that are made without any kind of mandate...

MV: It wasn’t that, no. It wasn’t the case at all. That’s just not true. People were very interested, but I was not able to get enough work done about it, because of the lack of resources and so forth, I was there by myself.

SF: So the public that weren’t interested...

MV: But that’s not true. I mean ... there were people talking about the consultations they had been involved in, they were talking about things that were about to happen, or wanted to know what was about to happen where they live, but the distinction is that most of the public were not interested in general terms, but in specifics. I don’t think that is surprising. People wanted to know specific things in relation to that. But I didn’t feel that I had the knowledge or resources to answer that on my own.(*)

SF: So in what sense did the artists who came in answer those questions? Is that what they were there to do?

MV: No I mean, the project took on a different character from what I had intended and when the market stall was, when I was making the market stall in a practical sense, it was between January and the end of March 2010, the idea of the project was a different one to what it became.

SF: Talk about what it became.

MV: Well, it became a series of distinct pieces of work that are research-based or artistic, (...) initially the idea was to have some sort of collective research activity as far as I’m understanding it, which would be then documented in the newsletter which could also potentially be of an open nature in the sense that we would have little events at the stall maybe and invite someone from, for example, Corporate Watch to look into the Supermarket for a day or so, then I could invite an architecture student from Birmingham to do something about The Public, that was my hope...

SF: Did that happen?

MV: No, none of this happened. Which is because at this time, I was expecting more help [...] the idea was that it would be more connected...

SF: With the artists and the public, or the artists with each other?MV: Both.

SF: And that didn’t happen either?

MV: No. In hindsight, the main thing is the lack of

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previous relationships, the fact that no-one was living in the area and that had implications, and I wasn’t very forceful about steering it in the, you know I didn’t say, ‘you can’t do that because it was not the original plan’. It was difficult enough, I was caught up in the management of things all the time […]

My personal situation really affected the work in the sense that I experienced isolation since moving to the area, it became much harder to do things […] in the sense of a lack of response from people working in the arts sector in the area, or trying to get information working with me on the project, or getting some sort of reaction from staff at the University, or at Multistory. […] One of the things that has probably affected all parts of the project is the recession and the cuts in all kinds of institutions […] Dew Harrison took on being my boss in addition to other work after Tim left, because they were having a hiring freeze ..., there was a big voluntary redundancy scheme already last year [at the University], so people had other things on their minds. And there might have even been a perception that since they are fulfilling core functions of the organisation in terms of doing teaching and research. And I’m just doing this extra thing and I didn’t have tons of money, but if you are struggling already, then, well, ‘Why are we doing this kind of thing’?

SF: Do you think they asked that question?

MV: It would have been different if it [the project] would have had future implications for the organisation […] There are probably tons of other things happening. Similarly Multistory made I think nine people redundant last year, and now they have four staff. Communication was already difficult at the beginning, [...] there is definitely a focus on other things, in a pragmatic formal way I would say it’s because of where the potential for the organisations is, the University, the Art School, Multistory, their ability to continue was not attached to this project. Other things were more promising for them.

SF: What changed in West Bromwich as a result of this project?

MV: […] I went back to the market the other week and some of the stall-holders expressed an interest in having some sort of continuation there, but the issue for me is that basically my job is coming to an end, there is not much money left in the budget and I feel very drained! So I emailed various local arts organisations and individuals saying don’t you want to do something there. I told them I had a really great experience there and that the traders have expressed an interest and they could do all those terrific things. I emailed photography and media studies at Sandwell College because the college are getting a new building right behind the market so it would make sense for them to do work with their new neighbours, I’ve emailed Graham at the Public, spoken with Chloe obviously about it, at Multistory, I’ve emailed the graphic design tutor at the art school because people wanted to have design for their stalls happening. And I emailed Fierce which is like an arts organisation but they don’t have a permanent base, but do all sorts of public art around the region, they worked with Manu... Then I emailed Black Country Touring, and a couple of other places […] some of those people are people I have been trying to meet ever since I moved down here, various curators who are doing public art in relation to regeneration in the area, and also artists […] I think that it is again a question of the time limit and how to enter a social group, because either you would need more time, or you need a personal introduction, or a combination of those.

*) From: <M.Vykoukal@wlv.ac.uk>Date: 6 January 2011 13:25:53 GMT+01:00Subject: Catching up, plans, etc.

Dear Suzy,

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[...] to reflect on our conversation about a month ago: I did realize, even as I got all muddled about it, that there is a contradiction between what I said about people’s interest in the issues about regeneration and decision-making and the project and the questions I was asked that were not directly to do with what we had set up as the frame of the investigation but more about local history details and such.

I think both happened, and that I would have liked the framing to change in response to people’s interest a little, which is what happened to some extent. I also think that the questions and interest about the project’s initial focus petered out as I was not equipped to respond adequately when the stall opened in early April. The key issue I have been struggling with from the start and all through the project has been not being able to work more collectively, or even get discussions with the people who are to some extent co-workers (including the artists) on the project, and not being able to find partner organisations and individuals to work with from the start, with my views hanging rather helplessly and vaguely in the balance between personal failings (social skills, ability to come up with focus that is of interest to others, etc.) and systemic (working conditions, professional roles, histories of artists and other individuals and orgs more specifically in the locality, conflict between aim to work collectively and set-up of institutions, practical limitations, etc.).

And then I don’t want this to become about me as a person, and so it kind of goes around my head without much resolve, frankly. But I think, to complement answers to your question, both elements were present. [...]

So that’s it for now...

Monika

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THE END. SOME FINAL QUESTIONS, AND SOME ANSWERS. See also initial questions and answers in Creative Reports # 3 and 5.

Some answers from tHighways Services, Sandwell Council:

Q: A road - this might be the A4034 - built around 40 years ago, looks like it was supposed to go to to Blackheath but it only goes to Whiteheath:here are four lanes from Oldbury, then only two lanes, but the traffic island had been built, it looks like then the building works stopped. Whatappened?

A: The road referred to is indeed the A4034. When the M5 was built in the late 60s/early 70s, the Ministry of Transport (as it was then) improved the local A roads as they met the motorway at the new junctions. It was normal practice to upgrade them from the next junction in each direction. In the case of M5 Junction 2, the A4123 (Wolverhampton Road) was already a dual carriageway but the A4034 (Birchfield Lane/Churchbridge) wasn’t. Therefore, as part of the motorway works Birchfield Lane was widened to dual carriageway standard as far as Whiteheath Gate and Churchbridge as far as Park Lane. It was left to the local authorities to improve the remainder of the routes. Warley Borough Coun-cil (and from 1974 - West Midlands County Coun-cil) had proposals to complete the dual carriageway south to Blackheath Town Centre and North to Oldbury Town Centre. Funding was never obtained for the Blackheath route and this proposal was dropped by the County Council in the early 1980s. The proposal to complete the route up to Oldbury was considered to be of greater importance and this was retained, ultimately being constructed by Sandwell in the early 1990s (following the demise of the County Council in 1986).

Q: What was the original road layout and right of way on Bustleholme Lane?

A: Originally the Lane was very narrow and ran from Charlemont to Bustleholme Mill Farm, which was located on land that is now under the M6 Motor-way. Here it terminated at a dead end. As far as I can tell, the lane was widened as far as Bustleholme Avenue between the wars and development took place on either side of it. In the mid 1960s when the Charlemont Farm and Bustleholme Mill Estates were constructed the lane was curtailed just north of the railway line at the new Andrew Road. At this time Beacon View Road was constructed which bisected Bustleholme Lane. A new bridge was built over the railway so a short section of the lane be-came wider here providing the link to the Bustlehol-me Mill Estate. The section between Bustleholme Avenue and Beacon View Road remains as little more than a track along its original alignment.

Sandwell Cuts Poster: Poster produced by Jubilee Arts, 1983 [featured in: Kennedy, Liam, ed. Remaking Birmingham, The Visual Culture of Urban Regeneration. London: Routledge, 2004: 58].

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-E-mail from Andy Miller, Transportation Team Leader, Sandwell Council, 3 February

Still trying to find out what happened with the coal once on display in a case in the Queen’s Square Shopping Centre.

In 1991, the coal display was described in Journey Down the Golden Mile (Meandes, M.M., West Bromwich, 11-12): The Block of Coal - In the glass case in the centre of the covered square. It was donated by the coal board’s Mineworkers Pension Fund. It is a block of Anthracite from the Abercrave Opencast Mine in South Wales pre-sented in 1969 to commemorate the Board’s contribution to the building of the Shopping Centre. The centre was designed by the John Maden Design Group in 1971.

To find out more, I wrote to the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme, who sent me a very thorough response, sug-gesting I contact some other organisations. I have now also sent enquiries to the Black Country Living Museum; the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation; Fairacre Properties, the receivers appointed by the Nationwide Building Society on this and another shopping centre owned by Stockland (for details on this see http://www.propertyweek.com/news/nationwide-appoints-receivers-on-malls/3159247.article#ixzz1DY0G4HAO); the National Coal Mining Museum, who referred me to the Big Pit - National Coal Museum, Wales, who in turn suggested I contact the Black Country Living Museum; and the National Union of Mineworkers. It doesn’t look good to me, but maybe something will turn up?

Remaining questions:Who built and lived in 190 Beeches Road? What Pub was between the Billiard Hall and St. Michael’s Church ca. 250 years ago? What was where the former Sandwell Pub, now Grouse, is?

Looking for old photos:Black Lake School (demolished 1966)Bungalows behind Lancaster House, Whiteheath (demolished in the 1980s)Chester Street in Carters GreenSamson’s Farm in Rowley Regis

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BLAZONAbsent shield, tincture cendrée/transparent.

Motto: Progress! Progress? The end and beginning