Forward Footing at the Flaming Skirt Festival, Ironville, Amber Valley

Artist and curator Sally Lemsford invited Miles and Dacombe to create a Forward Footing Walk as part of the Flaming Skirt Festival 2015, a contemporary arts festival in village halls and public spaces in the Amber Valley in Derbyshire. Participants experienced five mini contemporary art events in Ironville, Alfreton Community Hall, St Andrews Church Langley Mill plus on a double-decker bus travelling between. 

After Sally's now famous lucky dips, Shirley's Snack Shack and tickets, each member of our group was given a mini clipboard, paper and pencils. The group was guided out in a long creative crocodile from Ironville church hall to the boarded up former Doctors surgery, an intriguing building and a solid, inviting structure. Here Carole introduced the idea of looking for and recording all those things of beauty, interest or curiosity as we walk and people immediately took the opportunity to start drawing.

 Jo and Carole had designed the walk during a previous scoping day with Sally

and the second intervention centered around a public space surrounded by newer housing. There was a mysterious, now empty circle edged with brick, there were carefully sited stones, some with an inscription carved on them. At the far side, iron fencing with evidence of public art commemorating the railway. You could see it as an empty space of a space that was waiting to be filled.

 

Carole had raided her collection of vintage dolls house furniture which was divided up into bags donated by the lovely people at Mors bags and Jo brought large chalks to draw with. The two artists then invited people to divide themselves into smaller groups and to imagine that they were pioneering new town planners.

They drew out their re-imagined spaces

and set about creating a sculpture park

a wildlife haven

new houses

play spaces and nature habitats

mini wooden or stone Henges 

and outdoor learning environments.

One of our walkers came wearing wings

and had been a former Town Planner!

A puddle became a lake for floating houses

a wall was redrawn as a new whole street

The damp ground made the chalk drawings shine out and it was wonderful to see all ages huddled in small, intensely engaged groups. Each group used their props differently and the once empty community space was now full of small, inspired community groups. Everyone visited each others spaces sharing and enjoying what they had made. The work was documented and all the the images can be seen here 

All the artifacts were collected in and the walk recommenced, taking us past signs of industry and round the backs of houses, before we climbed a bank and stepped through a break in a low wall made from the waste materials from the iron smelting. 

Once again our walkers were invited to take a closer look - at the wall, the stones, at the canal basin and what was growing. 

Textures were explored and recorded

Art bridges gaps, fills them with mark making and imagination.

Richness can always be found in unexpected places.

Our walk ended almost back where it had begun and participants were invited to install their work on the boarded windows and ledges of the Doctors surgery.

At the end of the walk and interventions Jo and Carole became participants again, as the bus carried us off for more creative experiences with artists Lindsay Warnes-Carroll, Sophie Cero, Queenie Tea and Charlotte Ashman. We experimented with Sophie on the bus, played Where You Bin Go with Queenie Tea, were served a variety of delights by Shirley's Snack Shack and created a paper fashion show. What a fabulous day! 

On our return journey Miles and Dacombe held their prize draw for the Ironville Walking Art Kit 

Here are our winners exploring the contents of their kit.

For more about the Flaming Skirt Festival follow this link.

Whatstandwell

Our idea has always been to go somewhere unknown to us, without doing any research, to explore what we find and meet people along the way. Our second away day was to Whatstandwell in Derbyshire and we were fairly certain we would find a very different location than we found in Perry Bar. There were no station buildings but there was a graceful bridge between the active platform and the one on the other side, which was colonised by a wonderful array of wild flowers and weeds.

Gary the Train Driver was the first person we met, on his way to work in Derby. He’d had a variety of jobs with the railway and told us it was best to contact the main station in Derby if we wanted to stage an intervention at Whatstandwell. He hopped on the train and we crossed the bridge in search of a cup of tea.

The bridge took us to the towpath of the Cromford canal.  On the towpath we met three sisters, all local, who told us there was a tea shop further along “it wasn’t far”, so we fell in step with them for a while. By the end of the day we’d discovered that “not far” was roughly 2 and a half miles in any given direction! 

After walking with the sisters and hearing about their lives, local industry, family ties we fell back to better appreciate the lay of the land discovering that there were 4 levels running in parallel, river, road, rail and canal.  At points along the way these networks crossed each other.  Our feet on the path added a fifth network.

Canal crosses over railway

Canal crossed over river

Hidden behind trees on the far bank

Finally we came to High Peak Junction, where we not only found a cup of tea but a wealth of information from the Countryside  Rangers at work there.  They told us about some of the work that used to go on on the railway along the route that we had just walked.  They were intrigued by the idea of an artistic intervention and, again, were very helpful with giving us contacts and information.

Cromford Station itself was beautiful, painted in the same red and cream livery as Whatstandwell and again with wonderful details in the iron work.   A black and white cat bellowed at us as he crossed the rail line and wandered around the platforms that he clearly owned!


We took a train ride from Cromford Station, through Whatstandwell to Ambergate, and then walked back from Ambergate to Whatstandwell.  It felt strange to be travelling the same route we had just walked on the train, the experience of the two modes of travel were diametrical opposites.  We seemed to have been walking for hours that day, whereas the train journey from Cromford to Ambergate was a mere 10 minutes!  No time at all for the contemplation of small details and to take in the play of light on water and through trees, as we had on the walk.

Kevin the Conductor, a mine of information and a very kind man who had the time to show us just how his ticket machine worked. We have been intrigued by tickets and ticket machines ever since our visit to the London Transport Museum. He had worked in finance for most of his career but found that working for the railway the past three years had been a completely joyous experience. He was a man truly happy in his work!

Walking back from Ambergate, we had no idea how far it would be!

A welcome sight for our hot feet, the foot bridge to the platform at Whatstandwell

The day had been one of crossing networks, modes of travel, helpful people, sunshine, getting lost and endless possibilities!

THOUGHTS FROM THE WAITING ROOM

I feel as though I am in the Waiting Room – in the time before activity or before our proposed journeys can begin, I am pacing round the room, looking out, watching the clock, ready for the off. There are walls and windows between me, and where I hope to be. There is excitement, a sitting on the edge of my seat feeling, so many things may yet be possible.

The Waiting Room itself could be a place of creative activity, convention dictates that the passenger must sit and wait, but other activities could take place in this ‘waiting’ space. It could also be seen as a space waiting for something to happen. I can see all the possible activities that could take place but I must sit on my hands for the time being, and wait. In this time of waiting, I’m taking the opportunity to make other sorts of journeys on different, pre-existing networks.

Out on winding country roads hardly a car wide navigating by ordinance survey map learning to look for landmarks – pylons cutting across the road and changing direction – seeing first the diagram on a map before the pylons appear in reality. Very little traffic, apart from the inevitable, impatient 4 by 4.

Cradled inside an old landscape of gnarled trees and bountiful fields, villages connected by many small roads that crisscross and intersect each other. Small wonders that can punctuate the day, a well- stocked gift shop, a recycled wool blanket at a bargain price, the impromptu cream tea in a tree shrouded car park.

Striding out on tow paths beside canals, walking along networks and systems, which were designed to transport all kinds of goods, routes cut into the landscape, engineered and manmade.

As with trains, these walks can afford a glimpse into the gardens and backyards of others, some well tended, some a blank canvass, others chaotic and uncared for.

Passing alongside once thriving industrial buildings, the landscape bearing traces of change, decay, renewal, the ghosts of problem solving, remnants of the places where networking systems met and moved on, leaving one mode defunct once a new form of transportation took it’s place.

Ghost on the Rails by MacCanonymous (You Tube link)