Coincidences

Thinking about Jo’s image of the child on the station platform made me remember some journeys from my own childhood. My family emigrated to Western Australia on the £10 ticket, we lived in a place called Kelmscott and for the first few years my brother and I travelled to school in Gosnells by train. There was a walk from our house to the station, then a brief train ride and a short walk to school. I can’t remember much about the journey, or what the train was like, I have no image of either station in my head. What I do remember was that every day, whilst waiting for the train our Mum would read to us. I loved getting lost in stories and I expect that’s why I can remember so little about the built environment, I was wandering around in my imagination and not paying too much attention to the outside world. If I strain my memory I can just feel the dry morning heat on my cheeks, catch a whiff of railway carriage and recall the ache of being torn away from the book of the moment.

These memories prompted a spot of Googling to see what the station had been like. The old Kelmscott Station, which opened in 1889, had been replaced, in 2008, by a modern, state of the art station. You can see both the old and the new by following this link

I did get a slight tingle on seeing the new Kelmscott station building, as its’ outer structure is very like the new building that houses the swimming pool in Corby.

Photo by Andrew Rushton

Corby Swimming Pool under construction 2009.

Kelmscott Station under construction

The second shiver of coincidence came when doing research into some tangential family histories, looking through public records, at patterns of work and the moves made from countryside to cities. I discovered that in 1911, a distant relative, 17 year old William Miles was living with aunt Hannah Sophia Staples & uncle Charles Staples at 12 Becher St, Derby (the original house no longer exists). Peartree Station (Peartree and Normanton as it was known) opened in 1839, the Victorian / Edwardian housing stock in the area was built to cater for the growing industrialworkforce, employed by the chemical industries, Rolls Royce and the railways in Derby.

William was employed as Railway Clerk Hotel, I assume this means he was employed in a railway hotel. His uncle Charles and cousin Albert were railway clerks working either at Derby Station, 22 minutes walk away or Peartree Station, 12 walk minutes away. As our project is still in the planning stage I can’t do too much digging around about Peartree Station, which is one of the names on the line from Corby that appealed to me, but I quite like this invisible line radiating out from the past into the present.

In the meantime here is an image connected with both Kelmscott and the research mentioned above – a piece called “Three Sails, Many Voyages”, digital images printed on silk, currently on display as part of Out Yer Tree’s exhibition of outdoor contemporary art in the grounds of Coombe Abbey Country Park (Brinklow Road, Binley, Nr Coventry CV3 2AB) from 28th August – 17th September 2010. There is a free walk and talk event on Saturday the 28th of August where the artists involved will discuss their work and answer any questions the public may have. The walk and talk will leave from the visitor’s centre at 2pm.

romanticism

One travels to escape from it all, but that is the great illusion: It cannot be done, since one travels with one's mind.

 Ella Maillart (travel writer, 1903-1997)

The romanticism of travel still persists.  Yesterday I saw a 7 year old boy at the station platform waiting for the train with his family.  Mum looks tired, carrying all the bags - they are on a trip to Skegness, they had to get up early to get things ready.  The boy, however, is full of beans, he's beside himself with excitement and announces to the platform crowd "We're going on a train! choo choo!"  followed by the dance:  he strides up and down the platform, rotating arms bent at the elbow, "chuff chuff, woo woo!"

Where, I wonder, has he got this image from?  Has this young boy ever actually seen a steam engine that goes "chuff chuff woo woo"?  Certainly no trains at this platform will be making that sound.  Somehow the excitement of the romantic image of the train lives on in this child - he does not talk about the excitement of the seaside, it is the journey itself that has him enthused.

Alas, not so for the rest of us this morning, commuting to our various places of work.  How different the weekend train passengers are from the Monday morning.  The train is equally noisy, but nobody here expects the journey to be exciting, or even fun - most people have brought some form of distraction for themselves:  headphones, books, mobiles for texting, spreadsheets to pore over, dark sunglasses to sleep under.  No child's voice trilling over the conversations of colleagues, no sense of anticipation, just a sleepy, weary monotony of the same old journey...

I once made a piece called "Interruptions"which mused on travel... how travel is a series of interruptions, a story to tell and the "interruptions are what make a journey worth relating."  The daily commute has no sense of story, there will be no interruptions... it is the efficiency of the train that takes away the anticipation, the unexpected, the romanticism...

It is the unknown that excites us, the sense of exploration, the romanticism of the train only lasts for those for whom it is a novelty, who don't know what to expect, who knows what could happen... like a 7 year old boy.

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)

myth strata

More on Mythogeography...

Having thought about maps as visual representations showing us things that we cannot see, revealing connections and networks, mythogeography introduces the idea that each place is also an interweaving of myths, stories and histories, a network of meanings that cannot be seen but become part of the fabric of the place...

(Public art can be a way of making the meaning of a place visible.)

The threads that link a place to another place (or person connected to that place) are also part of this interweaving, overlaying of networks forming new nexus points, connecting stories, themes, imaginative responses...

These connections all exist in the imagination.  If made physical they might look like rock strata - building up layer upon layer over time to produce a rich fabric of meanings, compacted together to create the place that we now inhabit.

- oh!  and there's another word I must blog about!  I came across something the other day about the word "inhabit", the physical occupation of a space with one's body... I must look that up again, another blog post coming soon!

Navigation, Signage and the Wonderful Jock Kinneir & Margaret Calvert

A few weeks ago I found myself driving to London, I’ve made the journey before but hadn’t driven there myself, for quite some time. At the end of the M1 my heart always starts to beat a little faster, will I remember to get in the right lane, will I come off at the right exit, will they have moved the Edgeware Rd, will I find my way to Vauxhall Bridge? It was the end of a scorching day, the motorway was a clear and beautiful space to drive on (after Luton), Map Man was beside me navigating – he doesn’t like parties, is not too keen on London, he was hot and a bit fractious.

The last time we’d been on this route, he had been driving and my Dad and I (both used to the route but not quite paying attention) were being hopeless navigators, there was a detour, which took us onto Abbey Rd – Map Man was really getting pretty frantic, we were lost, we would be late and Miles & Miles weren’t helping at all, eventually he gave us up for a bad job and got out his compass, yes, the old fashioned kind not Sat Nav and we did eventually get to where we were going.

My hopelessness with maps was the reason I was designated driver on our most recent trip, almost time to leave the motorway and Map Man was getting agitated, my instincts and prior knowledge (which I should have trusted) told me to go one way, he was directing me elsewhere (Golders Green, to be precise). Map Man loves maps, understands where he is in relation to physical world and paper representation of world, I navigate by landmark, if I’ve seen it, I’ll remember it. I was swayed as things were looking a bit unfamiliar.......

Having taken the wrong exit, it was quite hard to turn off or turn round, so an unguided tour of familiar sounding places like Highgate, Primrose hill, Camden Town etc ensued, we seemed to be travelling across London in a series of circles and the maps weren’t really helping. I tried to reassure my companion that the rules of navigation by map didn’t really apply in the city, things were apt to change, there may be diversions or direction changes, signs were likely to disappear for long stretches of time but most things tended to reconnect to somewhere familiar at some point, you just had to take a kind of leap of faith. Staying calm also helps, even when some other lost soul is driving towards you the wrong way in your own lane.

Finally we found the Thames and a bit later, Vauxhall Bridge – I almost wept for joy. I recognised a section of wall, some buildings, a roundabout, it’s a bit of a hit and miss way of getting around, but it generally works for me! I think I would probably fare better with the medieval maps Jo described a few entries ago, the ones with the small illustrations of landmarks, today, Street View is very helpful to a ‘by sight’ navigator like me.

What the journey did make me think about was the signage we have on our roads, designed by Jock Kinneir & Margaret Calvert in 1958. They are so part of our everyday that we probably no longer register just what marvels of graphic design they are and how simply and effectively they manage to direct us on our travels, how great they still look and how grateful I felt every time a sign appeared that confirmed I was still heading in the right direction or at least towards somewhere I recognised.

Quote from

(weblink) "JOCK KINNEIR + MARGARET CALVERT Graphic Designers (1917-1994) + (1936-) Designing Modern Britain - Design Museum"

“It is sad but true to say that most of us take our surroundings for granted,” Kinneir observed in 1965. “Direction signs and street names, for instance, are as vital as a drop of oil in an engine, without which the moving parts would seize up; one can picture the effect of the removal of this category of information on drivers in a busy city or on pedestrians trying to find their way in a large building complex. It is a need which has bred a sub-division of graphic design with more influence on the appearance of our surroundings than any other.”

I love the fact that Margaret Calvert designed the typefaces (web links below)

"Transport"

"Rail Alphabet"

"New Rail Alphabet"

to help us on our way.

Mythogeography

"Mythogeography describes a way of thinking about and visiting places where multiple meanings have been squeezed into a single and restricted meaning (for example, heritage, tourist or leisure sites tend to be presented as just that, when they may also have been homes, jam factories, battlegrounds, lovers' lanes, farms, cemeteries and madhouses). Mythogeography emphasises the multiple nature of places and suggests multiple ways of celebrating, expressing and weaving those places and their multiple meanings."

Mythogeography website

Slowing it Down

For the last 6 years I have been working in a small and lovely school in Bedford, the time is short - 6 to 8 mornings a year but we are never tied to a rigid format. I choose artists to look at, take the children on a walk through their work, ask them questions, ask them to look and think about what they are seeing. They are all longing to get straight into the drawing, painting or making but taking a few moments to look and discuss adds to the quality of the work they move on to produce.

Whilst there last week I was brought a cup of coffee in the mug above, a lovely coincidence combining a map describing a network showing relationships "connecting the education sector across the UK". The network seems to be making connections, but the more I look at it, the more the diagram seems to describe branches that cross each other but place its practitioners in isolated bubbles.

Today we are used to a world of immediate communication, speedy responses, words broken into fragments, tiny shards of meaning, we are in such a rush to be here there and everywhere all at the same time, we forget the value of slowing it right down. This is particularly true of delivering creative outcomes in schools, we believe that children have a short attention span, will get bored, run riot, if we ask them to slow down.

During these activities the teachers and I also try to take the children on imaginative journeys, for the past two Fridays we have been in China looking at surface decoration and ceramics. Their teacher had recently been on a school exchange trip to China, her experiences helped to bring the vases to life for the children.

We could have thrown ourselves straight into the planned printing activity as soon as the children had finished their designs, instead we asked them to add to what they'd cut out and to plan out their designs by placing them inside the paper templates.

Slowing down creates space, there is nothing lovelier than drifting into a bubble of relaxation, of quiet and creative contemplation, the rush and buzz of the rest of life shrinks away, there are your thoughts, the materials and the many possibilities they present. The first mark needn't be the finished item. Everyone should give themselves the time to take that journey, not everyone ends up making images but we can all walk around inside them and enjoy or learn from the artist's chosen viewpoint.