Peripheral Vision
Peripheral Vision Peripheral Vision is a project aimed at everyone, especially those on the edge of society. Through the innovative use of new digital media and visits to cultural venues in Greater Manchester and beyond, learners have had the opportunity to take part in film, art, creative writing, photography, and textiles courses within their communities. Culminating in a celebratory event and the launch of this magazine, Peripheral Vision has encouraged those on the periphery to challenge others’ vision of society today. This project has also contributed towards Manchester City’s Cultural Strategy to “Provide a wide range of opportunities for creative expression and active participation thereby spreading the benefit of the city’s cultural facilities.” Over 180 adults have taken part in the project with 55 course visits to cultural venues. Peripheral Vision is funded by the Skills Funding Agency.
Cultural venues Whitworth Art Gallery People’s History Museum Yorkshire Sculpture Park Manchester Art Gallery Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester Library Theatre The Hepworth Wakefield MadLab Museum of Science and Industry Hat Works The John Rylands University Library Lyme Park, House and Garden Bury Met Cornerhouse Quarry Bank Mill and Styal Estate IWM North Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre Tate Liverpool Irwell Sculpture Trail The Manchester Wheel The Lowry
Community partners ADAB, Bury; Adactus Housing, Manchester; The Angel Healthy Living Centre, Salford; Bolton at Home; The Booth Centre, Manchester; City South Manchester Housing Trust, Manchester; Fatima Women’s Association, Oldham; LDRC, Stockport; REACHE NW, Hope Hospital, Salford; REAL, Rossendale; Southway Housing Trust, Manchester; Valuing Older People, Manchester
We would like to thank the following tutors, admin staff and volunteers for all their hard work and enthusiasm for the project: Carmen, Dani, David, Dawn, Ed, Hannah, Ian, Jamie, Jennie, Jillian, Karen, Kim, Matt, Michelle, Rachael, Richard, Shenna. We would also like to extend our appreciation to the film-makers: Phil, Matt, Ben, John and Colin; and all of the freelance artists who provided wonderful, interactive workshops at the cultural venues. And of course without you, our learners, Peripheral Vision would not have been such a whirlwind of fabulous creativity and fun! Thank you Published by WEA NW http://nw.wea.org.uk/ Designed by Richard Weltman http://www.picturesforpress.co.uk/ Edited by Kate Elaine Hutchings http://www.weacreative.org.uk/peripheralvision/ Peripheral Vision Project Manager: Kate Elaine Hutchings Printed by Sharman & Company Limited, Peterborough http://www.sharmanandco.co.uk/ All artworks © The Artists, 2012.
My Learning Journey I have been on a journey of learning all my life. Sometimes you go on a course to learn a skill like sewing and you end up learning so much more. This is my journey, I don’t want to tell you what I have learnt as you will learn it too as you go on your own journey. I want to hold your hand and let you be whatever you want to be because you can. At the start there are so many thorns in my way. Sometimes it’s myself. Sometimes it’s my life or the motivation to change my situation. I look around and want to change but I do not know how so I start on my journey of learning something new: culture, counselling or just a course to feel better. Then I see what I need to do, to get where I want to be. This is my mountain that I need to climb: the path is straight but steep. I sometimes fall, stumble and lose hope. Then I look up at the sky and see what I want to do. I feel nervous but happy and determined, as I deserve to reach the top because this mountain is mine and no one else’s. I need to reach my goal for myself. I get help from people but that’s ok, that’s why God put them there. I somehow reach the top and when I look down I feel good looking back. I am always amazed to find the most difficult part was the part when I learnt the most, or changed for the better. I begin to understand that these trials make me grow and become a better me. Wisdom is what I gain and understanding of myself and others. I am in a good place and feel happy and relaxed. I have achieved what I wanted to. Sometimes I do not realise it but it changes me. I have new knowledge in which to view the world, myself and others. Then something changes and I need to search for a new answer or change a new thing and my journey starts again… Shanela Chaudary
Shanela Chaudary Shanela enrolled on Being Me: the best I can be.
John Abbot John enrolled on In the Frame.
DIARY Tuesday 5.30am Knocking on the door, tapping on the window woke me up. Then the doorbell went and not just mine everyone’s. Drugged up zombies after borrowing Rizla papers I guessed. The woman upstairs buzzed them in. Lots of shuffling feet and bumping into things until they get bored and go away.
Saturday Note to do – get God on your side. Sunday 8am St. Patrick’s 9am St. Peter’s 10am St. Paul’s
Wednesday
11am St. Andrew’s
6am The zombies are back. Better prepared this time with anti stab vests and personal communicators. She let them in again, some people will never learn. She started off talking to them, then shouting at them. Now it is time for tears. The wet stairs make it difficult for them to get close to her. I know what they are thinking. I can see their cold dead eyes. They are thinking ‘Brains’.
12pm St. Joseph’s
Thursday 7am Hardly slept with the worry and all that. Protection is what I need. That is it! A stake and hammer.
1pm St. Chad’s 2pm St. Sebastian’s 3pm St. Mary’s Hospital A&E. Tripped and broke a toe. They accused me of being drunk. This will slow me down. How to keep one step ahead? Think Home Alone 1. Think the siege of Stalingrad.
David Dennehy
Friday 4pm Do not believe the adverts. Older staff who know their products. Not at B&Q they don’t.
David Dennehy David enrolled on Power and Performance, Get into Shape and The Apprentice.
Jason Turner Jason enrolled on My Favourite Things.
Redundant Buttons
My first thoughts on hearing the words ‘peripheral vision’ were: Oh gosh what does that mean? Quickly followed by how an earth am I going to achieve putting my view of the words into an art form in the textile context? This was so far out of my comfort zone. I hadn’t done any proper needlework for over thirty years, and the little I knew certainly wasn’t up to much; I even avoided (and may I say hated) sewing a button on a skirt! Having gone to my sewing cupboard I looked inside to find a few scraps of left over material, a jar of the dreaded buttons, and a jar of broken necklaces and bracelets I’d kept ‘to one day use’ and sat and stared at them in dismay. What on earth was I going to do? As I sat and stared at the jar of buttons every one of them was individual, unique and different in some way, just like humans. Also they were just sitting in a jar doing nothing with no prospects of being used as they didn’t match any others in the jar. Some were dull and others were really bright and jolly when you took them out and looked at them; they were useful, but overlooked. It took a few moments for me to realise we had a lot in common, that they were redundant... just like me. For the first time in years they were not wanted and were seemingly of no use to anyone, but they could still be useful and fun, just in a different way. So my idea was born, to once again use those cast away buttons and make them useful and fun! I even learned to enjoy sewing on buttons again, what a bonus. Having just been made redundant, after a lifetime of wear, I may not be the brightest, prettiest, trendiest button in the jar, but I can still be useful and fun to know.
Christine Crook
Christine Crook Christine enrolled on In Stitches.
Listening Through Dyslexic Sound My title `Listening Through Dyslexic Sound’ came from the textile pieces I created at the ‘In Stitches’ mono print and tie-dying workshops. A friend remarked how they reminded her of Dyslexia, and I realised they visually described the continuous noise in and around my head from tinnitus - the feeling of imaginary antennae or horns distorting sounds, so making the spoken word difficult to decipher.
Chris Worswick Chris Worswick
Chris enrolled on In Stitches.
December He likes to watch the lunchtime amblers Office worker wanderers with iPod sound-scapes for looking at the landscapes Surreptitious sandwich eaters Bored, reluctant Year 3 sketchers And once a week He watches Nana chase her children’s children Who stomp on the clackety polished parquet And run giddy ‘cross expansive polished floors though echoey halls With not so much as a glance at the walls Where a world’s worth of love, hate, fear and beauty is hung for all to see
follows the meander of the stream, On whose snow covered banks sheep feed and lie on madder yellow coloured straw And sees her life lived in parallel, her love loved in parallel, alongside but not with But surely somewhere around that bend, the track must meet and cross the stream And head off, up and over the sun tinted ridge and beyond Not painted or captured, only hinted at
If only If only She could step onto the track And walk from the cooling shade into the sun And then there are the sitters sparkled snow of that valley Heads inclined, soft shouldered, reverential and Squinting into the light of a million-million flakes oblivious to all footfalls that pass of snow And hear the squeak and crunch He saw her that first time, when with a parting As an avalanche in miniature crumbles into each glance she hesitated and turned footstep Drawn to pause, to sit and look upon this snow covered valley set in a simple frame But not on her own Like an open window And as expected and anticipated, here She is Today is the day she realises and decides This will be the last time she stands in the shade Once a week, for seven today She is ready Her route takes her through each gallery in turn Ready to step into the cerulean blue gap between And as She passes, she feels obliged to view and snow-pinked clouds of a painted sky appreciate each artistic nuance But her heartbeat only quickens when, from this And He is somehow braver today than he has ever been, so stands close by doorway There before her is an unobstructed view of her And as She turns, she sees his pinned on black plastic badge says ‘Ask me!’ destination And seeking enlightenment, She sits and looks So she does and waits to know why she is here She has come to feel the chill of the snow cov- Clare Webster ered valley beyond Where an unseen winter sun still shines As a smudge of cadmium orange on a distant ridge Warming the gable end of the burnt umber toned farmhouse nestled in the valley But here, where the viewer sits, the sun has left and a dusk cooling begins She sees the cart track as it bends away and
Clare Webster Clare enrolled on Watch This Space.
Jackie Kendall Jackie enrolled on In the Frame.
Jacob Howard Jacob enrolled on In the Frame.
A Child of Our Time Michael Tippett’s A Child of our Time oratorio was inspired by events in 1938: Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish refugee teenager in Paris, murdered the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath. This was a catalyst for the Nazi’s attacks against Jews in Germany on Kristallnacht, and was one of the events portrayed in the performance of Good at the Royal Exchange. Discipline and Punish Majid Kavousifar waves to his nephew. The main text is by Foucault on eighteenth century crime and punishment. A wave and a smile undoes this judicial performance. Nephew and uncle both hang.
Yukio Mishima was short listed for the Nobel prize for literature three times. He is portrayed in this image. He led a hopelessly futile right wing coup in 1970 that ended in his committing seppuku. The extended text is a description of that event taken from Mishima’s Sword by Christopher Ross, which makes clear that Mishima’s final performance was not glorious but horrible. This seems to fit with the Power and Performance theme of the course. The bolder type is a kind of Haiku pulled out of the text of a standard creative writing technique. Finally, the overlaying of images of some of the pictures at the Whitworth was the visual spur. [facing page]
David Dennehy David enrolled on Power and Performance, Get into Shape and The Apprentice.
James Aiden James enrolled on In the Frame.
Falling In Love Again He stood rooted to the spot, longing desperately to let loose the tight curls, bury his face in the promised cascade of her hair. What was it, he wondered, about 18th Century women, with pursed smiles and enigmatic eyes, flaunting tantalising tastes of voluptuous flesh right in your face, inviting his hands to wander, unrestrained, where they would, through rivers of streaming silk, beneath cultivated acres of satin or under broad fields of brocade. How he longed to lift the lissom lace, press his lips to her alabaster arms, kiss the fingers of her refined, white hands, delicate, like fragile porcelain, to be used but rarely, then put away for safety, against another time.
Corinne Lawrence On Portrait of a Lady [Mrs Margaret Ainslie circa 1764] by George Romney at Manchester Art Gallery.
Corinne Lawrence Corinne enrolled on Watch This Space.
Martin Fisher Martin enrolled on Get into Shape and The Apprentice. [photos taken at the Jaume Plensa exhibition at YSP]
Ian Campbell Ian enrolled on Moving Pictures.
Lawrence Wineberg Lawrence enrolled on My Favourite Things.
Michael Shepherd Michael enrolled on My Favourite Things.
Philip Ludlaim Philip enrolled on Art Attack.
“I like the crown because of the Queen. When you’re 100 she gives you a cheque. She gives you a lot of money.”
“I came because I wanted to see all the photos. I wanted to see that one like Jesus on the cross. I worked on this piece on the iPad. On the iPad I liked to see the photos. I did drawings. It was easy. I used pink, green, red, yellow and the glittery one. I like all colours. I don’t have a favourite. The best bit about today was going around to see all the pictures. There was a waterfall one with Jesus and another one for Easter. I liked both of them. I liked drawing the pictures.”
Barbara Alexander Barbara enrolled on Art Attack.
Watching Over You Such a soft child. Yet I suppose that of all the things she might have chosen for my ninetieth birthday, a ticket to Puccini’s Turandot is the least frivolous. Once I loved the opera. And I have to admit the opera house is sumptuous – a symphony of gilt and red velvet, chandeliers as pure as a mezzo-soprano’s top C and the anticipation created by the scraping of the instruments clearing their throats. But she’s so stupid. How could I have fathered such an insipid creature? She doesn’t understand that I’m a man outside my time. I loathe these people and can’t bear their proximity. The tide of history has ebbed away, leaving me stranded with this detritus – like that creature in a wheelchair, at the end of the row: the after-image of a man, a concave chest, hollow face. Is he looking at me, peering with the eyes of a blind man trying to decode a noise? Does he sense my surprise at living to see February 2012? Back in ’89 I thought they would dangle me from a lamppost. And these here are the ones who would have done it, to keep their squalid secrets. Look at them, the new, free, democratic Germany. In what does their freedom consist? Is it in sticking their snouts into McDonald’s swill or in anaesthetising their minds reading newspapers full of fascist lies and being able to spend the annual wage of a worker on breast enlargement? In the golden days this place was full of workers and schoolchildren – now it is the exclusive domain of what passes for the intelligentsia. Like him. Yes. It’s him. Three rows in front. That gangling fellow with the bewildered hair. It’s him alright. Does he recognise me? He wouldn’t dare say anything. Instead he smiles modestly, looking about, hoping someone will see him and say, ‘Look, there’s Rudolph Meisner, a leader of the opposition to the communist regime. What a courageous man.’ If only they knew! He wasn’t very courageous when we got him in the cellar of Normannenstrasse 22, Stasi HQ. Often that was all it took: walk them down those three flights of stairs into that concrete cavern, where the walls exhale the stench of fear, the reek of the sweat that weeps from your flesh when you are sitting in a cold room and turns your clothes into sodden paper. That’s all it took. I simply said nothing – merely ushered him into a concrete box with nothing but a bleak bulb trapped in a wire cage. It didn’t take long – three maybe four hours. Then I walked him into the interrogation room in total silence. The silence had done its work. You didn’t have to threaten. All those rumours that we applied blowlamps to men’s shoulders and used an elaborate cat’s cradle of pulleys and belts to drop them into alternate baths of boiling and freezing water is complete nonsense. What did they think we were – Nazis? That sort of thing was seldom necessary. Usually they couldn’t wait to talk. The cruellest thing was keeping them waiting.
Sitting across the table from them, filling in the WLB(1), like a doctor writing a prescription, while the lies they want to pour out choke off their breath. I listened in silence with a mild expression of disappointment. Then I looked at the file – quoted a few sentences from what he thought was a secret conversation. Mentioned a few of the undesirables he’d met clandestinely. Then he betrayed everyone – colleagues, friends, lovers, parents. He knew there was no point in lying. He spewed it all out. His speeches to his noble comrades – we had them all taped, of course – his courageous articles in the fascist western press, speaking of the need for courage in the face of oppression, suddenly evaporated. Or did they lie under his seat with the puddle he made when he wet himself? That was before I agreed to let him keep me informed. It was actually he who suggested it. He’d do anything, he said, if only we wouldn’t take his children away: two little girls – five and seven, angelic creatures, with halos of blonde hair. Who said anything about taking his children away? I certainly hadn’t mentioned it. Where do they get such ideas? A few were different. They were the dangerous ones – not the likes of Meisner, who is a survivor. Paulus was a challenge. Damn fool. Day after day, it was always the same thing. ‘God forbids it,’ he said. Imbecile! Why couldn’t he see that his god was nothing more than the invention of priests, the fascists’ lackeys? Where was his god when he lay naked in his own filth day after day? Even when the cell had sucked the colour from his flesh, bleached his hair and eyebrows bone white, turned his skeleton to sticks of chalk, he said the same thing over and over again: ‘God forbids it’. Could he not see the position I was in? The people upstairs wanted results – not excuses. Yes, I admit it, I lost control. When they’d finished with him, only his feet were undamaged – white as verruca socks against the purple, black and puce of his body. I could hear the metatarsals snap under my heels, breaking like sticks of charcoal. But the swine still kept saying the same thing, through his broken teeth and with a tongue so swollen he couldn’t close his mouth, ‘God forbids it’. That cripple is still looking at me. Now he’s doing it openly – his toothless mouth ajar, mucus glistening on his chin. The woman beside him is stroking his hands and then she takes his eggshell skull in her palms and seeks to turn his head away. But his neck is rigid and his mouth is working. People are looking and shuffling in embarrassment. What is he saying? Something about hitting it? Oh no, it’s him. I can hear him. He’s saying, ‘God forbids it.’ THE END Joseph O’Neill
Joseph O’Neill Joe enrolled on Watch This Space.
Jamie Moloney To understand history is to understand where we came Rachael Field from. It tells us about the Rachael creates art for struggles that have gone exhibition, performance before, and about those peoand screening, and is now ple who fought for their right concentrating on developto political representation, ing her teaching abilities. equality, and for the freeRachael works with those doms which we enjoy today. who have been left behind With A Class Act, I wanted by mainstream education, to communicate these ideas including young offenders, to our cultural champions in the homeless and adults a way that would help them with learning disabilities, and understand how society she has been a Workers’ works and where it fails. Educational Association tutor since October 2009.
Shenna Swan MA I trained in knitted fabric Ed Watts design, and later knitwear Ed is the Adult Programme design. I practised these Coordinator at Whitworth Art exclusively for about 10 Gallery. He studied photogyears, before branching out raphy at university and is a into the world of felt making. photographic artist and edu- Five years ago I embarked cator. Ed was the tutor on on a Master’s degree in The Apprentice course where surface pattern. I have the participants curated the worked in education for over content for a new iPad app 20 years in various rolls and for people with dementia. Ed joined WEA in February this describes himself as being year. I enjoy combining the creative, easy going and fun! stimulation and social interaction of teaching, with my own practice.
Jillian Harrison I live and work as an artist in a small village in Carmen Walton I’m a writer and creative writ- Saddleworth. I have been ing tutor. For me the heart of employed as an illustrator, a tutor and a community artist any story has to be people: both locally and abroad. Art the things that matter to practice is not just about them, their motives, desires mixing colours and painting and deeds. Power and the pictures, it can be a way of way it shifts is subtly woven exploring and commenting into drama and stories and on all the big issues of life... for this course (Power & Performance) I’ve been given and we have fun too! Art opens up your eyes to the the opportunity to look at world around you. overt examples of its use on the stage and in film.
Ian Irvine Ian is an artist originally from Liverpool, now living in Salford and working out of the neoartists studio in Bolton. He transforms found images into artworks, using screen-print, etching and other print processes. “I love that bit in ‘The Rebel’ with Tony Hancock, where he’s playing a famous artist and a critic says ‘How do you mix your paints?’ and he says ‘In a bucket with a big stick.’ It’s the best job in the world — where’s my cravat?”
Jennie Keegan My name is Jennie and I’m the photography tutor for In the Frame. I am a graduate of Visual Art and a time-served photographer for a busy city centre portrait studio. Two years ago, I decided to pursue my ambition to join the teaching profession. I now work as a tutor and am studying for an MA in Creative Education, which allows me to continue with my own photography and further my educational career.
Dani Gaines Dani studied a BA(Hons) in Embroidery and has an MA in Design Management. She works as a Visual Artist and her own creative practice uses a broad range of mark making and mixed media. Dani’s professional passion is facilitating other people’s creative processes. Dani works with all ages from babies to centenarians, to enable others to increase their well-being, confidence and abilities through creativity.
Karen Dring Hi there. I’ve been working for the WEA for eight years. It’s exciting to get back to my roots and do something creative again. I used to recycle old drawings and paintings and collage them to create different surfaces and textures. My textile work took a similar line with fabric appliqué and free machining. I used the sewing machine like a pen and would draw over the top to give detail and texture.
Kim Irwin I am a self-employed vegetarian chef based at Islington Mill in Salford. I provide relief chef cover, event catering, and run healthy eating workshops with Cracking Good Food. Recipe for Success was thoroughly enjoyable. It was a pleasure to meet my learners and hear their stories, of which there were many! From lives spent at sea, to tales of Salford Quays in the war… these women had a wealth of experience to share and I was lucky enough to go on a small journey with them!
Dawn Haworth Dawn is a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist, Life Coach, Teacher and Careers Guidance Officer. She has successfully worked with adults for over 25 years, influencing change and guiding them towards the life they would rather have. Practicing what she has preached, Dawn has reached out for the life she would rather have and now owns her own company Life Designs…and more Ltd.
The Tutors
WEA NW 4th Floor Crawford House Oxford Road Manchester M13 9GH The Workers’ Educational Association is a registered charity, number 1112775 and a company registered in England and Wales, number 2806910. This project has been funded by the Skills Funding Agency.