'Significant Features'

Some months ago I got involved in planning an exhibition of the work produced during the 'Photography and the Archive' module (see previous posts). MA and BA Art and Design and students from the School of Architecture responded to aspects of the Bournville Village Trust Archive. After several meetings, we are now starting to make some decisions about the exhibition which will be entitled 'Significant Features'. A curatorial statement has been written:

Significant Features has been curated in response to a study of Wendy Sarkissian’s book Social Mix: The Bournville Experience. It was published in 1978 by Bournville Village Trust to find out how Bournville’s residents found living in the model village.

The exhibition will bring together work by students at BIAD, along with contemporary responses to questions that Social Mix poses and material from Bournville Village Trust’s archive, to explore aspects of the residential experience, ideas of ‘home’ and what it is that creates a sense of community.

As well as selecting artworks, we also hope to exhibit material from both the Cadbury Archive and the Bournville Village Trust Archive. Yesterday we started to consider the layout of the show, grouping work to link with statements from the original source publication 'Social Mix'.

One other plan is to create an interactive survey map based on people's ideas of home and community. An inspiration for this comes from a display at 'Birmingham Made Me Expo' a couple of years back.

We also hope to get hold of a copy of 'When We Build Again' a film commissioned by BVT. A clip from the film can be seen here.