'Significant Features' Evening Event

This evening we staged an event at Bournville. A discussion chaired by Mike Dring from the BCU School of Architecture with special guests,  Peter Larkham - Professor of Planning at BCU and specialist in the development of cities after WW2 and Christopher Timothy - Independent Town Planner whose family contributed to the original Bill Brandt photographs commissioned by BVT in the 1940's.

There was a really good turn out and lively discussion throughout.

'Significant Features' Private View

My mirror was displayed leaning against the wall which resulted in some interesting reflections during the afternoon as the sun came through the skylights.

Final day of preparation for 'Significant Features'

The floor has been cleaned and sealed and looks fantastic - well worth having to wait a day for it to be done.

Next the projection booth arrives which Matt has prefabricated and is assembled on site.

Cheryl works on the floor plan earlier in the day. Ross makes last minute adjustments to the lights.

Installing 'Significant Features' at Bournville

Over the last few days we have been preparing the gallery space for the exhibition. A large number of boards needed to be removed from the walls and floor. The walls had to be filled and then painted.

 Matt, who is fabricating the exhibition furniture, as made two tables to display books, screens for photographs and a projection booth.

Ross and I have agreed on a lay out which he is drawing up ready for a floor plan to be printed as an exhibition guide.

'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.