SHARING OUR HISTORY OPEN DAYS, EVENTS, ORAL HISTORIES, BUILDING AN ARCHIVE, EXHIBITED WORKS
Demolition | Demolition In 2005 the local authority announced their intention to demolish Stockton Heath Primary School, a near 100-year old locally listed landmark to build a replacement building on the same site. Generations of local families who had attended the school and local residents quickly vocalised their opposition to the plans. They had an incredibly strong passion for their place, they didn't want it to go. Over the following two years until the new building opened in 2008 I spent time engaging with those who had a passion for this place through interactions with them on the site. I wanted to question the effects of intervention and engagement, to disrupt the anger through the following actions:
- Explore ways of recording the site with the children - Build a new digital archive of over 2,000 images and new oral histories - Organise and manage open days to share photographs and stories, and to gather more - Recorded sounds of the old building in use and empty - Creatively explored the interactions between gathered memories and images in the new building during the archaeological dig and new build development with the on site work teams - Created and exhibited my own sculptural, installation and interventions in response