Me and My other half (poet Mill Milligan) took a walk around Carlisle City Centre. We saw some familiar sights; Carlisle Castle & Cathedral, Tullie House underpass and gardens, and some less familiar sights; the street art murals on west walls and Abbey Street. It was a great excuse to re- familiarise ourselves with our own home, a reason to go for a walk.
I mapped out the cultural points of interest from my Artful Ways route around Carlisle city centre. From these points I created a set of 12 shapes (constellations).
In the first half of the video the 12 shapes appear alongside the map. In the second half, photographs taken along the way appear underneath a new shape, which gradually forms as all of the shapes are placed on top of each other.
I first developed this technique of forming shapes/constellations from map points during a project with Signal Film & Media in 2017: ‘Found Constellations’. I’m currently working on a collaborative project which also relates to shape mapping.
Answering the three Artful questions
Creativity – What does creativity/culture mean to you?
Creativity is the force that drives me forward each day. Not necessarily in producing objects, but in ideas and possibilities, which sometimes end up as a project or an artwork.
Connectivity – Covid-19 has forced us all to reimagine ways to connect. What have you missed – and what new possibilities have opened up?
It’s been such a strange time, I’m not sure what I’ve missed until I get the chance to experience it again. This walk was helpful in that – just walking around my own home town, without a purpose in the sense that was defined through Covid – daily exercise or a trip to the supermarket. A walk, just because.
Place – How can we, collectively, and artfully, better care for our environment?
I came across a few discarded masks on my walk, and on pretty much every walk I’ve been on since the pandemic started. What can we do about all of this extra plastic waste? I really don’t know to be honest, more community litter picks maybe? How can art and culture play a role in this? An arts project directly asking people to respond to the ecological and climate crisis, and collecting and using discarded waste as part of the project?
