Utilising sound as a means to uncover and represent vacancy in the Town Centre. Participants will first plan routes around the town centre, using previous emotional/vacancy mappings. The afternoon will be spent recording and tracing sounds across the town centre.
EVERYTHING MUST GO!
“Often when there’s no logic, is when you know you’re in someone’s dream” – adrienne maree brown, “We are in a time of new suns”, interview with Krista Tippett for ‘On Being’, 2022
Since the 12th century, a dream of Croydon Town Centre has been pinned up and torn down time and again, papering over unappealing realities to make way for new imaginaries. From John Whitgift to James Marshall, Kennards to Westfields, the high street holds traces of the schemer, plotting to shape its past and future in his image. As each dream fades, communities are left with the tombstones of the underimagined, vacant shops and empty high streets that weren’t detailed out in yesterday’s plan.
We are encouraging communities of Croydon to join us on a process of collective reimagination. Across 6 workshops we will use sound, mapping and hands-on making to interrogate Croydon’s current condition and reimagine a community-centred future. Participants will share their experiences of and connections to the local area, trace and manipulate sounds and forage discarded material in order to build a tool-kit to reimagine vacancy in Croydon Town Centre and rehearse new models of high street operation. The work will contribute to Turf Projects latest season, MakeRoom, and provide input into a blueprint for regenerative spatial practice in Croydon’s vacant town centre.
About Turf
Founded in 2013 by Croydon locals, Turf is Croydon’s homegrown artist space and the first entirely artist-run contemporary art space in the borough. Based in Croydon’s Whitgift Shopping Centre, we put on free exhibitions & workshops, provide affordable artist studios, run a free creative project space for locals & host a number of other local creative organisations and collectives. A registered charity, Turf aims to provide paid opportunities for artists and creatives who might otherwise be undersupported.
For more info or to get involved, please email us at info@turf-projects.com