Archive for Change @ This Is Not A Gateway, London 26 & 27 January 2013
EXHIBITION: 26 & 27 Jan 2013, 10am – 8pm
TALK: Saturday 26th January 2013, 3.30 – 4.40pm
“Recording community history, strengthening collective memory. The artist as archivist of grassroots struggles in the post-industrial city”
Presentation & informal discussion
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Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, London, EC2M 4QH
Free
Archive for Change is a critical film collection that explores the social and built landscape of Newcastle’s West End, site of one of the largest regeneration programmes in the UK.
‘Regeneration’ has become a familiar concept in cities across the UK over the last few decades. Newcastle upon Tyne, like so many other post-industrial cities, has resorted to urban restructuring as a way of marking the economic shift following the decline of traditional industry. While the city has been redesigned by architects, planners and government schemes to fulfil policy-driven ideas of urban ‘renaissance’, what impact has this has this had on the complex communities that inhabit these environments?
From the post-war decline of traditional heavy industries, to privatisation and unemployment during the Thatcher years, to questions around the re-appropriation of community action under the rhetoric of the ‘Big Society’, the project considers local experience as a means to highlight issues that affect wider society, the role of authorities in addressing these issues through policy, and how this is experienced on the ground.
Critical, Rigorous, Independent, Productive … This Is Not A Gateway creates platforms for critical projects and ideas related to cities. This years festival will bring together over 60 events and 160+ contributors to consider the theme of The Urban Industry and its Post Critical Condition through a number of critical strands.