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Invitation to a drop-in session Boulder design - Dan Jones Graphic design - Lucy Bergman
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Back in March we were just getting Cornerstones onto the starting blocks in St Mary's, Oldham, with a mixture of anticipation and slight trepidation. The anticipation was about the creative challenges and opportunities lying ahead of us, a multi-disciplinary team of four, as we set out to respond to a community engagement brief requiring carved stone seating, performance and film outputs - a big ask in relation to budget and timescales but exciting stuff to get our teeth into, with loads of potential. The trepidation was about setting foot as strangers in a community that hadn't invited us to be there (the commissioning organisation had), wouldn't necessarily want to play ball, and didn't have in place most of the structures and resources that you usually look to plug into when embarking on a new project.
How time flies when you're out in the field having fun. We're now cantering towards endings - installation of seating, 'grand finale' event with performance and film, and a sense of a job well done, not always in easy circumstances. But really, truth be told, we're only now arriving at the beginning - the beginning of what could be, in a community that is just starting to be ready for a project like this. With relationships established, supporters enlisted, local knowledge gained, connections made, conversations started, stories uncovered, and many activities run that have got people involved across age differences, cultural differences and language barriers (and some that haven't - you live and learn) where we have arrived now is a very good place to start.
Standing here, looking towards the ending, with most of the practical essentials for next month's finale in place and all outputs soon to be ticked off, the excitement and reward come not from knowing what's been done but from the sense of where things could go next, if the seeds we've sown around this green space in the middle of this newly forming community are enabled to sprout and grow. We're looking forward to getting the beautiful carved boulders installed and so creating a sculptural 'timeline' that depicts the story of the place from its early, green, Wild time (design above) up to its present-day Connection time. We can't wait to see how people respond to the performance piece that is being made from the material we've gathered about the place they call home, and to the film that will turn Poppy Road for a few minutes into an outdoor cinema and hopefully give residents ideas for future events that could be held in the space. But most of all we're itching to have the conversations about where things can go from here and how people might continue working together - creatively and otherwise - to build on the starting points that are now in place. You might call them cornerstones, even.
