Shed Building Plans

 

Each of us lives our lives in our own skins with our own experiences and expectations. I had the fortune of growing up in an area which was up and coming. My mother was a cleaner, my father an electrician. They landed on their feet and bought a house when prices were cheaper. My Mum always took us to galleries and museums so we never felt out of place there. One parents evening my geography teacher told my parents that I was bright enough to go to University. My parents came back to tell me, what was probably to them, unexpected news. None of my family had been to University before me. Growing up in Whythenshaw, it wasnt the path they took. But I did and it was good and it gave me a sense that I would be given the chances to succeed. Although I struggle financially as an artist I generally feel in control of my fate. There are never that many mishaps littering my path. I have very high expectations. Here are just a few of my expectations. I expect to live to around 75 or 80. I expect society to provide my son with a good place to build his talents. I expect to be treated with respect when I ring a company. I expect most things to go my way. Sometimes things dont live up to my expectations but most of the time, because I expect them to, they do. If my upbringing had been even more affluent I might have expected to get a good job through a family friend, to get a deposit on a house or be supported in an unpaid internship. Our expectations are all different depending on what we see around us and the experiences we have had. 

 

My journey home from "Project Shed" takes me by bike from Kersal Vale Allotments in Lower Kersal (Salford) through Charlestown and up into Manchester City Centre to Piccadilly Station. I have visited Lower Kersal as an artist and project consultant many times over the past 8 years. I know some of the people and the people I know know lots of other local people. Although not without its woes Lower Kersal appears to  to have the remains of a tight knit community.  If you want something doing there will be somebody local who knows someone who can get it done. People may complain that they never get a minutes peace, somebody is always calling, everybody knows your business, but this contact means that help comes fairly naturally for those with strong roots here.  There are plenty of opportunities to help. Be it a sudden change to benefits, loss of a job or a dip in health people are often only a few steps away from needing help. There is probably a sense that the state has abandoned responsibility and the slack is silently picked up by kind soles for free. A local pragmatism seems to say "Well if I dont help no bugger else will.". People talk of a sense of inbuilt entitlement  in poor areas but I dont witness that. People appear to feel entitled to very little. People seem to accept that heavy industry will operate on their doorstep, they will live by derelict land (the mark of failed housing market renewal) and that their life span may be less than those living up the road in Manchester. Many people from Lower Kersal seem to accept that they will struggle and life will be littered with disadvantage and mishap. 

 

After cycling through Lower Kersal I go on through Lower Broughton and turn right at a half abandoned shopping precinct called Mocha Parade. This is where my accent into Manchester City centre seems to begin.  The low level houses are replaced with posher apartment blocks.  Whilst the landscape of Lower Kersal and Broughton seems to echo the greyness of a Lowry painting town seems to glow. Not just  in terms of its brighter lights but in the materials used to create it. The difference in the built environments seems to be nothing and yet everything to do with the people who occupy them. Or rather it is perhaps to do with both the expectations of the people who occupy them and the expectations placed on them by those who build for them. Let me try to explain my thinking. What we think we deserve we tend to get. If the powers that be can leave a large proportion of the world population living with poor expectations they can negate their responsibility to give them the good stuff. So a building in town must be made of the best stuff because that is what the people who pass through expect whereas one in a poorer area can afford to be poorly made from poor materials. So town glows before me. As I cycle/walk on through the streets of town I attain an anonymity which I havent had for the rest of the ride.  I feel like Im occupying places which dont belong to anybody.  Places I am allowed to occupy temporarily whilst being encouraged to move on quickly. If the open town spaces dont belong to anybody perhaps they belong to everybody? Myself and another artist Simon Kennedy found this to be very much untrue when we set about doing a piece of Manchester town centre based work called "Urban Interventions". The piece saw us performing tiny changes in various environments and noting how people reacted. On Piccadilly approach we placed two cardboard signs with arrows which directed people between one set of bollards as opposed to another. Within minutes of placing the signs a network rail official appeared. We were told that we were not allowed to photograph the station as its logos were copyright and we were not allowed to do anything other than walk on the approach to the station as it was owned by Network Rail. A homeless man joined our debate with a list of things he was not allowed to do. Like good citizens we of course desisted but it outlined just how owned and managed our public spaces and our use of them can be. We are of course all aware of this at a subconscious level and most of the time, unless engaged in artistic mischief, we alter our behaviours accordingly. Most of the time the spaces work for us and our town personas work for the space. 

 

Along my route there has been a bottle neck created by some building work at Victoria Station. It has forced us usually remote commuters into closer proximity than we would like.  Rather than seeing the fenced space as a temporary inconvenience we become grumpy and intolerant with each other. A mans dog gets tangled up with a lady walking by. My bike causes an obstacle for a man texting and walking. We could just apologies or join in mutual moaning about the space but instead we tut or shout and leave the encounters wondering why the world is full of such idiots. Why doesnt somebody do something about them?

I feel an expectation for the ever watchful state or other powers that be to police this town space. I feel less responsibility to care for my fellow man. Space allowing the people who pass me by are as anonymous to me as I am to them.