Wishing Penny Well by Scott Farlow. Photo @ Seth Richardson
Synopsis
Bristol City Council, in partnership with local residents, businesses and landowners, is working to guide the long-term transformation of the area either side of the River Frome in St.Jude’s, known as Frome Gateway, to better meet the needs of the city and the local community.
To help guide this process, Bristol City Council commissioned an Artist in Residence for 6 months to work with the local community to help set out the ambitions and future vision for Frome Gateway. Throughout June and July 2022 resident artist, Scott Farlow an artist poet, held a series of creative conversations across the locality and collected thoughts and ideas from local people and passers-by about the future of this special neighbourhood.
– What does this place mean to you?
– What stories does it hold?
– What does its future look like?
“This area gives me a sense of home; it is always somewhere I return to.”Local Resident
Wishing Penny well was an imaginative, creative and immersive adventure; a deliberate – sometimes delicate – and experimental diversion away from conventional consultation methodologies and into uncharted waters.
Against a backdrop of long-term transformation of the area either side of the River Frome in St. Jude’s, known as Frome Gateway, the project set out to devise and test different approaches to public engagement. Our activities explored known and unknown local territories and textures in order to see this complex place in different ways and through different eyes. Part of the process was to gauge a broader understanding of how residents, businesses, passers-by and people passing through feel about it today and, significantly, what their aspirations are for its future.
The creative means and methods of public engagement for wishing Penny well were intentionally experimental. The project provided imaginatively different ways of meeting people on site and in-situ that offered playful and interactive alternatives to more formal and conventional consultation exercises.
An imperative of the process was to be physically present and active in the area and to co-create varied opportunities (‘happenings’ and interventions) for face-to-face public encounters, interactions and exchange. In other words, to facilitate different ways of meeting different people at different times and in different places across the neighbourhood. It felt important to be inclusive, responsive and alive to the potential that the place and its people offered – to go with the flow and to actually listen to the heartbeat, the rhythm and reflections of the locality.
You can read the wishing Penny well Project Report, 2022, here.
