A Time and A Place Residency

A Time and A Place took place over the first two weeks of February at Site Gallery. This mini residency saw Site Gallery turn the entire space over to 10 artists who either work with participation or wanted to explore ways of including participation within their practice. Artists of a variety of disciplines submitted a proposal for a mini project.

I was selected to take part in the project. The two weeks started with a three day workshop exploring all things participatory led by Ania Bas, Kate Genever and Steve Pool. Then followed the two week residency. I used the opportunity to chat to people over knitting, crocheting and pompom making. Often in my practice during skills based workshops conversation turns to memories of craft: family members who were makers, professionally, as a hobby or necessity; peoples past experiences of making and so on. These memories are an unplanned occurrence of the workshops and I do not get a chance to document them. I used the residency to explore ways of documenting these memories, how I could use them in future work and how my work could fit into a gallery context.

One of the best things about the residency being in the company of other artists (I usually work freelance and in the studio alone when I am not doing workshops), with time to discuss ideas and a chance to collaborate. I worked with sound artist Adam Denton to record the sound of knitting needles and wool. I worked with Steve Anwar to devise a meditation session which explored the meditative qualities of knitting. Abi Goodman and I visited locations outside the gallery to chat to people in different contexts. And I worked with fellow Yorkshire Artspace artist Lyn Carruthers to write and perform a ‘wool chant’ inspired by a knitting chant that she created previously and based on snippets of conversations I had had with people during the week.

The result of my residency was a sound piece of collated conversations, knitting sounds and the wool chant. Alongside an interactive installation where people could listen to and record their own craft histories. The residency was a fantastic opportunity to explore new areas of my practice and meet and work with new artists and has provided my with plenty of fresh ideas and inspiration.

A Time and A Place Blog: http://blog.sitegallery.org/atimeandaplace/

Saturday 11/02/12: Project day 5

Today was my last day of the A Time and a Place residency. Stu came in to help me get the jar lids screwed to the shelf so I could set up the display/ station to represent my project when I am away next week.


At 4 I Lyn, Hannah and I sat down with Heather, a MFA student from Hallam who happened to be in the gallery at the time, sat down to try out the wool chant that Lyn had devised from snippets of stories I have been told over the week. The chant has four parts.

Part one, Heather: Peruvian, English, German, Irish Cottage knitting

Part two, Hannah: Pom pom, chick! Pom pom, chick!

Part three, Ruthie: Hated flippin jumpers! Hated flippin jumpers! Now I wish someone would knit me one. Now I wish someone would knit me one.

Part four, Lyn: Sister knitted yellow scarf, common thread between them. Sister knitted yellow scarf, common thread between them.


We recorded the chant together and then the parts separately for Lyn to edit later. The lines and melodies worked really well together and it was totally different to anything we'd done all week.



At 5 we invited anyone in the gallery to join us in a performance. People were shy to join in but some watched and Abi, Smizz and Steve joined in the chant. It was a really fun, unifying experience to perform together and it felt like a real celebration of the stories that were told. Heather who joined in the chant said: 'I love it when random unexpected things like this happen!'


This is how the finished display looked. I will upload the sound when I figure out how to!









'The words text and textile come from the same Latin origin: textere: to weave.'

The listening post includes an invitation to knit or crochet while you listen to the memories recorded and a pin board for participants to add their own memories to in my absence.

Friday 10/02/12: project day 4

In the morning I worked on editing recordings that I had gathered. Again yesterday I missed a bunch of stories as the recorder was set to the wrong setting! I have enjoyed exploring using sound but I think if I use it in future I need to either learn a lot more about the device or get a much simpler recorder! Any way, a good excuse to do more recording.

Steve arrived having bought his clocks and was delighted with the fact that all the clocks were set to 10:10, his magic number!


He listened to the knitting sound recordings from yesterday and we decided to use the metal needle sounds from Lyn's knitting with the knitting meditation today.


I set up the room with a piece of orange yarn connecting each chair in the meditation circle. I did this because I felt that it would add an extra element to have a tactile sense during meditation and it seemed to represent knitting if everyone was connected. Steve said this was interesting as meditation talks about interconnectedness between people so by physically connecting everyone we were adding a new factor to the meditation.


Steve Pool, Lyn, Steve and I took part in the meditation. We started with an observation of breath and mindful movements. The Steve talked us through the meditation and started the knitting soundtrack. We all held the wool at either side of our chair.

For me the tactile element really helped me to focus and I felt somehow calmer being connected in this way to the others in the room. Lyn and Steve said the same. Steve Pool commented that the slightly irregular rhythm of the knitting sound track was useful as it kept his focus in the room.


During the afternoon the gallery was very animated. Lots of people dropped in and joined in with the activities or had a chat about what was going on. I was great to see the gallery filling up and people beginning to participate.




Steve Pool brought me in a dyno machine to make labels for my jars.




Steve and Victor hung the clocks and Steve gave each of us a battery and said we could set our clock to whatever time we liked.

On the way home I bought the Kenco jars for my display of memories. It felt a bit wrong buying coffee that will not be used but I am going to split it up and distribute it to the various community centres I do workshops in and to the Parson Cross food initiative, so it will not be wasted.

I decided in the end that although the jars are different in shape to the ones I remembered, they represent the same thing. There are 14 jars for the 14 words of the quote.

Thursday 09/02/12: project day 3

This morning Abi and I went to Sharon's Snack Bar Cafe in Castle Market for some strong tea, huge pieces of cake and to explore engagement with people in a wholly different situation. I continued with some crochet and Abi re-learned how to make a pompom, something she hadn't done since primary school.


Our activities certainly created interest from passers by and cafe goers and invoked lots of smiles and comments.


We had a lovely chat with Jack who goes to the cafe every morning and told us that everyone is regulars. As we sat there we realised he was right, everyone greeted each other like old friends.

I said to Abi that it didn't feel right just to show up and start questioning people about things and she agreed. We decided that it would be more appropriate in this setting to visit once a week or similar and start to build relationships with people and let the questions we wanted to ask come out naturally over time.


It did make me think about the value of engaging with people in this setting. Everybody was already very engaged with the area and the other people. It made me think that you would really have to think carefully about going into a setting like this and why you were doing it. I guess that questions and ideas would come out the more we visited.



On the way back to the gallery I went in search of Kenco jars for my display and found that the jar has been updated and in not the octagonal icon of my youth. I don't know why I was surprised.



From 12-2 I sat in the gallery and crafted. I experimented with chalk adverts on the floor outside the gallery but didn't get anyone walking in. It was a really quiet day on Brown Street.


Lyn and Sunshine joined me and Lyn and I talked about particular stories and words that have been coming out of my documentation to inform the knitting chant.


After I worked with Adam to record the sound of knitting. He taped a contact mic to the end of the needles and I sat and knit. I used wooden needles and chunky wool. When I did knit rows there was a nice mechanical noise but purl rows sounded uneven and not specific to knitting. Adam and I discussed the different sounds and moved the recorder around the room for different effects.

Then Adam recorded Lyn knitting. I asked Lyn to knit as she is a far more traditional and experienced knitter and I was interested to see the difference in sounds. Lyn used metal needles and finer wool. The sound was far more rhythmic and even. The metal compared to the wool sounded completely different.

Wednesday 08/02/12: Project day 2

This morning I had a bit of a blow in discovering that none of the conversations I thought I had recorded last night had actually recorded. A valuable lesson in learning how things work properly! I did get one track so I spent the morning downloading and experimenting with Audacity, with the help of Adam, to learn the basics of editing recordings.

From 2-4 I had invited people in to craft. Geoffry popped in for a knit and a chat. I met Geoffry last year during an embroidery project at Access Space. He had happened by the gallery yesterday while having a coffee in the cafe and came in to see what we were up to.


He decided to come back and we spent an hour knitting and chatting. I knew Geoffry was keen on textiles and he told me more about how the projects he is involved with and the work he has done in the past.

We also talked about family members and the different crafts. His mother and grandmother were keen knitters and dressmakers. And his father had been director of a cotton mill in Lancashire before they moved to Sheffield in 1976. Textile crafts are something very close to Geoffry's heart and he said he enjoyed telling his tales.


Later Steve had a go at finger knitting and we talked about the knitting meditation. We discussed creating the recording of the knitting to play during the session and the potential of using wool or long strands of knitting to connect people.


In the evening Abi, Smizz, Charlotte and I went to the central library and took over a table. I crocheted and we all contributed to Abi and Smizz's subvertising project. We had decided we would only approach people who showed an interest or approached us so as not to disturb people. We were not approached. Towards the end of the session one of the librarians suggested moving to a more prominent location by the self-service check outs in order to get in people view and catch them on the way in or out of the library. Abi and Smizz are going to try this out next week.

On the way home I thought about how I would set up a station to represent myself during the second week when I am not here. I want it to include headphones to listen to the sound recordings on. I was thinking about what would represent a memory of craft for me and that got me thinking about the way people store their craft tools and accessories, and how maybe I could use this idea to present memories I have recorded and stored.

My grandfather had a wood shed where he worked and turned wood. He had two rows of narrow shelves running around the whole space. He had screwed old Kenco coffee jar lids to the bottom of the shelves so that he could screw and unscrew the jars down from them. Who know where he got all of the jars from but they served as an amazing storage unit for all his screws and nails and drill bits and everything else.

Tuesday 07/02/12: Project day 1 + opening night