HOME in Cliftonville

Resort StudiosHOME in Cliftonville is an ambitious programme of artist residences. Seven artists from both sides of the Channel have been selected to spend time in the town from 2014 to 2015, creating new artworks in Cliftonville, Kent. The HOME artists are hosted by Resort Studios and engaging with community members. Home is also part of an Inter-regional Culture-led Regeneration (ICR)partnership programme, comprising a number of European partners, including arts organisations, higher education institutions and local authorities. These ICR partners are seeking to investigate the development of creative practice and its role in the cultural regeneration of the region.

Building upon existing research pertaining to urban and coastal regeneration, it is hoped that HOME in Cliftonville will provide an opportunity to compare approaches to culture-led regeneration in Margate and Lens, whilst also investigating impacts related to perception of place.
Cliftonville meanwhile is a coastal area of the town of Margate, situated in the Thanet district of eastern Kent. Once an important holiday destination, Margate is the UK’s original seaside resort while its neighbour, Cliftonville was in its heyday noted to be one of the most desirable places to live in the UK. In recent decades, Cliftonville has experienced a period of serious economic decline, as with many coastal towns in the UK towards the end of the 20th century.

In addition to its rich seaside history and unique architectural features, Cliftonville has a diverse and vibrant local community with over 40 different languages being spoken. Northdown Road is its lively, independent shopping street with new business owners alongside historic businesses, some operating for over a century. Many of Cliftonville’s buildings date from between 1850 and 1914, with squares, avenues and a series of seafront green spaces looking out over scenic bays and beaches.

HOME projects

In Our Blood

Emma Critchley

Emma Critchley is a visual artist specialising in underwater photography and video.

Souvenirs of Cliftonville

Sadie Hennessy

An exhibition of 14 specially commissioned portraits of local Cliftonville residents.

Living here

Sarah Lippett

A series of interactive narratives through the words of Cliftonville's residents.

Open Your Eyes

Jean Lain

This new public artwork by Jean Lain makes the viewer active in an unpredictable, sudden and surprising way.

Open See

Alex Sturrock

The area has an abundance of the contradictions and eccentricities that are hallmarks of modern Britain.

The Blushing Pavillon

Vividero Colectivo / Sam Causer

The evolving role of the landscape and architecture of the English seaside in the expression and repression of the body, gender and sexuality.

Cliftonville Community Camera Club

Jason Evans

“When I make group portraits I try to engage with my subjects as individuals. In asking my sitters to act out scenes from their daily lives whist simultaneously interacting with one another I create picture puzzles for looking at.”

In Our Blood

Emma Critchley is a visual artist specialising in underwater photography and video.


Souvenirs of Cliftonville

Sadie Hennessy has presented "Souvenirs of Cliftonville" her exhibition of 14 specially commissioned portraits of local Cliftonville residents, displayed in a custom-made souvenir shop. The portraits have been developed by the artist during a 3 month residency at the Resort Studios. Each portrait celebrates a different aspect of Cliftonville, and draws upon the subjects' memories of living and working in the area. The artist has incorporated found ephemera from Cliftonville's heyday in the finished portraits and each portrait is a one-off digital collage.


Living Here

 

Visit the Living Here web site


Open See

“Open See” – Alex Sturrock

Everything that drew me to the area originally still has a draw, the meeting of rural and urban, of international and local. People from across the globe live next door to each other a stones throw from a beautiful and desolate beach, in flats converted from grand houses that once housed the rich at play. The front doors are left open, on many the locks are busted, and people within the different communities are always dropping past on each other,  like an inner city council estate before the modern day security doors.

The area has an abundance of the contradictions and eccentricities that are hallmarks of modern Britain. Retirees rest next to a square full of young kids, creatives work happily in big cheap studios while their bikes are stolen and sold for parts, people swim blissfullly alone in an acre long tidal pool while big groups of the same faces share pain and laughs on the same doorsteps day in day out. I have seen Junkies get high in hallways next to reiki cleansing centres, & people talk openly in racist terms only for the next week see them go out their way to help people of the family they were talking about oblivious to what their words mean.

People who have grown up in Thanet see a different place to people who chose to live here because its offers refuge from London, and again people who chose to live here because of its beauty and have their eye on the future have a different way of seeing the area to those attracted to the cheap accommodation. These differing viewpoints are like faultlines pushing against each other in an evolving and developing place.

People talk openly here and some people will always enjoy the notoriety that comes with living in area of reputation, but also in area with so much transience people cling to things to unify them with what they think is the norm.

Kids play out and run wild, in a way that most inner city kids aren't getting the freedom to do any more which is something I really wanted to be a focus of the work, and feel we have done with some success. But this is still modern day Britain and the paranoia that our children are under constant attack is felt here also. So we had to concentrate the work on small groups and would seek contact with parents, instead of large groups of kids “playing out”, which unfortunately is where kids ride the line of freedom and adventure, and are at their most creative.

In reality the most successful part of the work was focussed on one family whose eldest son, Martin, became an integral part of the project, and I hope that he got as much out of it as I did from being invited to join them where the family is from in Slovakia and during my time spent with them in Cliftonville.

Open Your Eyes

 


The Blushing Pavillon

The Colombian artists Vividero Colectivo in collaboration with UK-based architect Studio Sam Causer researched the evolving role of the landscape and architecture of the English seaside in the expression and repression of the body, gender and sexuality. As a result of their research they conceived BLUSHING PAVILLON – a series of events including a temporary intervention at the seafront shelter in Palm Bay, Cliftonville.

http://www.vividerocolectivo.com/#/blushingpavilion/


Louvre Lens

Lens

Situated in north eastern France, Lens is a city in the Pas-de-Calais department, near to the Belgian border. Once an important coal mining town, by the time the last mine closed in 1986, the city suffered from poverty and a high unemployment rate, currently standing at 17.7%. Lens is near to many WWI memorials - including Vimy and Loos - sites of cultural and historic interest. It is also home to Louvre Lens, a striking new outpost of the Louvre opened in 2012 at a cost of £12m. Located on the site of an old Lens coal pit, the museum displays a selection of the Louvre’s most valued works in the midst of Lens’ red brick terraces and slag heaps.

Louvre museum in Lens

The Louvre is Paris's largest cultural attraction and the world's most visited museum, attracting more than 8 million people each year. Its Lens outpost is hoped transform the post-industrial north, with local politicians hailing it as a miracle. The Louvre-Lens project is seen as far bolder than other famous museum satellites, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Tate Liverpool or more recently the Pompidou centre in Metz, since those cities are larger, more established and better funded. With a population of around only 35,000, Lens does not have its own cinema, possesses two modest hotels and opened its first tourist office at the end of the 1990s.

Turner Contemporary

Opened in April 2011 at a cost of £17.5m, Turner Contemporary is an art gallery located at the edge of Margate’s Old Town, intended as a contemporary arts space and catalyst for the regeneration of the. Its title commemorates the association of the town with noted landscape painter JMW Turner, town20 who went to school locally and visited throughout his life. Turner Contemporary is situated adjacent to the harbour arm, on the site of a boarding house where Turner is reported to have once stayed.

Designed by David Chipperfield, who styled it “very much as a pavilion, nearly industrial, a type of shed” the emphasis here is upon the use of natural light21 yet the building has also been described as “alien, brutal and bleak”. In November 2011, the gallery received an award from the British Guild of Travel Writers, highlighting its contribution to the visual arts scene in Britain, Europe and more widely.

Evaluation of HOME

Evaluation Framework:

  1. HOME delivers a coherent and High quality programme of artists residencies/commissions
  2. HOME  builds a sense of belonging and civic pride
  3. HOME results in a more positive reputation for Cliftonville
  4. HOME results in a reputation and/or legacy for socially-engaged arts practice in Cliftonville

Download the Evaluation Framework and Participant Questionnaire