Anna has finished her third image in response to the feedback. It’s Arcadia ‘ Not For Sale”. People speak of the importance of a comforting home, or a happy working enviroment as opposed to a property, a possession , a workplace or an office. It is the safe space of a home, and the laughter shared in the office which makes a space. This is not “For Sale”. Living - is an experience, - to experience.In the same vein, my image to come, celebrate the positive feelings people have about working, being and living on Great George Street.

This will be the last week, the last hours to complete the work. Next, the ‘participants’ will choose what images to adorn their railings. On the 12th of September, Hidden Impact kicks off! All shall be revealed……

Meanhwile- some more comments:

Question: Are there any issues about the properties on Great George Street that you would like us to address in our prints?: “Only the architectural style of the buildings – some such as ours seem to have a Dutch influence and of course the existence of the mature trees.”

The trees keep coming back in to the conversation. Therefore, the trees come in to the images….

It is not so easy, this writing balancing between the autoethnographic, writing vulnerably while developing a scholarly language.
Iris de Leeuw comments: ” What you are doing in your honorable practice unfolding step by step this very practice is fascinating although the writing is sometimes a little hard for me to understand completely. It takes a while to get your language and thats a bit weird because you are so crystal clear in your talking and my english is not so bad after all. But its just if you use a format for ‘official’ writing in a court instead of letting go that pattern and lift the veil for communication.- Maybe because your texts seem to be filled with caution making it harder to respond spontaneously.”

I agree! So watch this space.

The dialogue rolls on - between the people on Great George Street - and between myseslf and fellow artist/ collaborator Anna Harley. She explains her responses as follows:
” Here is a bit of background on the prints- the historical context of the street has become important to these prints, inspired by the feedback questionnare where some people mentioned how much they liked the history of Great George Street.

Aside from the obvious 60’s hippy/daisy link, Peace and Love references William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge who are reputed to have first met at the Georgian house on Great George Street ‘Lyrical Ballads’ is a collection of poems by the pair, published by the Bristol bookseller Joseph Cottle and is ‘generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature. The immediate effect on critics was modest, but it became and remains a landmark, changing the course of English literature and poetry’ (source-wikipedia) the phone numbers are their birth and death dates.

Freedom references Pero, a black slave bought in Nevis in the West Indies by the plantation owner John Pinney, who lived at who named him Pero Jones. Pinney brought Pero back with him when he moved to England in 1783, but left his two sisters, Nancy and Sheeba at the sugar plantation in Nevis. Pero lived, worked and died at number 7 Great George Street- according to the Georgian House, Pero enjoyed an unusual level of freedom ‘for a slave’. Again the contact number is his birth and death date. In 1999 a footbridge, named after Pero, was opened in the docks area of Bristol, so his name is well known to Bristol folk. The bridge ‘is one of the few public monuments to the Black and Asian presence in the whole of Britain’ (source -http:/www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/journeys/virtual_tour_html/bristol/bristol.htm)

Moving home is on the top of stressor in life. I wonder how many house moves- or loss of homes - the credit crunch has forced. Others asked to. I saw this painted on a wall in Shoreditch: “If you lost your home who would help you?’.

Compare these with the answers from Bristol when asked if owning a property is important.

‘I love my flat, and I love not having to give money to rental agencies for a terrible service. If something goes wrong I fix it. ‘

‘Yes. It’s nice to have a place you can call your own that nobody else has an influence over.’

‘I’d like it not to be but it is so tied up with way UK property market organised its hard for it not to be.’

Home - is a temple to share….

People are coming back with answers. My assumptions tumble, and once again, I am reminded to suspend judgement. The answers are far more positive than expected, and therefore, I have to change an idea from critical to celebratory. ( that means making my bankslave poster is for later, and for myself, and for another event…)

However, there appear to be a concensus that letting property is a theoretically good thing which doesn’t work. The properties are not cared for, neither by landlord not tenants. It doesn’t need to be that way, as a large part of Europe happily rent continoulsy and live in well managed flats. This is not alwyas the case in the UK. People of Great George Street comment on Question Nr. 4. What are your thoughts about rental property? :

‘My experience of renting, especially through agencies, has been that tenants (who are typically the poorest people) are horribly, horribly ripped off, feel completely powerless to do anything about it, and have to put up with holes in ceilings, mouldy bedrooms, broken central heating, and leaks, because the agency never does what it promises to do, then takes money out of the deposit when the tenant finally escapes for ‘cleaning’ when they’ve left the place a million times cleaner than when they moved in. ‘

‘My own experience over living in a block of flats is that some of the people who are renting don’t take as much care of the communal areas as those who own.’

‘Its an excellent idea and should be encouraged more in UK’

‘I tend to think people take better care of what they own.’

My ‘To Let’ poster is the visual response to the feedback so far.

People at Great George Street have started to collecting their answers to the questions about property. The prototypes for the subverted real estate signs have been printed, but without the answers, there will be no images, no drawings. This is dialogue in practice between the maker of the images and the people of the lived experience. I am waiting, with great curiosity, for the thoughts from the people along the street.

At this point, I don’t know what the next turn of the project will be. Anna is getting ready to print. Spike Island Print Studio is spreading the word. An office is working out the answers. There seems to be a murmuring of creativity, and excited anticipation growing, in this community of undecided boarders. To you - I give you the first print.