Caravan of Dreams - Intro Video!

So finally after waiting for what seems like days and days and days....

I have managed to upload the short film made which introduces the Caravan of Dreams nicely! Please enjoy - and if you really enjoy - please share and tell all your friends!

Millie =)

Ultimate team building… a view from the van

How do you build a network of wildly different organisations spread across a region of 6,000 square miles into a team of co-workers? 

A snap shot of an EMPAF meeting would show you that there are not enough hours even in a day-long meeting for passionate people to get everything off their chest.  Everyone has so much to say, share and hear from each other – our UK meetings often end when people suddenly stand up and say “I have to be on the train at 10 past”, put on their coats and walk out.  Then everyone travels back to their part of the region thinking of all the things we didn’t talk about; how interesting it would be to get views on a pressing issue that wasn’t on the agenda.

What was discovered at ICAF 2011 was the space to explore anything and everything on people’s minds, and the content of the conference itself as a catalyst to brand new thoughts and ideas.  Well, so I was told – I wasn’t there; my colleague Jill Turner was the High Peak representative that year, and she came home with a twinkle in her eye and a spring in her step.  So the Caravan of Dreams was born at some point between then and 2013 when our planning began.  Taking that idea of finding the space to work together intensively, we now have four of us sharing a journey in a van (two in relay), plus the reinforcements of another three who have joined us.   And I have to say it has been such an honour to visit and be welcomed by so many wildly different and passionate workers here in Holland.  They almost feel like part of our extended network now and reflecting on their practice has shone a light on our own.

I’ve loved being in the van – Andy Barrett from Excavate talks in his blog posts about approaching each encounter with a sense of mischief.  Yes, having witnessed him leaving a food parcel by the door of the family who told us where to find the supermarket, I can attest.  His warmth and energy have made an impression on me and it is exactly this kind of close working which we have no space for back in the UK.  Millie Ferguson from the Core in Corby is a legend of digital knowledge – I have been quietly sucking up new information and loving seeing how someone does it properly.  Keeping up with technology is a major issue for a tiny organisation like ours, where I am the default IT Manager, but am entirely self taught.

Everyone at home thinks I’m away on the ultimate Jolly.  But we have worked till near midnight on most days, and with a sense of panic over the volume of footage shot, the photos to upload, the coordinates to plot on Empedia.  Now is the time to make sense of it all and get gifts for those at home who have planned so hard and supported us while here (yes, Amy Smith, that’s you, and Tony that’s also you and many more…).  ICAF 2014 starts today – so watch this space for the fireworks that sets off.

Sophie, High Peak Community Arts

Common People

'Common People’, the greatest social commentary pop song ever written, is playing in the van as we head towards Eindhoven looking for the HQ of Drent Dorps, which we are told is a wooden building underneath a flyover. As it turns out it’s no ordinary wooden building underneath a flyover. This wooden building underneath a flyover was designed by Piet Hein Eek, who is one of Holland’s most respected designers. But more of that later.

Our host today is Wikke Peters; one of the Drent Dorps Angels project. There were three of them, these angels, all women, running all kinds of arts interventions on part of a site of a huge former Philips factory, that was built in 1922. I never realised they were a Dutch company. The first time I saw the name was on my father’s electric razor. They were responsible for making Eindoven what is it today, we are told, bringing together a series of little villages into a city that employed thousands of people to make its many products here on this site. There was cheap labour. And there was sand. Which was needed for the glass. For the lightbulbs. It was when they had pretty much exhausted the lightbulb market that they branched out into other projects. This is a landscape drenched with a history of innovation.

But Philips moved out in the 90’s, went to China and took the jobs with them. The local authority took over the site; then the architect Piet Hein Eek moved in (the later bit comes later); and housing associations took over the housing stock. Mr Philips was a paternalistic employer. He apparently had a fondness for Marx. (I remember seeing a statue of Marx in, I think, Vienna, standing in front of the Philishave HQ, which was what my dad’s electric razor was called). Eindhoven has always had a more left leaning attitude in local politics; the recent elections have returned someone with a ‘socialist leaning’; whatever that means these days.

Wikke and the Drent Dorps Angels create work to deal with a range of issues on this site where new people have moved in and which is going through a major process of change and redevelopment. There were three of them; one a writer/illustrator, one a designer, and one a theatremaker/photographer. Now there is only one. After three years the Housing Association doesn’t need them so much. The residents themselves have begun to initiate projects themselves. And so Wikki is the last angel standing.

In Dutch ‘angel’ also means a sting; like a bee’s sting. And the work they have been doing has been spiky; dealing with issues amongst the residents head on and in a really engaging and amusing manner. This place, Drent Dorps, a sector of the overall development, is an island, rows of houses surrounded by the former Philips factories that are currently in transition. The housing association who now own these properties and the tenants weren’t getting on; there was a lack of communication; a sense of distrust. Renovation of the factories was about to happen and there was concern about what was going to occur. People in Drent Dorps were co-existing but they weren’t connecting.

The Angels were employed by a Housing Corporation, but were allowed to keep their distance from them. They wanted (were asked?) to find out what residents wanted from their housing – which is all social here in Drent Dorps. What did these people want to happen in the area; what neighbourhood facilities did they want? Wikki mentions the word ‘social cohesion’, adding ‘but I hate that word; it sounds official’. I suggest that it’s maybe about investigating the ‘soul’ of the place and she agrees. It’s in part a search for the identity of Drent Dorps.

The Angels, all three of them, like Charlie’s, rang everybody’s bell first of all, to say hello. There are around five hundred and fifty door bells here in Drent Dorps. They went out on guerrilla flower planting and graffiti excursions. They gathered thoughts on how the renovation that was happening should proceed.

Some things didn’t work. Eindhoven is seen as a major design centre (more on this also later). Last year it was voted as the smartest region in the world, Wikki tells us, but I’m not sure what in exactly. But it’s to do with design. The angels had a designer come in to work with residents to contribute a product for the major Design Expo that is held in Eindhoven, centred around the ex-factory site, which is known as Strijp S. But she told the residents what they should make rather than seeing what they wanted to make and they weren’t having that. The Angels tried to set up committees to steer projects but they didn’t really work either.

But what did work was the fact that they were here, right in the heart of the neighbourhood. They were able to change plans as they went. To be lightfooted. And to feel able to make fools of themselves. And it’s this sense of fun that attracted me most to their work. The idea of simple projects that are are faintly ridiculous. So – there are issues with domestic pets; dogs, cats and, we were told by several people, with rabbits (they run about all over the place apparently; we never saw one). So the Angels held an Animal Roadshow where people could bring their pets to a red carpet. Another project involved a tattoo table where people could come and draw out their tattoos on a large sheet of paper and tell stories about why they got them and what they mean. There was a real sense of play in these projects. Of mischievousness even. (It’s how I’ve been approaching people on this trip. Assuming that they won’t mind me being, well, a bit cheeky. It’s how I always approach people. I think people understand it; mischief. It’s a game; it’s play and I think that people, deep down, understand play, however much it’s been kicked out of them).

Wikki told us that Housing Associations are now paying less for cultural activities; there’s a developing belief that this is not their job. But that the people who live in these neighbourhoods where there is a tradition of activity are beginning to understand this and are looking for how they can raise money for themselves.

Tijs Rooijakkers comes to talk to us and shows us some images of a beautiful project he has been doing with a rapper called Fresku. Fresku, who is to rap in Holland what Pietr Hein Eek is to design (this still isn’t the later bit), writes on strips of wood which Tijs then bends and shapes into fantastic structures. (Have a look at a really great film about this on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_kspKGmLMk) After doing the first of these he developed the project further in Woensel, where a designers collective called Tante Netty live, making interventions in the area. They have made and given out bird houses. They have painted the houses that have been left empty before they are demolished as redevelopment happens. When they think of something, Tijs says, they just do it.

They are trusted now. They are embedded.

Tijs work in Woensel has been to continue with the idea of people writing on slats of wood, only these are written on by people who live there, and rather than being in an art gallery they are hanging in the trees. There are ten different areas in Woensel with over 700 slats suspended up above the heads of those that live there. He doesn’t call himself a community artist. It’s about power. He knows that he is making the work, the decisions; and that those who contribute are adding to something that he is making. 

And then a new word appears; almost out of the blue. Co-design. This is the term that the community artists and designers and social policy people appear to use. And there is a lot of it, this co-design. We walk past an empty tract of land that is designated as Space S where housing is to be built. There are co-design sessions where architects come to talk to potential residents about what they want to see in the new dwellings that will be put there. Four hundred ‘units’; around one hundred and fifty for students and some for the elderly. They have a Facebook page with around six hundred people conversing on it. People will be chosen to live in the new buildings on their level of participation. The more comments and likes you can get in the more chance you can live on this site where my Dad’s razor was probably made.

We go to a café to see Ingrid van der Wecht. She is an arch evangelist for co-design and is the Project Manager for Capital D. I’m not quite sure what she does. One of the projects she is involved in is called Proud, which stands for People Researchers Organisations Using Design. The door of their offices say Design / Cooperation / Brainport. It’s back to this idea about Eindhoven being very smart. Because of the innovation of the Philips factory. Where the people of Eindhoven used to work.

There’s something nagging at me. And it’s connected to Piet Hein Eek; the designer who is based here; who struck a great deal with the local authority. His work is made here; his show rooms are here; you can buy his stuff. It uses reclaimed materials. It is great. And hugely expensive. He rents out space to artists and designers. The café we go to for lunch is run by something called The Robin Hood project, a Jamie Oliver type thing where the unemployed work in restaurants that most of their friends probably can’t afford to come to. The restaurant we are shown, as we continue to walk around this huge ex industrial site, now a home for new tenants and those mainly employed in design, is one of those cavernous spaces with untreated walls. There are huge slabs of machinery and old radiograms. It is shabby chic at its shabbiest and at its chicest. It is, I suggest to Wikki, a temple of the middle class aesthetic; one that I recognise from the UK. ‘Where are the greasy spoons?’ I ask; ‘are they not allowed on this site?’ They are at the edges, she tells me, knowing exactly what I mean. The people who once worked here are not the kind of people that are being enticed onto this new site. (Wikki told us that many of the people that come to the Drent Dorps HQ don’t like the building. Even if it was built by some fancy well known designer. Like Piet Hein Eek).

And so, I ask Ingrid, from Capital D, is this design that you talk about basically all interior design; that cult that allows people to sink further and further into their own houses, the exact opposite of what perhaps they are trying to do here? But I am not understanding the situation at all. There is interior design, there is product design, there is housing design, there is scientific design. The first Television broadcast in the world was made on this site and now this is providing a vision for the future.

(I’ve just had a look and Brainport, which is actually yet another region in Eindhoven is ‘according to the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) the world’s smartest region in 2011, and a top technology breeding ground for innovation and home to world-class businesses, knowledge institutes and research institutions. Together they design and manufacture the technology of the future to ensure a safe, green and caring society and sustainable economic development of the Netherlands. The five focal sectors of Brainport Eindhoven region are High Tech Systems & Materials, Food, Automotive, Lifetec and Design’. So that’s told me).

There is lots that is great about it; but there’s something that I’m not quite comfortable with. Maybe it’s something to do with ‘Common People’, the song that we bounced along to on the way here. Maybe it’s because I have a sneaking fear that however much co-designing is done, there will be issues of taste, that are really badges of class, that may be a bridge too far for those who have the future in their sights. That those who live on the edges, where the Angels have been doing their work, will never truly be let in to the place where they once spent their working lives and made it the area of innovation that it became. But then again maybe I don't really understand what is happening here at all.

You'll never live like common people / You'll never do what common people do / You'll never fail like common people / You'll never watch your life slide out of view, and dance and drink and screw / Because there's nothing else to do.

Andy Barrett

What to do with the elephants?

I am in Het Hoge Heem, a house for the elderly in Uithoorn. It’s a semi state run place, one of 27 in the region. An older lady has just gone behind a sheet rigged up on some pole to make a shadow puppet theatre screen. She is holding an elephant shadow puppet, which presumably she made in one of the two earlier workshops held here. She is accompanied by a primary age child from a local school who also has an elephant. It’s national puppetry day here in the Netherlands. And also Volunteers Day. There were some folk back at base, where Franz – puppeteer in chief -  lives and where we had lunch, from the pharmaceutical company Bayer, who were putting in their four hours of voluntary service a year in return for a certificate and a 20% off voucher at some department store or another. Some of the puppets they helped with, based, I think, on designs from some of the older people, are being used in this workshop where the young and the old are practising using the puppets behind a large screen for the first time.

Joanne Oussoren, from Droomtheater reads The Carnival of Animals while Saint Saens plays. A local politician is also holding an elephant but hasn’t had a go yet. She may have lost her post in the regional(?) government on Wednesday but deals are being made as we speak and she may be welcomed back in. The state is in retreat she tells me. It’s the same in the U.K. I tell her. Probably worse. (Definitely worse). And there doesn’t seem to be much heard in the way of protest. The same here, she says; it’s strange. Where’s the revolution? Hope she gets back in.

The house where Franz, who is running this project, Carnaval der Dieren, lives is part of a Central Housing project; one of around one hundred in the country. Franz moved here 24 years ago, about a year after it was opened. He got lucky. First in a one bed apartment and then moving to a two bed apartment. There are fifteen in all; of various sizes. And there is – most importantly – a large communal room. When he was first here people ate together twice a week; now it’s once a month. There’s a rota for looking after the chickens, for clearing up the communal room; which is used mainly now for the birthday parties of those that live here, full of relatives rather than housemates (or whatever the collective term for such a thing is). If you ever earn over thirty three thousand euros you have to leave. Many haven’t. When a space becomes free they have a meal and invite people to be communal and sociable and make their case. Some struggle.

Het Hoge Heem has a waiting list. The communal room is large and airy and light and Eric, the activities organiser, is overseeing today’s activity. There are around 130 rooms here. But many of the activities are not well attended. Today there are really only a handful of older people joining in, more women than men, (one looks frighteningly like Ann Widdecombe; another has wonderful shoes). By the time people arrive here, Eric tells me, they have spent five or six years retreating into themselves, learning isolation and loneliness; like many (most?) older people do.

Next Friday there will be one more workshop and then, on the Sunday a performance complete with a six piece brass band. The ‘political woman’ as she’s called, will help to rewrite the story to make it more topical. There is talk about the swans of Uithoorn but nobody is quite sure what to do with the elephants. This project has been crowd funded.

Twenty years ago, when Joanne set up Droomtheater, she was writing plays about Freudian cases; now she’s interested in the notion of the social dream. She works in the Feyenoord area of Rotterdam, a very multicultural area (unlike here). She has discovered that puppetry is a readily accepted artistic form that has many connections with other cultures. Droomtheater have taken work to schools and mosques. They blend live music, story-telling and puppetry. When she went to Iran she couldn’t believe how many puppet companies there were.

And, as she explains, she’s getting older and so is thinking about the kind of community that she wants to live in. A shared space; like the project that Franz is in, this ‘special place’; rather than being alone. It is lovely. There’s a river outside. The rain has stopped and the sun is coming out.

As my and my wife’s parents get older; as my friends talk about setting up a communal living project, (there’s some land identified in Belper, Derbyshire) I wonder if Franz is right. He thinks – hopes – that this social experiment of the sixties may return. Because of this retreating of the state. Because of the need that will arise for people to need more help. It’s cheaper for a health visitor to come and visit a project with five older people in, and who get day to day support from those who live around them, he suggests, then by putting them up in these nursing homes, even with their part funding from charities. And they can have Franz’s puppet shows there too. 

Andy

Dinosaurs & Disco Balls!

Millie's Log - Earth Date 20 March 2014

We begin! Today was the day! The day of the epic journey starting in Chesterfield, going to Nottingham, onwards to Leicester then to Dover! (Via Maplins!)

For those of you who know me well, will not be surprised to hear that I left it to the last (very last) minute to pack - and for those who have yet to get to know (& love) me - I can sometimes leave things till the 11th hour and 56th minute!

Luckily the traffic was on our side and we made it to those white cliffs with plenty of time to spare. The whole ferry experience was a bit weird as compared to the security at the airport it seemed on the whole very non-existent - not that we had anything to hide!

We all felt a surge of excitement as we saw the sea - the adventure begins! (& Of course lunch!)

When we reached Calais-  France, the fun did start! Paul made driving on the wrong side of the road look a doddle - and when we finally found a petrol station it was my turn to acquaint myself with driving. Which of course I handled like a pro!


Getting through France to Holland seemed to take no time at all  - three hours to drive through three countries - the roads were nice, straight and little traffic!

When we arrived at the Hotel Port, us road weary travellers decided that a drink was in order - which could commence once we had unloaded the van - Buckaroo anyone? We were also met by Sikko from Cal XL (http://www.cal-xl.nl/) who has been organising our trip from this end. Over a pint for the chaps and a modest JD & coke for me, we chatted about the week ahead - which sounds fab!

As for Dinosaurs & Disco Balls? The bar we ended up in was Jurassic Park meets Hard Rock Cafe!

And on that note - I bid you good night as I make a bee line for my bed!

See you on the 'morrow!

Millie =)