In December 2024, local historian and resident Tony Mellors came up with the idea of matching a 1939 Ordinance Survey (OS) Map of Newton, with the families of those who lived there as listed in the 1939 Registration of England and Wales. And so began a project to explore further how the streets once were… this quickly snowballed into what we are now referring to as our Phase 1 ‘Hunter Gathering’ phase of this project! It certainly has grown legs and tentacles since it’s small seed of a start (more on phase 1 is here).
Phase 1 gave the community a chance to come out in force to bring us information on the old businesses, photos, maps and memories of the people and places on Main Street in Newton and beyond. Since then, Tony and his subgroup (other local residents and history enthusiasts that formed a working party for the project) supported by the wider Greater Creative team and Platform Thirty1, have been sorting and cataloguing the content gained from this initial phase. This phase also opened new avenues for us to delve deeper, so in the summer Greater Creative working party assembled at Newton’s largest annual event, The Newton Carnival with a multi project display and hunter gatherer hats on to seek out knowledge from the local visitors on some of the information we had already. It was a wonderful day with the sun shining on us all and many people came to talk to us about our projects. Tony had his display boards ready with a focussed set of information on the shops and streets to prompt new thoughts and old memories. We had our recorders at the ready and captured many more recordings of people sharing their information and memories too!
As part of Greater Creative’s youth strand of work, local young leader and resident Izzy ran summer drop-in workshops with younger children at the NCAfé (voluntary ran community association coffee morning) at Newton Community Centre. Here, they produced some wonderful collage pictures of their own houses to get local families thinking about their homes and where they live.
So…. we had lots of information … where did it go next?
It became a big task in itself to see, hold and understand the wealth of information gained and then decide how best to bring the Street to life, to ‘Re-Create’ it for an intergenerational public showcase. It was decided that Main Street was the heart of the community, with many of the stories coming in relating directly to the shops and the people who lived and worked nearby; so we focused on this street as we moved forward into the next production phase. The desired purpose of the public showcase on 19 October is to celebrate and share the gathered history with the community across the generations in an authentic and creative effort. Here’s how the information and intel has grown tentacles into the pieces that we are showcasing:
Upon gathering information about the street, Tony Mellors found it important to draft out a physical visual of the street and using ‘Microsoft Paint’ he painstakingly created a working visual document that captured the intel on the information he and the team had gained. This got updated copious times, as stories were shared about the small differences of colour and detail on the buildings.
As you can imagine, there were many conflicting and interesting counter conversations amongst the community, as they sometimes shared vivid memories of the physical attributes of the places (throughout a 30 year window of time during which businesses changed hands). Sometimes some quirky contributions had us wondering what was real and got our imaginations ticking about the street and all of it’s many characters living amongst it.
“There has been so much information willingly shared, and there has been a real joy shown by those who shared it..almost as if they hadn’t thought anyone would be interested to know about their village and lives in those far off days. And wonderfully many have been accompanied by their children, who in turn have realised that while they don’t remember the 1940s and 50s, their history of the second half of the century is valuable too. It’s also been a great experience for the members of our working group to see this, and given them confidence going forward” Tony Mellors
Following the evolving visual of the street and all of the details being recorded, the team were keen to have visual interpretation of the piece created to showcase the information gathered. That could then be encapsulated, enjoyed and celebrated with the wider community, be hung permanently at the community centre in the village and be available to be used online to support the interpretation of the information and potentially published too.
Platform Thirty1 worked with the resident working party group to create a brief for the ‘Visual Interpreter’, designed an Expression of Interest (EOI) application pack and an application assessment process for the resident group to lead.
The resident working party desired an artwork that could show the street as it was in the 1940s-60s period when the street was alive with hustle and bustle. One of the residents was inspired by ‘S.L Lowry’ and for some of the residents, being involved in writing a brief and commissioning an artist was very new! All of the resident steering group assessed the applications and two artists were taken forward to interview. Two of the residents interviewed the artists and Pippa Huley-Gibbs was commissioned for the brief. She won over the team’s hearts with her enthusiasm for wanting to work alongside the community in a co-developed way and her watercolour works and intricate attention to detail was favoured to commission the 2D artwork of one side of Main Street running from the memorial junction opposite the community centre, to the far end of town nearest Tibshelf.
Pippa joined the fun by having sessions with the resident working group to familiarise herself with the wealth of information gathered and did a walk along the street to discuss dwellings and explore on foot the possibilities, practicalities and challenges at hand. Obviously, during the walk we found ourselves chatting to residents and gaining deeper understanding about the area even on this adventure.
Pippa took the information and went away to work on creating custom made canvases to fit the dimensions of such a long street. It was a delight to see her work in progress as she came back for regular meetings – which always led to edits, as ever more details and information was provided. We all found that visual prompts were so very useful in enabling wider community members to see and reflect and say, “oh no it didn’t look like that, it was like this”. Pippa’s perseverance was noteworthy throughout and she embraced the community co-creation aspects as the project developed. We all anticipated the coming deadline for alterations to stop as the waterwashed canvases were soon adorned with intrinsic detail and we had to accept that this part of the process must finish for the piece to be completed. We are all very proud to have built the picture we have gained through this process, which was as historically authentic as we could make it with the resources and many hours taken to get to this stage.
‘It was quite something to watch the final versions of the canvases be shared with the working resident group. I think it would be fair to say that I observed some of the group were emotionally moved to see this revealed in the flesh. It was a real meaningful moment, having been a part of the projects process from its teeny seedlings of an idea to this, seeing hours of work, precious memories and care joined together in this beautiful output for all involved. I am thrilled this will be celebrated with the community at the upcoming event and look forward to seeing it hung permanently beyond the event in the community centre for future generations to see what the street once was’. Quote from Jodie Cresswell-Waring, Home Truths Project Facilitator
‘I feel privileged actually, to have been trusted to portray the incredible research this community have done’ Quote from visual interpretation artist Pippa
It has been fascinating to see how Pippa has absorbed fragments of information and images from the working group, combined that with viewing the street as it is today, and produced an artwork portraying the historic development of Main St.. She has shared our enthusiasm for the community spirit and it’s history and created images beyond our wildest expectations. Pippa should become an Honorary Newtonian! – Tony Mellors
We have continued to gather oral history recordings from our local residents. With many hours of recordings being made at our last Streets event we had lots to listen to already, we then worked out where the gaps in our knowledge were and went out in search of people who might be able to provide that information.
Monday Morning NCAfé (resident voluntary ran café) has become a hub for people gathering to meet their local neighbours and has been a prime place to chat about the various parts of their local memories. It has become a place where people know they can bring their friends or relatives if they have a story to tell or to share photos and memorabilia with the Re-Create The Streets resident working team. These oral histories, that so preciously tell these memories directly from the people that lived them, in a voice that is authentically theirs, deserved a special way to be shared with the wider community and beyond, hence why our next ‘model’ strand of work was generated.
With so many shops concentrated in such a small space along the length of one side of Main Street we had an abundance of information and memories flooded in for these. We recorded these through oral histories and wanted a way to present these creatively for people to commemorate the shops.
We know Blackwell Parish has many talented residents nestled in the community and many of them have creative past-times but they do not use these amazing skills or promote them beyond making on their kitchen tables and in hobby rooms. Knowing this information and with the oral histories rolling in, we mulled over several different ways of creating a way to combine these factors, eventually settling on a collection of 3D models of the shops which we thought could be decorated by community members. Whilst we commissioned the build of the models, we promoted the opportunity to target local makers:
We were very excited to receive strong interest for the opportunity, so much so that we commissioned a further model shell of the local watering hole and created a further two mobile businesses of local food vans that came up and down Main Street back in the day!
The dolls house style models were built and distributed within the community, to be decorated using the descriptive information which had been gathered regarding each shop throughout the project. Some of these had a lot of information with some images, some had a mix of information culminating years of owners’ knowledge and others had much less information. This meant the makers had to decide what they wanted to interpret, to bring their models to life. We simply asked that where possible, historic authenticity should be included, but also that creative licence was necessary for some and of course fun for all!
“Many of the memories gathered related to the people and interactions in these shops more than the nitty gritty of paint colours and building materials used. This then in turn had led us to go back out into the community to ask more questions, getting deeper into the details of what our older generation could recall. It was joyful to find stories spilling out alongside this info gathering and many people we spoke to told us how happy they were to chat about their youth and record the changes which have evolved over time”. Quote by project assistant Mel Perkins
“It felt very special to drop off the model cases on people’s doorsteps! The size of them initially took them by surprise, but they were just as excited as us to get cracking! Some models were given to individuals who created their models alone; a local community knit and natter group had three to decorate, working in groups, and some families worked together as a household to make their model. When we got picture updates we got SO excited about their progress. What a vessel they are to ‘house’ the oral histories for this project. This project is like an onion, so many beautiful layers within it!” Quote by Jodie Cresswell-Waring, Home Truths Project Facilitator.
It goes without saying that it was the people that made the ‘street’ what it was, these powered and were the true fabric of this place. It felt really important to commemorate some of these characters that came up time and time again. Greater Creative’s young leaders received some essential information of these individuals and worked with artist Meg Bonser and project assistant Mel, learning the art of ‘Peg people’ to bring the characters to life as authentically as possible.
“It was a fiddly and tricky task to which they rose admirably producing the most beautiful little figures. The young leaders will also be on hand at our celebration event at a drop in table for the public to come and have a go at making peg people themselves to pass on this old past-time to others to celebrate more local characters”. Quote by Melanie Perkins, project assistant
From the beginnings of this project, two ladies (Dorothy Mellors and Janice Flintham) in the resident working team for the project were particularly keen to involve local children in the project. They wanted local children to have access, knowledge and participation in both local heritage and creative activities. Initially it was hoped there would be things at the event to interest the children. This then quickly evolved into hoping that the children could do something for the event that could then be shared at the event.
Janice works at the local village school and was keen to involve some of the students there. Platform Thirty1 linked Janice up with Hazel Townsend, Artsmark consultant to discuss the possibility of an after-school heritage project. Within a couple of meetings, they had invited local artist, Stephanie Coley to join them to grow a group of Arts Ambassadors and develop a heritage project with young people! The project creations, which are mosaics will be exhibited as part of the public sharing on 19 October.
We’ve even got our treasured Avon lady and cake maker, Gail Needham to make us a ‘street cake’, have a local baker making us ‘house biscuits’ and have themed snacks to compliment the produce of the shops too! We have commissioned the local pottery to come and do some ‘house’ workshops on the day, have local theatre company ‘Maison Foo’ doing some ‘in character’ interactive consultation, young leaders will be running a drop in workshop, a heritage bus will be coming along and there will be some talks and presentations lined up too!!
“It is very satisfying to see the project reach it’s targetted completion date, and achieve an artwork to sit alongside the embroidered tapestry of Newton’s historic buildings. But it is the journey to get to this conclusion which has been truly amazing, seeing the community get togethers, friends of old meeting up after many years, shoe boxes of photos dusted down, memories shared, some sad but mostly joyous, and the laughter still rings in my ears! A Big Thank You to Greater Creative from our working party for this opportunity.” – Tony Mellors
Read more about this project in our blogs from Artist Pippa and in Phase Three.