Phil Rawle - Visiting artist

A cold, wet afternoon is not the best way of appreciating Hanley Park, but in lots of ways it reflected its current run down qualities. However, the Park Traces project gives hope to a brighter future for the park and is an opportunity to discover and explore what that future might look like. We were given a tour of the whole park and I was particularly interested in the change of levels and the numbers of sets of steps. They seemed to me to represent ‘rising up’, ‘leading to somewhere’ and literally ‘steps forward’ which is analogous to the overarching Heritage Lottery project objectives.

I started thinking of using garden canes (a common and cheap support for plants and a natural choice in a garden context) to create a set of steps in 3D. I considered how these might be made, the biggest issue being how to join the canes together at each of the joints so that they remained sturdy. I experimented with wooden blocks, tape and string. Should this prove difficult, I had a back up plan which was to draw an isometric plan of the steps in chalk on the ground, sited between some of the existing steps near the bandstand. When sharing this with the group it was proposed that I do the drawing first (planning phase) and then spend the rest of the time trying to build it and exploring the issues that came about (construction phase).

The drawing took 3 hours. In the remaining time I cut the bamboo to size and began tying it together with string. It was a slow process. Whilst the string made secure joints, as the structure grew it became more and more unweildy. In the end, within the timesale, I was only able to create one side of the steps. Again, this seemed to me to reflect the very nature of the design process, the need to effectively marry the design process to the construction process and ensure appropriate time and consideration is given to both, or it will all fall down! Hanley Park was opened in 1897 and for many years it was what people wanted. Its fall into disrepair is indicative of its lack of contemporary purpose and why it is unloved by much of the local community and receives relatively few visitors for a park of its size. It is essential that any development of the park is innovatively carried out to create a resource that fulfills the needs of a larger audience and that can create purpose and revenue to reduce the likelihood of it deteriorating in the future.

Whilst I was unable to complete the steps within the week of the residency, I intend to reconstruct and finish them and add to the blog during the next few of weeks.