Category Archives: Environment

Brighton Life, Environment, Events, Features, Music, The Arts, Uncategorized

Art in public spaces. What do you think? Here’s your chance to say

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Morris Singer Art Foundry Ltd|Bruce, Romany Mark; Tay (AIDS Memorial); ; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/tay-aids-memorial-245784

What do you feel when you see a statue to some historical figure you’ve kinda heard of but don’t really know anything about? Do you think… “It’s just there. It’s always been there, so let it be there”? Do you think… “Who is that? I’m going to find out about that right now. Now, where’s my Wikipedia…?” Do you think… “Whoever it is, it means nothing to me. I wish there was something there I could feel something positive about”.

Well… strangely enough now we’ve got a chance to say what we think about public art in our city. We’re not talking about private exhibitions, shows, gigs, festivals, that’s one thing, But what about the art that’s out there in the public spaces. Statues. Outdoor installations. Spaces in parks. How do we, as a city, feel about that stuff? We saw last year, particularly in Bristol, that historic statues can be… problematic. How do we deal with those subjects and feelings? Remember the Mary Wollstonecraft sculpture that was unveiled in London in November?

Brighton’s an arty city, a creative city. It’s one of the reasons we’re here. The public art should reflect that – and now’s a chance to make that happen.

The Brighton based arts charity Lighthouse has launched an online public survey and series of short films under the banner “Let’s Talk Public Art” to encourage us to say what we think about public art in the city.

“Public art can provoke intensely divided public opinion, as we have seen recently with historic statues being removed because of their connections to slavery. These short films feature discussion points such as heritage, inclusion, sustainability and wellbeing so we can delve into how people feel about public art” says Alli Beddoes, Lighthouse CEO & Artistic Director.

Films:

Places & Spaces with Matt Adams – Blast Theory and Atif Choudhury – Diversity & Ability An exploration of what and where the spaces and places can be for public art. It should be more than standalone works in the public realm, they should be integral to the ways in which we experience and understand our city.

A Green City with Ami Rae – Onca Gallery and Claire Potter – Claire Potter Design What doers it mean to be green – and can you green the city through public art. Brighton & Hove aims to be carbon neutral by 2030 – how can public art support this?

Wellbeing with Elsa Monteith – Writer & Artist and Emma Frankland – Artist What does public art mean for our sense of identity and belonging? How can it help us connect and care?

Heritage with Judith Ricketts, Artist and E J Scott, Historian & Curator What is a successful piece of artwork that celebrates heritage in our city? How can public art hold onto the past without erasing it but use it to be informed and carve out a better future for the next generation?

Connectivity & Community with Amartey Golding – Artist and Bobby Brown – Music Producer & Careworker, Hangleton & Knoll A film discussion of the ways commissioning public art can connect to community groups in the city.

There’s an event – online, natch – called Let’s Talk Public Art – Digital Campfire(10am to 12 noon, Fri 5 February) which might be interesting. To join, take part in the survey, watch the films or register for the event visit: lighthouse.org.uk/events/lets-talk-about-public-art

Brighton Life, Environment

Books, music… baby clothes?

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Every parent knows the story. No sooner have you stocked up on your baby or toddler’s new wardrobe than little Johnny has already outgrown the lot.  You’re looking at your bank account and scratching your head while the kids’ clothes manufacturers are gleefully ringing up the tills. It’s the price you pay as a parent, but the cost to the earth isn’t funny.

“I was making organic baby and kids clothes for my company SuperNatural Collections but I got to thinking that the world really does not need me to produce any more baby clothes whether they are organic or not”, said Jenny Barrett, the founder of SuperLooper. “There are 183 million items of unused baby clothing stored in UK homes.” 

Jenny is on a mission to make a difference and created SuperLooper, an online baby clothing library of pre-loved clothes for babies 0-2 years to offer parents a waste-free-wardrobe for as long as they need. ‘And when your child has outgrown them, you just send them back to be loved & looped again’. 

When it comes to sustainable fashion, baby clothing is often forgotten. Of the estimated £140 million worth (around 350,000 tonnes) of used clothing which goes to landfill in the UK every year, baby clothes account for huge portion simply because of how fast they grow. After spending much of her life in the fashion industry Jenny realised things didn’t have to be that way. SuperLooper, a subscription service of around £20 a month enables parents to avoid buying new clothes altogether and to clear out all their outgrown items to share with other families. “You can choose as many clothes as you like.”

The circular economy is an alternative to the traditional way where we make, use and dispose of items, ensuring that the life of a product doesn’t end when it is no longer used. It is re-used, remade and eventually recycled into another product. SuperLooper makes sure that great clothes will be at least be kept in circulation for as long as possible.

So far, the clothes library has over 1600 items to choose from and will have lots more by Christmas “It’s a huge job, ironing labels on, taking photographs then uploading them. It’s all a bit overwhelming but I’m very determined!” 

We know we can do things to help our planet but it’s that further step to make the change which seems to stop most people from actually doing anything. “Just keep on it and don’t worry that it’s a tiny thing because we all know tiny things eventually, become big things. We can all make the difference. We just have to believe.” 

If you would like to join the 

community check them out 

on Facebook @SuperLooper or sign up at http://www.superlooperlife.com

#Whyownwhenyoucanrent

#ownyourfuturenotyourclothes

Brighton Life, Eating Out, Environment, Features, Health Matters

Back home for one more adventure

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What do you do after the jungles of French Guiana and Chicago? Jed Novick finds out

I’m outside the newly revamped Eddy, enjoying an afternoon drink and chat with Mark and Hatt, the new guardians of this particular galaxy. A car comes down the road and stops outside the pub. I don’t even notce, but Mark’s up and over there. Hatt turns, looks, smiles, carries on. Seconds later, a young lad, all muscles and tatts and with a face like a kid who’s been told to clear up his dinner plates, is walking over to the recycling bins carrying a lone bottle. He drops the bottle in the bin and throws us a half-hearted sneer, but Mark’s already back with us and the story is done. “He was just going to leave the bottle on the pavement” says Mark. “This is our community. We live here. We all live here. Have a bit of respect”. 

Hatt – Harriet Eaton – and Mark – Mark Reed – took over The Eddy in January and from there till now, it hasn’t been a straight line. But one look at Hatt and Mark and somehow you know they’re familiar with picaresque journeys. They’ve got stories.

She’s all bangles, tattoos and rings. An artist. Originally from West Sussex, the road to West Hill hasn’t been a straight one. Went to Paris when she was 18, worked in fashion, married a doctor. “He wanted to specialise in the tropical diseases. So we went and lived in South America for three years in French Guiana in a place called Maripasoula, right in the middle of the jungle. It’s like a tiny plane or three days on a boat to get out. So that was interesting. Mostly”. 

As you do when you find yourself in the middle of the jungle days away from anywhere, Hatt set up a textile business “because that’s what I’d done in Paris and that went really well – beach towels and robes” but then life intervened – kids, parents, school, the usual – and the path led back to Brighton working behind the bar in a pub not far from where we’re sitting now. 

Originally from Hastings, Mark also took a few detours before getting the keys to The Eddy. “I had a few pubs and clubs in Hastings, pubs and clubs in Brighton”. Anything I’d know? “Yeah. The old Club Savannah, which is where Club Revenge is now above Harry Ramsden”. How far are we going back here? “This is back in the early to mid-Eighties. Then I moved to America and I worked in the music industry in America, going on tour with bands for a number of years, lived out hotel rooms for about five. I worked for EMI and then I was a writer for a while and then my…  Then the music industry career got parlayed into partnerships in nightclubs and bars and restaurants in Chicago, um, over, uh, over a long period of time. And then alongside that, I also got into the car industry and worked for a major US Volkswagen dealership”. But then Mark’s life intervened…

So Mark came back after 25 years away, and Hatt taught herself how pubs worked and when the landlord of the pub where Hatt worked moved on… Well, opportunity knocks.  

Opportunity knocks and then opportunity pulls the rug away.  In January they got the keys. A couple of months later… the world stopped. Words like “global pandemic” and “lockdown” probably weren’t in the original business plan. What was the conversation like on March 19th, the night before the lights went out?  “We’ve got a lovely little film of the last night before we shut and there was great atmosphere and everybody was wow, this is our last night for a while.

“I think people just thought it was going to be about a month or a couple of weeks, and then we’d be back open again. And I think that we were sort of ignorant of how long it was going to be. But, you know, things happen and it’s just a question of how you look at it. For us, lockdown was fantastic. We just completely embraced it and changed the pub to who we are. Re-painted everything, cleaned everything, changed everything. The cellars, the toilets, everything.  It’s like being in my front room really, you know, we really, really have made it our own.

One sweet thing that came out of lockdown was that the idea of community really kicked in. “When we closed down, John at The Yeoman created a WhatsApp group for the four pubs on the block. We called ourselves The Manor and there’s definitely a sense of care between us, but yeah, it’s very sad that some of these pubs are too small to open. John’s been there for 15 years and his whole business plan has had to change. And it’s really tough”.

What do you want from all this? “The last owner was more…, um, he didn’t really understand the concept of the community, but that’s what we love. We live here. We live above the pub. It’s our home”.

Brighton Life, Environment, Features

Belonging and Nature in West Hill

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A chance encounter in a shared space. L.O.Hughes meditates on an urban sanctuary

ON THIS JUNE DAY, I attempt to write about the theme of Belonging and Nature. The theme resonates and feels sensitive for me, a British-African. Hoping to unblock my writer self, I take a break in St Ann’s Well and walk over to St Nicholas Quiet Gardens, my sanctuary over 30 years. 

It’s a cool afternoon. As I stroll, I notice light trying to break through the flat, milk sky. Not unlike my own process. Right now, I’m content under this oasis of trees. But a brief encounter stops me in my tracks. 

An unfamiliar pooch, charges while barking loudly. Often I freeze and hold my breath, the ‘owner seeing the situation, swiftly calls on their pet  “He’s harmless” they say,  taking him in tow. We exchange smiles I breathe out. Job done. 

Yet on this June morning the scenario has all the tension and trepidation of a slow-motion film. I’m frozen, the owner, while only an arm’s length away, crawls like a tortoise, towards his barking terrier. More, his hard-shell silence and steely gaze, slice through my pleading eyes. I notice his pursed lip. Is he’s thinking, “Who is this stupid woman, scared of small lovable dog?”. I can’t tell, but as he finally takes control, I hear myself apologising. “I’m just a bit afraid of dogs when…” 

 “Well” he spoke assuredly, “This is a place of many dogs… So not the best place…” He stopped short. The words “for you” hung momentarily unspoken in the air between us, before drifting into the sky. 

My equilibrium quickly returns. “I think this is a place for everyone”.

I promptly dismissed the incident in my head. This was a decent enough guy, perhaps, interpreting my fear as dislike of his pet dog, and whose ill- manner, briefly, threw me off balance. 

Later I reflect on our shared gardens. How over 30 years I’ve seen changes in the ways we use these spaces; from strollers, tai chi practitioners and meditators to couples doing exercise, a place of refuge /sleep, to walkers, their dogs and more. Brightonians, while we not perfect, are generally open and accommodating to such diversity. 

Back home and with my writing. My mind has cleared. I reflect on belonging and inclusion during pandemic, front line workers finally recognised as essential, disabled people again fought for their lives, as others who are overlooked. I think about the incident in the park how it speaks to the theme of belonging in nature.  

I allowed myself feel the momentary blow, the impact of the spoken and unspoken atmosphere. The territorial claim over a green space, meant to be shared.  

I think about my childhood growing up in an institution that kept us separate from ordinary life and from nature itself, about how regularly my presence has been subject to question, often unwittingly, and at times blatantly. The impact on mental health, a collective experience for many struggling with the complexities of belonging re disability, class, ethnicity and more. Here there’s a gap in understanding of who can take belonging and inclusion for granted and those who don’t have that privilege.

I notice how my equilibrium more often returns quickly. How, I have found healing in nature itself. Walking the South Downs Way over 30 years gave me a feeling of belonging to the land as well as friendships here. Our parks are part of nature we long to protect. I experience Brighton as one of most open places in the South. During lock down, we saw some of our best qualities.  And like many cities we have our challenges. 

As we face more lock downs and use our communal spaces more, we are challenged to negotiate how we use, share, take care of them and each other. Many are fighting to enable people, animals and earth to breathe more easily, be protected, respected and enjoy belonging together in our precious green city.

Brighton Life, Environment

West Hill Watch

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Jim Gowans looks at heritage pubs and considers the cost of graffiti

IN THE LAST WHISTLER, reference was made to the three pubs included in the five locally listed heritage assets in West Hill conservation area: the Queen’s Head, the Royal Standard and the Grand Central.

The north façade of the Queen’s Head which greets visitors as they leave Brighton Station is not part of the original late 19th century design. The two highly decorative balconies and the elaborate mouldings at second floor level are, in fact, only eight years old. This façade was previously quite plain because when built, it was not exposed, being obscured by buildings which were subsequently demolished to widen the roads during the mid-20th century. 

The Royal Standard, a few yards further down Queen’s Road, is mentioned in street directories as early as 1859, but the current building seems to date from the late 19th century like the Queen’s Head. The Royal Standard owes its inclusion in the local list partly because of its red brick and stone design which is not typical of the area. 

The roofline is particularly interesting with its carved stone pediment flanked (originally) by two copper domed open turrets one of which remains. The single copper dome of the Grand Central pub is much more prominent and is a notably exuberant feature of what was the “baroque” style of the former Railway Hotel re- built in 1925 for Tamplins Brewery. 

The Regency Society’s James Gray collection (see picture and link) shows the hotel in about 1911 before the re-build. This hotel dates from the 1840s when it catered for travellers using the newly built railway terminus opposite.

http://regencysociety-jamesgray.com/volume31/source/jg_31_163.html

As its name implies this was a product of the Railway and it opened in the early 1840’s. The photograph, dating from 1911, shows it in its original form. In 1924 the Terminus Hotel, Queens Road and the Terminus Shades in Surrey Street were demolished, leaving the Railway Hotel in full view from the Station. Probably as a result of this, the Hotel was completely rebuilt, in its present form in 1925.

Clamping down on graffiti

THE BRIGHTON SOCIETY has led a campaign to force the police and the City Council to take a much less casual attitude to the scourge of graffiti and spray paint vandalism. 

In an online meeting hosted by the Brighton Society recently the deputy manager of Waitrose in Western Road revealed that his branch alone has been spending £12,000 per year removing graffiti and despite offering CCTV evidence to the police has yet to secure a prosecution. 

Examples of the police attitude include the case in 2019 of a “tagger” caught and held responsible for over 81 acts of spray paint vandalism. There was an outcry when the 22-year-old was given a caution with the condition he carry out a day’s “unpaid work” for the Council. 

The Council’s attitude is similarly un-reassuring when it allows its own tourism delivery unit “Visit Brighton” to sponsor an organisation whose un-authorised advertising used spray paint to advertise on pavements including those parts designated conservation areas. 

The City Council has published a 16 page “Graffiti Reduction Strategy 2018” and an online reporting system (which is only for graffiti on public property or “offensive” graffiti). Graffiti on private property should be reported directly to the police, preferably with a photo of the damage.