GRRRLS in the GAREJ & the MINI-MERCHED MONUMENTS

I think we’ve just made Llandudno the first town in history to monumentalise it’s women! That’s a big claim, and what we made may have been quite small (mini, in fact), but a first is a first, and we thought we’d celebrate with a little blog, to commemorate the occasion.

And to carry on the excitement, the project is going to be shown in a real, proper art gallery. This is a first for me, having some ‘socially engaged’ art move from the streets to a white cube-type environment. We have been selected to be part of the Wrexham Open, involving two galleries - Tÿ Pawb and Undegun that are themselves, socially engaged. Exciting (yes, ok, a bit scary too - do things have to be neat?)!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First a little story about what has happened.

GRRRLs in the GAREJ

I was invited to be part of the ‘final’ show for Culture Action Llandudno’s Ideas-People-Places project, as part of LLAWN ‘06, Llandudno’s arts weekend 16 - 17th September 2018.

In August, I’d also designed and facilitated an ‘open space’ event to celebrate the project, and build shared leadership of the legacy. Excitingly it seemed the time was ripe, in time to feed into the councils’ cultural strategy, and many other individuals and organisations took the lead on making sure that Llandudno stays on the map, creatively and culturally…

… and my part in that was to contribute the story of Hanes Llanddynes…. So for LLAWN, I asked Wanda Zyborska and Lisa Hudson to join me, and together we created GRRRLS in the GAREJ.

We set up shop in HAUS, bringing together the work we’d done in Llandudno with various other collaborations that we are involved in, including The Stanley Reveiling Project, XSexcentenary and Merched Chwarel.

Over the weekend, we invited people to come and add to and edit the Hanes Llanddynes story of Llandudno from 16,000 years ago to present, told just through the stories of women. We also got input from “You Know You Are From Llandudno if…” facebook page, from those who couldn’t make it.

We invited everyone who came - around 200 people in all - to make some mini-monuments. We talked about memorialising and monuments, questioned ‘heritage’ and the status of history, shared stories, and drank tea and ate cake and biscuits… and then we went on procession….

The Mini Merched Monument Placing Procession

The highlight of the weekend was our procession. We had an impromptu police escort (many thanks to PCSO Mike Smith who had just dropped by to see what was happening!), and we each chose one (or two) of the 40 monuments that had been made, to take and place somewhere in town.

The video (which has had over 1,000 plays on facebook!) is a good way to get a feel for it….

New stories

Here are some of the new stories and women that were suggested, together with some pictures of the Mini-Merched Monuments that were made.

I’ve added some ‘category’ headings, just to break it up a bit. We have no idea how many people came, but probably something like 200, with several people coming back on the Sunday, including lovely Valerie May, who cancelled her Sunday plans to come back and spend all day with us, making a Dion Fortune monument and adding lots of information to the various stories.

WOMEN OF THE TIMES

Nancy McMillan (Hough) (known as Annie)

Born in Beaumaris, spent her childhood living in the childhood museum, moved to Liverpool and was evacuated to Cyf.n.bae outside Wrexham during the war. Went back to Liverpool, holidayed in Llandudno and North Wales.

Mary Anning (1799 – 1847)

Palentologist (fossil finder). She made important fossil finds in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis. We would like to think she came on holiday to Llandudno to look at the fossils on the Gt. Orme.

Elizabeth Howells

Worked as a matron in Holloway Prison during the time of the suffragettes. She moved to Caernarfon prison, where she worked as a matron. On her wedding certificate it states she ‘married in prison’ as at that time matrons and other staff had lodgings in the prison.

Peggy Bleakley

Owned/managed Sumners (a huge bakery on Builder Street, and shop on Mostyn St) for years. It was a magnificent Institution. I worked there as a 15 year old in 1966, delivering bread to hotels. She was a rather formidable character but underneath was a heart of gold. Proposed by Mike Simpkins via Facebook 

Vera Thomas

Now 101, lives in Sychnant Parc, Conwy. She worked for the WRVS for many years – right into her 80s.

Jo, Isabella & Florence Castellanos

Lived in Craig-Y-Don. Rolled around Wales in a clapped-out Alpine Sprite Caravan.

Paula Yates, Colwyn Bay

Broadcaster and TV Presenter. Best known for The Tube and Big Breakfast. Partner of Bob Geldof and later Michael Hutchence. Her family lived in Deganwy Castle and then Rowen.

Women of Llandudno Junction Mosque

FIRSTS

Edna Vernon of Vernon’s Motors 1921 – Feb 1960

Co-owner and book keeper of the first car showrooms in North Wales. Owner of the first Daimler. Founder of the first dance troop in Llandudno, “The Gunners”. Danced the Black Swan from Swan Lake in the Palladium and designed and made all the costumes.

[This one even came with a picture - here she is in the back of the Daimler, the first in North Wales!]

Eugenie Nix - Llandudno's first female councillor

Suggested by Adrian Hughes via facebook

Kate Horniblow - Llandudno's first female pharmacist

Suggested by Adrian Hughes via facebook

Gwenda - The first woman to be born in a Volcano

Suggested by Gwion Williams

Gwenllian Emmett and the PQA team

We are the first ever girls in Llandudno to perform in the West End! “Trouble’s a Brewin’”! Yeeeha!   We meet at Ysgol John Bright. Our motto is: “Be Yourself, Be Amazing”

INTRIGUE       

Gwenllian the First Princess of Wales

Taken at age 2 from Abergwyngregyn to Sempringham. Convent, lived out her life there. Went to France? Had children? Descendents? There’s a monument to her in Sempringham, Lincs. Lot of people from this area paid for it: it’s slate. Gwenllian society and plaque and flowers.

Mary the Mother of Jesus

Was Mary the Mother of Jesus the first Disciple on the Isle of Anglesey? Recent research states that a small village near the Sacred Lakes was the One and Only true First Home of Christianity. Maybe she came to Llandudno?

Myfanwy the Mammoth

Ice-age Mammoth found in site of former bog/swamp (possibly Bog Island). Tens of thousands of years old. Museums in north Wales displayed it (?fossil?). By Anonymous

COMMON EXPERIENCE

To all the women who have died in childbirth

To all the women with imperfections and also my mother who this resembles

CAMPAIGNERS

 Carol Marubbi

For her campaigning to save our hospital among many other things she has done for our town. Proposed by Rachel Roberts via facebook

Sally Pidcock

Great Orme Ranger who has dedicated her career to the conservation of the Orme. Nature, goats, archaeology, cotoneaster, cultural eduction.

Theresa Evans

For her tireless effort sending ‘welling boxes’ to our troops abroad to boost moral Founded after the loss of her son Llewelyn on the first day of the Iraq War. And her passion for Ty Hapus Purl Knitters and sending knitted items throughout the world. A Llandudno treasure. Nominated by Gaynor.

Elan Rivers

A town historian and librarian who knows everything about everthing. Organised a trour around Llandudno for the Bacup Historical Society which led to them liking Llandudno so much that they agreed to give her back (after 100 years). The case Blodwen is housed in today was the first crowd-funded exhibition case in the world! Elan also campaigned to save the house where the Australian PM lived on Church Walks forcing the Mostyn Estates to give it to her for £1.

Lady Forester

Opened the now blind veterans home as a convalescent home. Now a home in Much Wenlock Shropshire for elderly residents.

ACHIEVEMENTS (past, present and future)

 Lila Pavey (2 1/2): Future Great Woman

Ellie Simmonds

GB Paralympic swimming champioin (restricted growth) (2008/2012/2016). West Midlands UK; Trains in UK/S. Wales/N. Wales. Competed, Llandudno pool.

Megan Hughes

Is one of the best swimmers in Llandudno. I swim as many times as I can a week, and one day I hope to become a famous swimmer.

Add to Eisteddfod card: Beryl Thomas’ great, great uncle designed the Archdruid’s gown!

Add to Dion Fortune: Also wrote occult novels featuring powerful female magicians such as The Sea Priestess. She wa a key figure restoring the Chalice Well in Glastonbury, legendary resting place of the Holy Grail. Could her fascination with WATER arise from your youth in Llandudno?

Bodafon Farm Park & Bird of Prey Centre – Alpacas, birds (women run the place, mostly)

“Rev Bev” Beverley Ramsden, Llandudno

Diolch enfawr!
With many thanks to everyone who came, and especially to those who made monuments, suggested women and who helped document the occasion with photography and film.

Who knows, maybe the exhibition in Wrexham will lead to a similar process to monumentalise the women of Wrexham! And from there, the world….. mmmmmwwwwwhahahaha!

Hanes Llanddynes - Llandudno Through the Stories of The Women

Since my residency with Culture Action Llandudno in Autumn last year, I've been working on Hanes Llanddynes, a telling of the 16,000 year - long story of Llandudno, through the lives of women who have been part of it.

Hanes Llandynes - Llandudno through the Stories of Women (inspired by their memorialisation, or more often, lack of it) is now being published as a series of 31 cards, to coincide with the celebrations around the 100 years of women's Suffrage : See the cards online here, or email me (lindsey.colbourne@me.com) you'd like a hard copy.

Hanes Llanddynes also inspired some of the content on the PROCESSIONS banner, created by women from North Wales under the leadership of artist Melanie Miller. A huge, participatory art work, tens of thousands of women marched in Cardiff with banners, and Llandudno's banner carried images/messages from the card series.

I also hope to be creating something for Llawn 06 - more details soon!

Meanwhile, here is a bit of background..

Hanes Llanddynes was inspired by my residency walk with Wanda Zyborska in search of monuments and memorials. I was looking for anything at all, but Wanda was looking for those to women. Our first stop was the Tourist Information Office. Here we were told there were no monuments or memorials whatsoever in Llandudno. After some more insistent probing, it was conceded that there was one, the War Memorial, to men who lost their lives in the second world war.

Here is Wanda feeling very tired infront of the war memorial...

While engaged in trying to extract useful information at the Tourist Information Office, we were lucky to be overheard by two local women (one of whom was Sue Wolfendale who has written a history of the band stand) delivering various books/leaflets. They seemed much more interested in the questions we were asking, and mentioned a few other monuments and memorials. But, it was agreed, there are very few.

Sylvia Sleigh - world famous artist

We started to speculated on why. Wanda suggested that "You get a statue if you are rich enough, if you’ve exploited enough people … if you are a non-murdering psychopath, you get a statue". Was the lack of statues because it was a spa rather than an industrial town, and so there were no rich industrialists? And/or was it because the whole town is really a memorial to the Mostyns, the power behind the scenes, operating below the radar, in a way?

Lady Henrietta Augusta Mostyn

We wanted to get to the bottom of it. And after 8 hours of searching, lots of conversations with men and women around the town, and then many weeks more of finding things by accident, we have found more than 50 plaques, stones, carvings… and that is not even counting the too-many-to-count memorial benches (I’d estimate 100 of those). They are all very subtle memorials. It is as though memorializing has gone underground, popping up like weeds in a car park, while the stoic ‘curatorial’ presence of the Mostyns attempt to keep a grip on the surface.

We have made an online map, where you can see all we found. It is continually updated, because there are plaques lurking where you least expect it, and only yesterday I found another, to a solicitor, neatly placed next to the door of a solicitors office. It has been interesting to discover them all, and it is true that (as predicted), most of them are to men.

Dr Martha Hughes Canon - first female senator in the USA

So what if we just look at those to women, and the missing ones to women (past and present) that could have been memorialised: might we here find the lost soul of Llandudno?

The short answer is 'well, yes!'. Llandudno – as you probably know - is best known as a Victorian seaside resort: The Queen of Welsh Resorts, after all. But Hanes Llanddynes shows Llandudno’s roots reaching way back, into ancient geology and the origins of human habitation in Britain. Her branches reach forward to an uncertain future built on events that relate their origins – as a proverbial butterfly flapping its wings – to the beginnings of neoliberalism and its results, including patterns of land ownership, consumerism and climate chaos. This is also, after all, the Venice of the North (as well as God’s Waiting Room), and this maybe a Siren Call to action.

Dion Fortune - dreamer of atlantis (or was it Llys Helig?), occultist and soy milk entrepreneur

On the way, Hanes Llanddynes celebrates the interplay between the everyday and the extraordinary. We will see common themes like the bond of sisters and collective action, and some classic Llandudno favourites come through too, like the intimate connection to rock and water, strong characters, active citizens, a love of history and the sea. And quite a few queens.

There is some going with the flow, some standing up against it (although we didn’t quite get the pink hotel in), and a bit of running from it. There is quite a bit about being an angel or a harridan (or the face of an angel with a harridan inside), especially when the story turns to pioneering change.

Llanddynes challenge Llandudno’s ‘history’, because, as it turns out, there exists just as strong a ‘her’story, and it seems impossible to go back to believing it is possible ‘know’ Llandudno without it.

Miriam yr Ogof - an extraordinary cave dweller

As a young art student said to me at a CALL event in January,“We aren’t taught anything in school here about the history of women: we heard about the suffrage movement, but nothing else, and I didn’t know the first group met here! We heard nothing of all those women you’ve just talked about. We need to tell this story!”

So Hanes Llanddynes is that story. The story is inevitably incomplete, and if you have more to add, or changes to make, I'd love to hear from you!

PS

There are many other ways of telling the stories of Llandudno see (for example):
Secret Llandudno by John Lawson Reay (who also has an incredible selection of photos); The Band on the Prom by Susan M. Wolfendale;  couple of books by F. Ron Williams on Llandudno and the Mostyn Influence; diary of a Journey into North Wales in the year 1774 by Samuel Johnson ; Atgofion Hen Llandudno (Memories of Old Llandudno) written in about 1883 by Thomas Rowlands.  There are many technical archaeological, caving and geological papers to be found by searching online. Also History Points and a book about Beatrice Blore Brown is available from Llandudno Museum.

Socially engaged art - engaging in the architecture of flow

On 14th December, CALL got all their recent artists in residence together to get an overview of what had happened in each residency, and build a picture of where we've got to as a whole. As well as reviewing who we'd engaged and what the outcomes were, we were also asked about our thoughts for what next.

This blog summarises some of the conclusions I came to, in preparation for that meeting, including an example of a project that could come out of my residency....

Read more....

From Cenotaph to Selfies: a look at place through its memorialisation

One of the things I wanted to explore as part of this residency was whether 'memorialisation' - the things, people and events that have been chosen to be remembered (in a civic recognition/in memorium kind of way) - and the way in which they are memorialised say something about a place? And specifically, does that memorialisation affect our experience of being in a place, and our feelings about our past, present and future here?

Monuments are very much in the news at the moment, many being pulled down through direct action of people who feel they should no-longer have a presence, but also movements to create new ones that counter-balance, rather than erase, injustice/inequality in the past. See for example the success of the recent campaign to site the first monument to a woman in Parliament Square, London (the resulting statue of Millicent Fawcett made by Gillian Wearing).

So I was delighted when Wanda Zyborska agreed to take me on a wander around Llandudno in search of monuments and memorialising, particularly those to women. . Wanda has thought about memorials a lot (the photo above is her being tired of war, in front of the Cenotaph). And I like the way she think, and what she does with that thinking. For example, for 6 years, she has undertaken annual ritual re-veiling of the controversial civic statue of H.M. Stanley as part of a public protest about a man who supported slavery and was guilty of crimes against humanity.

Clasically , monuments are to 'heros': typically men of power and success, chosen and built by the rich. Or of self sacrifice, after exceptional service to mankind. They can also be to a central person taking part in an event. They are dominant modes of expression venerated by dominant structures. And in any situation, only the choices made by the dominant group will be heard/listened to.

But it is different in Llandudno.

The best way to get a flavour of what we found - on our 8 hour odyssey - is to take a look at this interactive map of what we found, including sound clips of Wanda talking about what we found here

Apart from the Cenotaph (and the new cenotaph), it is all very subtle. This is not a town built by loud industrialists, by the huge Mostyn Estate as a watering hole for (mostly) northern visitors, in order to make most money from the land they acquired after the 1843 Enclosure Act. And they still own the vast majority of the land in Llandudno - buildings (and land, including the Prom) are almost entirely leasehold. And they are Estate colours.

So what we found, as we wandered around the town, is that Llandudno has hardly any monuments of the kind we'd expect to find in a town with a population of about 33,000.

In fact, there is not only one statue of a real person - Queen Victoria (In Happy Valley above, with the Gorsedd stones behind). Llandudno is not the place for heroics, major battles, major fortunes, but a place to come quietly, to enjoy 'Hardd-Hafan-Hedd', a 'beautiful haven of peace', before passing on (to eternity or back to a life elsewhere).

And what is memorialised reflects this perfectly: Entertainment (conductors, Punch and Judy, film makers); imagination (Alice in Wonderland); supportive people (women who have contributed to churches and good causes) and tragedy (mostly involving the sea and weather) rather than heroics. Mostly these are in the form of plaques of various kinds.

You have to seek them out (or follow the interactive map).

What we concluded was that the whole town is, in fact, is a memorial to the power and lineage and longevity of the Mostyn Estate. It is very subtle - street and building names, plaques and so on. And this speaks volumes of the 'curating' role of the Mostyn Estate: Still the most powerful force in the town today.

And what of others?

Well they are around too, and they are monuments by the people, of the people: dozens if not hundreds of memorial benches as well as The Hill of Names, Ted yr Ogof, The Winged Lady, Blodwen (Lady of the Little Orme), the WWII Roll of Honour, these are all of 'everyday people' - including a surprising number of women - without major thrusting heroics. 

Even the boulders that fell onto Marine drive during the floods in 1993 are memorialised by 'Not the Biggest Boulder that Fell onto Marine Drive'.

This is all in keeping with the transience of the 'non-Mostyn' Llandudno: the people with leaseholds, renting, homeless (with a tradition of living in caves going back hundreds of years)

Is the naming of Llandudno after St Tudno, son of the errant Seithenyn (he who let in the floods that lost us Cantref ofa Gwaelod), foretelling of flooding in Llandudno and our need to do something about it?

We thought this was all quite interesting. So in the last week of my residency, Wanda and I held a 'salon-style' evening discussion for CALL at Y Tabernacl to discuss and develop the results. As well as discussing what we'd found, and sharing information (including about the new and Obelisk - at Ffrith Hill, 1993. Built by a private owner when he restored the hall on an SSSI, opposed by the Ffrith Obelisk Action Group ) we also shared ideas about of the future of monuments and memorialising in Llandudno.

Suggestions included:

• Temporary monument festival (a bit like the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square)

• Tiny monuments, inserted into crevices

• Plaques on deck chairs

• Contemporary Roll of Honour - people serving the community today

• Sylvia Sleigh (world famous feminist painter, originally Llandudno)

• Dr Martha Hughes Cannon (first woman senator in America, who was born in Llandudno)

• Christmas Tudno Jones (lifeboat man for years and years)

• Mr Traversi (band conductor)

• Brenda (Hope Restored)

• Site of the original Llandudno village

• Women who ran boarding houses (the foundation of the new Llandudno)

• Monkey Man

• A solar-powered water feature in the sea

• Quiet patrons - those who gave without making a noise about it (eg the Walkers?)

After the event, Alexandra Parry, who is also artist in residence for CALL at the moment, sent Wanda and I a link to a fantastic sounding monument-based project, running at the moment, called Monument Lab in Philadelphia. It was like a fully realised version of where all this might go! They have an interactive map of all the suggestions for monuments that they are gathering from the people of the town, prototype monuments of fantastically varied kinds, and plans for an exhibition that brings it all together. Now wouldn't THAT be interesting?

The next step is to map/tell the story of Llanddynes (Herstory), a past, present and future of Llandudno through the stories of the women of the town. Meanwhile our map of memorialisation in Llandudno is, of course, itself a monument.

This is (not) the end...

What a month! I didn’t realise just how much focusing on one place would affect me. It feels both so much longer and hardly any time at all.  I have walked, listened, talked, thought, drunk, eaten, smelt, heard, felt and experienced Llandudno in many different ways and with many different people… and yet feel I’ve only just scraped the surface.

It has taken me back to my roots, challenged my ideas of what Llandudno is, made me confused, welcomed, angry, sad, delighted, over-awed, foolish, caring, surprised, joyful and energized.

Llandudno is a multi-hearted, multi-layered place, a place of connection but also of contradictions and difference.  As Rebecca Solnit says:

“A city is many worlds in the same place… it compounds many versions without quite reconciling them, though some cross over to live in multiple worlds”.

Working out how to do justice to the many worlds in one place is the challenge (and fun!) now.  I wanted to create a “People’s Map”. It is clear to me now that this map cannot and will not be singular: and no matter how many maps I make, it will still be hugely subjective and selective and won’t come even close to describing the place adequately, and even less close to the infinite number of maps there could be.

There are already some maps to see: There’s the psychological maps ofColeg Llandrillo students, and individual maps of  walks I went on with inidividual people. There’s also a map for monuments and one for personal centres. But these are just beginnings!

I want to map more of the individual walks, add more detail to the monuments and centres. And then I want to move on to make more ‘cross-over’ maps, hopefully with the help of a local cartographer, to explore some of the dynamic tensions and juxtapositions that lie at the heart of Llandudno.

I’m also exploring the possibility of longer-term collaborative projects and interventions in Llandudno including Llanddynes/Herstory (llandudno past, present and future as told through the stories of the women) and one on Llandudno as the Venice of the North (looking at the past, present and future of water). And I’m looking forward too, to a possible visit by psychogeographer, Phil Smith, who we hope will come and lead a walk, and give a talk. Perhaps by then, I’ll have something to show!

Meantime, I’d like to say a massive THANK YOU to everyone who has taken me on a walk, come to events, spoken to me on the street, shown an interest, lent me books, sent me links, recommended things. And thank you especially to all at CALL, for the opportunity and the support and encouragement. It has been – and continues to be - a pleasure.

The commons, the home, the state and the private sector - an evening with the Friends of the West Shore

On Monday evening last week (6th October 2017), about half way through my residency with Culture Action Llandudno (CALL), I was invited to address the Friends of the West Shore. The West Shore has been nominated numerous times by a wide range of people - from tourists to homeless to well heeled residents - in Llandudno, as their centre of the town. I was interested to find out more about this place, and how it worked. Is it one of those spaces where key issues are played out, in microcosm?

And so it turned out to be. This is a long blog, but I hope you'll stick with it, because for me, it started to bring everything together. This was the People's Map of Llandudno in action.

When the Victorian version of Llandudno was built, the decision to make it face the North Shore, rather than the West (which 'provided far superior views') was due to the fact that the tide goes out an 'impractically' long way here, leaving stretches of 'treacherous sand and mud'. This decision has opened up the West Shore as (relatively) free of the commercial focus that is at the heart of the North Shore/Llandudno town. So there is more room here for manoevre. The Victorian poet, Matthew Arnold does a beautiful description of the juxtaposition of the West Shore to the rest of Llandudno - it's well worth a read because it sets the scene...

200 years later, this Monday evening was stormy. The famous Llandudno wind was doing its stuff and kite surfers were making the most of the wind and the enormous stretches of sand. Brilliant shafts of light picked out their lollipop coloured sails against the dark storm clouds. I managed not to take any photos of it. Photos not taken are interesting: Moments missed? Or more salient because of it?

Having an hour or so before the meeting started at 6pm, I took a wander around the local area, going inland to escape the wind (as I'd heard people do) and found a space used by young people (well, young men - noone female around), playing football on what i found out later is called the Oval Cricket ground. 

There I met Mike, in his early 20s, walking his sister's dog, Warburton. Warburton had a rock in his mouth to calm him down, but Mike was concerned in case I had a dog. I reassured him I didn't, and explained why I was wondering around.

"Lovely area isn’t it?" he says. "I really enjoy it.  I’ve lived round here most of my life. When I moved to Manchester I just missed the place. My family, friends and.. yeah. I went out there for my brother in law, he had a business – window cleaning - but he got attacked by a group of lads in Oldham. Lost his right eye. I went out there for a year to help him out with the business. I enjoyed what I was doing, I was helping the family out, and I liked Manchester, it’s probably my favourite city. But I'm not a city person. I like the Orme. I love the sea. He’s not mine [Warburton], he’s my sisters. Whenever I’m looking after him I go everywhere – the Little orme, Great orme, the beaches. I like getting out."

I ask him if he thinks there’s much here for young people to do? "No, not really, no. But I play, I like playing computers,  I’ve got a PC, I play with my brother. I’ve got a big family to be honest, so that keeps me busy. It does help to have things to do. I think kids are getting too much into computers and not spending enough time with people. Going out like superbowl , cinema, that’s what kids should be doing. Some are, but not mahy.  cineball… there’s a different generation now."

I ask him how he'd describe Llandudno to someone who didn't know it.

"It’s a very picturesque, beautiful seaside town where I've lived most of my life. Over the last 15 years it become a much more well known town and it's still growing. It’s not a bad place. Don’t get me wrong – it used to be – it probably still is - nicknamed ‘Heavens Doorway’, there’s so many old people here. They all come on coach trips to the hotels on the front.

"But it's not all like that. You’ve got certain places you can go but some people might be uncomfortable, like walking down dark alley ways in the dark by themselves. My brother’s girlfriend has had a few people following here, not to the extent where it’s had to go to the police or anything. But you know, blokes are blokes. You get idiots everywhere you go. The same minorities everywhere. You can’t just single out a place and go 'this is beautiful and there’s no crime here. It’s both, isn’t it?

"I enjoy my life I’m quite happy. Like anyone who is happy now, has been to bad places. I’ve been depressed in the past, I’ve walked the streets, not having anywhere to live. I’ve come out on the bright side, and I think I’d prefer to be the way I am now. I’m not swimming in money, not got a big house, I haven’t got a car, but I’m happy.

"There’s so many people that stay on the Orme in caves and.. it's not nice, I hate seeing it all the time. It’s not just in this country, its everywhere. Just yesterday I said to my sister, 'There’s 35,000 people say in Llandudno. If every one person gave one item, anything, how much that’d do for a society of people who haven't got anything'.

I myself want to look into how to set up something, whether through the church or council.  In order to help these kids. I’ve not been in many of their situations, and I can’t put myself in their experience, but I’ve been to places, in my head, that are very dark. So I know how it can be. And it really isn’t nice. I want to help, you know".

What a nice man. I told him of the Hope Restored initiative, supporting homeless people in Llandudno, run by Brenda, from a church on the West Shore. Perhaps he could start there?

I ran to the meeting at the Lilly on the West Shore, arriving just in time. Blowing in through the West-facing doors.

I'd expected maybe 6, 10 people. There was already at least 20 there, and more chairs were being brought in. By the end, I think there must have been more than 30. Including a community liaison Officer, Chris Perkins. Gerry Sweeney, who had been described to me as 'at the heart of everything' in Llandudno was chairing the meeting in the absence of the usual chair, Louise, who'd had to go to Cardiff on council business.

To get a flavour of what the group does, take a look at their facebook page.

I was given the opportunity to introduce my People's Map of Llandudno project. More people had heard of what an 'artist in residence' was (about 6 people) than what Culture Action Llandudno was ( about 4 people). They seemed interested, and gve me about 20 recommendations for their personal centres of Llandudno. Gerry had put me on first, but the meeting got so interesting, I stayed to the end.

The main agenda item was to go through what they'd found on a 'walkabout' of the area. I like that: Embodied knowledge in action.

The thing that struck me was just how connected they were - their solutions to the 'issues' they'd found on the walkabout involved things like the community support officer getting aglass manufacturer in the area to replace a broken window in a shelter. And sharing their knowledge of how the memorial bench system works to solve the unmaintained benches by working with the council to get them replaced at the same time as raising money for the council.  They also talked of the recently restored (and in my mind one of the most beautiful buildings in Llandudno) Tram Shelter, and looking for someone to start using it. I suggested they get in touch with CALL (or maybe Helfa Gelf) - what an amazing creative space it could be.

The 'spider walk' they had arranged in Haulfre gardens was cancelled because Jenny (who I'd met on my walk with Francesca) was busy protecting the baby seal on the beach.

Two conversations I found tricky: One was about the West Shore Logo (another white rabbit - aargh) and the other was about replacing the glass in the Shelters on the shore. It was known as a 'controversial issue' and in the name of 'democracy', it went to a vote. But, (and this is the result of 25 years of facilitating discussions like this, so I appreciate others don't look at it this way!) I felt this was done before all the issues had been discussed. The vote went against it, but the woman next to me lent over and said 'well, there's no point, it's just a waste of money, it'll get broken again'. It was a classic opportunity to get below the 'positions' (opinion for or against replacement) into the area of 'interests and needs' (ie what underpins those positions) and so finding a way forward that addresses concerns.

This incredibly energetic and empowered - and inspiring - group is doing important stuff about infrastructure. But it struck me too that it was, in a way, limited to issues of appearance, benches falling into disrepair, picnic tables being sited too near toilets, rusty this and that. What about the big, systemic issues? I asked about flooding: "Oh no, we are not worried about that here - it's never flooded. Or only once, but that was to do with problems with the pipe".  I asked about the homeless. "Don't talk about them here". Quite a contrast to the view expressed by Mike at the Oval.

After the meeting finished, and the the group was leaving, Chris Perkins, the community liaison officer at the meeting (who, it turns out, had both gone to school in Manchester with, and policed in Moss Side with, my brother in law - how strong are the links to NW England stilL!), told me stories that illustrated some of the attitude towards the homeless. [Yesterday, Chris took me in the police van to visit the Hope Restored initiative during one of their open mornings at the church - more of that another time!]

Chris is well respected among the homeless people I've met on this residency. "Oh yeah, he's alright" they say. He told me the closure of the caves was due to 'health and safety concerns' because the caves were' full of human excrament and used needles' and would be a danger to [non-homeless] people who went in there (later I heard it was because of butterlies and bats).

 But of course, no-one who is not homeless would be going in there. All that happens is that homeless people have to sleep on the street. Chris then told me of a knife attack and rape on one homeless lad a few nights before. Awfully, it turns out it was probably Ley, who I'd met on my first day of the residency. Ley had said how unsafe he felt in his sleeping bag, and that 'at least in the caves you felt safe'. So here, a real danger, a danger in fact realised is deemed less of a danger than a very unlikely danger to a non-homeless (homeful?) person.

These are complicated issues, and I don't want to try to over simplify them, but I'd just read an article by George Monbiot, "Don't let the rich get even richer on the assets we all share"  which I think starts to get to some of the underlying issues.

In the article, Monbiot argues that the central debate over whether state intervention should be minimised (and the markets given free-reign) or that state ownership and regulation should be expanded is based on a mistaken premise. "In fact", he argues, "there are four major economic sectors: the market, the state, the household and the commons. The neglect of the last two by both neoliberals and social democrats has created many of the monstrosities of our times..."

What he says next really chimed with me in terms of all i'd found out about Llandudno - the incredible 'fiefdom' (as many people have described it) of the Mostyn Estate, which still owns the vast majority of the land in and around Llandudno, secured mostly after Enclosure Act that they themselves pushed through Parliament, and the role of groups like Friends of the West Shore, and Hope Restored:

"... another great subsidy, which all of us have granted [is] the vast wealth the economic elite has accumulated at our expense, through its seizure of the fourth sector of the economy: the commons.

"That it is necessary to explain the commons testifies to their neglect (despite the best efforts of political scientists such as the late Elinor Ostrom). A commons is neither state nor market. It has three main elements. First a resource, such as land, water, minerals, scientific research, hardware or software. Second a community of people who have shared and equal rights to this resource, and organise themselves to manage it. Third the rules, systems and negotiations they develop to sustain it and allocate the benefits.

"A true commons is managed not for the accumulation of capital or profit, but for the steady production of prosperity or wellbeing. It belongs to a particular group, who might live in or beside it, or who created and sustain it. It is inalienable, which means that it should not be sold or given away. Where it is based on a living resource, such as a forest or a coral reef, the commoners have an interest in its long-term protection, rather than the short-term gain that could be made from its destruction.

The commons have been attacked by both state power and capitalism for centuries. Resources that no one invented or created, or that a large number of people created together, are stolen by those who sniff an opportunity for profit. The saying, attributed to Balzac, that “behind every great fortune lies a great crime” is generally true. “Business acumen” often amounts to discovering novel ways of grabbing other people’s work and assets.

The theft of value by people or companies who did not create it is called enclosure. Originally, it meant the seizure – supported by violence – of common land. The current model was pioneered in England, spread to Scotland, then to Ireland and the other colonies, and from there to the rest of the world. It is still happening, through the great global land grab.

Enclosure creates inequality. It produces a rentier economy: those who capture essential resources force everyone else to pay for access. It shatters communities and alienates people from their labour and their surroundings. The ecosystems commoners sustained are liquidated for cash. Inequality, rent, atomisation, alienation, environmental destruction: the loss of the commons has caused or exacerbated many of the afflictions of our age...."

"I’m not proposing we abandon either market or state, but that we balance them by defending and expanding the two neglected sectors. I believe there should be wages for carers, through which the state and private enterprise repay part of the subsidy they receive. And communities should be allowed to take back control of resources on which their prosperity depends. For example, anyone who owns valuable land should pay a local community land contribution (a form of land value tax): compensation for the wealth created by others. Part of this can be harvested by local and national government, to pay for services and to distribute money from richer communities to poorer ones. But the residue should belong to a commons trust formed by the local community. One use to which this money might be put it is to buy back land, creating a genuine commons and regaining and sharing the revenue.

A commons, unlike state spending, obliges people to work together, to sustain their resources and decide how the income should be used. It gives community life a clear focus. It depends on democracy in its truest form. It destroys inequality. It provides an incentive to protect the living world. It creates, in sum, a politics of belonging."

I don't think I've had a single conversation where the Mostyn Estate has not come up in some way or other. People feel that this 'beautiful/clean/preserved' character of Llandudno is largely down to them, and appreciate that. But they also see it as sometimes being a hidden force, perhaps going too far (eg colours of houses), sometimes keeping it 'stuck in the past', demanding too much rent, not being accountable and so on. What struck me about this meeting with the FOWS is that community initiatives like this were part of the commons, and illustrate ways in which this vast estate could perhaps start to let go some of its grip... and to pay back some of what it has taken?

Spirited Away on the Orme: A walk with Francesca Colussi

I met Francesca at the Finding the Centre event last weekend. She told me of a walk she likes to take and on Thursday she took me on it. It is a long and beautiful walk, one that she'd started taking in July while her children were away for two weeks in Italy. She particularly enjoys it on a windy day: Spirited Away. Llandudno is completely different approached like this, sped through, rather than a destination. It feels like an alien invasion on an ancient landscape. Which, of course, it was. Is.

The walk is 17.5km, and it took us 5 hours. We talked of literature, film, fabric design, sustainability, careers and culture, of moving to new places, what Llandudno is like as a town, the grip of consumerism, the differences between approaches to food, alcohol, religion, children and education in Italy and North Wales. Of the pros and cons of perfectionism and the need for solitude, and of the other side - of isolation - if youdo not quit fit with a place.

Francesca talked of her work mapping personal geographies with textiles, and her approach opened my mind to freeing 'maps' from location: her (award winning) work is stunning - see here for images of her early work . Here is someone with arts and culture and sustainability running through her veins, that Llandudno doesn't seem quite able to either sustain nor reap the benefits from.  It makes me realise just how important are CALL, Llawn and Providero as initiatives that are raising innovative, cultural, more contemporary expectations of Llandudno. Perhaps we should re-name Upper Mostyn Street 'Start-up Street' or 'Contemporary Culture Street'? I had noticed the other day, on my walk with Wanda Zyborska, that Providero had a poster for 'Creatives Anonymous'...

At the end of our walk, Francesca gave me this beautiful work she'd made (2016): Combining the Orme with yarns from her textile course she'd taken in Derby. This is Francesca's map:

But back to our walk. It was a beautiful sunny day, and I couldn't help but notice patterns and design everywhere.

We met seals, goats, sheep (sheeps), cows, model glider fliers (grounded, ironically, by an unusual lack of wind) and the sharply dressed Susan Harper from Hay-on-Wye. We also met Jenny, volunteering every day for 3 weeks protecting seals raising a baby, that she'd spotted: She's got notices posted to try to get people to stop interfering with them, to give them some space. Here is a quick visual record of our walk together.

Next day, Francesca did the walk again. A more elemental walk: The wind had returned! "I was rewarded" she said "with a rainbow"....

Llandudno from Llandrillo: The Map as Art, by Foundation Students

What do 28 Art Foundation students think of Llandudno, and how would they map Llandudno? Becks Hardy-Griffith from CALL and I set out to find out yesterday morning.

In an hour and a half, the students, just 2 weeks into their course, came up with some fantastic - and surprising - insights and maps. We talked of the impossibility of an 'objective' map, the subjective, the personal and the political dimensions of mapping, and of the map-as-art.

It was great to hear the views of such a wide range of people: In response to the question 'what one word, image, phrase, symbol or sound (in any language) would you use to describe Llandudno?', their answers were:

So seagulls - wild seagulls - were top of the list (number-wise) the sea/beach, tourism, busy/lively/loud, shops (MUCH more of these later) and a signicant number about the 'pastels or cream/old/lacking umph/beautiful but missing young people.  Some mention too of nature, it being interesting, and some more cryptic views 'chess board' and B-way.

So perhaps we should replace the current Hardd - Hafan - Hedd description of Llandudnowith something based on their views (and images). The current one apparently comes from Queen Elizabeth of Roumania, aka Carmen Sylva novelist and poet, who visited Llandudno and fell in love with it (changing her original more negative opinion of it after taking tea with the Mostyns), calling it a “a beautiful haven of peace”. Carmen Sylva who was also admitted to the Gorsedd of the Bards.

Some maps were very personal, charting places and experiences in Llandudno in different ways:

I was particularly delighted that some even got political. (The observant among you may notice that this is Trine, who was my first 'take me on a walk' person is also on the Foundation course)

It was very striking just how many maps featured shopping. Many of the students ONLY knew the shops and the beach. But if you look closely there is a great deal of information in here, about how (predominantly younger) people experience Llandudno, their routes, their relationship with others...

With many thanks to Amanda Hamilton-Williams, Coleg Llandrillo, for the opportunity to run the workshop.

PS Just found this video on youtube about Llandudno - really interesting comments underneath it, another way of mapping Llandudno?

Come and Find the centre! 2pm saturday 23rd September

150 years ago, the first Blue Plaque was laid in 1867 (by the Royal Society for the Arts, to Lord Byron). Now you can site your very own personal Centre of Llandudno blue plaque if you come to the 'Finding the Centre' event in Llandudno this Saturday (23rd September 2017).

I've been asking the people I've met during the residency so far, and no two people have suggested the same place yet.

Nominations range from the steps of a church, somewhere near Builder Street, sand-dunes on the West Shore, the grabber machine on the pier, ice-cream and individual people... 

Please come at 2pm: You will get your 'centre orientation', and then set off to locate your plaque. If you return with some kind of documentation of where you have sited it (a photo, description, rubbing, found object, drawing, map etc), there will be PRIZES as well as refreshments and cake. You can even make use of especially energised divining rods.

Your Centre will also be placed on the map, together with any explanation of why you have chosen it.

For more, to book a place (you are also welcome to just turn up!), and for directions to the Tabernacl, see http://www.cultureactionllandudno.co.uk/events/o-fama-i-fama-finding-the-centre-with-lindsey-colbourne/

In search of temporary autonomous zones (TAZs) with Lisa Hudson

 "A TAZ", quotes Lisa Hudson - the Natural Anarchist, reading from 'Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution' by Andrew Boyd and Dave Oswold Mitchell, "is a liberated area where one can be for something, not just against, and where new ways of being human together can be explored and experimented with. Locating itself in the cracks and fault lines in the global grid of control and alientation, a TAZ is an eruption of free culture where life is experienced at maximum intensity".

Today we spent two hours - and about 7 km according to a new app I have on my phone - wandering around the inbetween bits of Llandudno, looking for TAZs. We started at Cafe Provedero, a crowd-funded-coffee-heaven in the north part of town and then wandered aimlessly about the centre (looking up longingly at the empty spaces above shops) before heading off in search of periphery.

We were loooking for 'spaces' (geographic, social, cultural, imaginal) within Llandudno, with potential to flower as autonomous zones. We found some, imagined some, talked to people about their ideas for them, got some fabric samples and a free bolster from the closing down bed shop, saw swans flying overhead and wondered about just how many cups of tea are served in Llandudno a day.

Over our own up of tea, and then while sitting in an already establised TAZ off Builder Street, we cooked up a plan to make one, a TAZ intervention, in one of the spaces that has come up again and again in conversations round the town. An intervention that, as Hakim Bey says, is "a guerilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen, before the State can crush it".

And I am really excited about the possibilities of that...

Walking with Trine, Al, Pete, Ley Googleit Evans, Jenny, Wenno and Ned

What a day! I met so many interesting people - and those words do NOT do them justice - and found out so much I probably have enough material to work on for the next 4 weeks. The idea of a 2-D map of Llandudno has already gone out the window: Llandudno consists of parallel universes, each isolated from the others by so many forces it is hard to comprehend the town as a coherent singular place.

Molly's cafe

Molly's Cafe next to the train station, a place full of locals known by name, and decorated with skylines from cities around the world. The universe I entered today from here was of homelessness and internationalism, contract killing and rare flowers, generosity and graveyards, churches and radical inspirational thinking, humour, dereliction and enormous amounts of energy. This is not a staid Llandudno of tourists and middle classes. It was raw and creative and edgy, of being outside the 'mainstream' (physically, mentally, economically and socially) and of the cohesive power of these self-contained alternative universes.

Jenny and Ley and Jenny's dog Poppit heading off

The centres of Llandudno for people I met in these universes were as diverse as: the steps of the church (where the homeless meet); the library (where books are arranged like modern gravestones); the West Shore (where parties can be held in the sanddunes) and the Welsh Church (where the Welsh-speaking community get together).

Trine outside the graveyard at the start of our walk

I've shot 2 hours of video, and I think it would make a film that would stand on its own as is. I don't want to say more about what they said here. People need to be talking of their worlds themselves. With many thanks especially to Trine (who spent 5 hours with me), and to Ley and Jenny for a mind-blowing half hour conversation outside Molly's.

Here's a little story from Trine, told to me next to the ruin of Tudno Castle (by co-incidence, it had been originally run down Tudno castle by Jenny's father into bankrupcy).  I had to write down this story because by then, my camera battery had ran out:

"I met him twice. Sir Ernest Hall. He was a concert musician. A very good concert musician. A very successful concert musician. And he bought a property which is a seriously big property. Seriously big [large bus goes past]. It's an old carpet mill [looking over at the closing down sale of the bed shop on the corner]. It's in Halifax. If you've seen them in Lancashire/Yorkshire, you'll know how big they can be. This one is big big. It was going into dereliction. He rescued it and everyone thought he was mad [we pause to watch a man play air guitar on the traffic island as another character, also known to Trine as 'the Gnome' walks past with a huge upright dark blue knitted hat].

'What the hell are you going to do with it?' people asked. The mill was six, eight stories high. Big floor spaces. Five or six buildings joined together, all of which would have been to do with carpet production. Obviously with carpets you need a lot of space. There would have been the warehouse. There would have been production. There would have been finishing space and so on. And I don't know how, but he had a vision but that vision was to create a community. So he did.

Trine with wool collected from the factory floor by the owner of the bed shop on the corner opposite Tudno Castle

"So in the building now there are banks and there are government offices. There are working companies. And the wealthy companies take a big amount of space but not all the space. There are some spaces not fit for their purpose. In those small areas there are secondary companies like radio, television, experimental spaces - there's art space, studios. Some of those are free because he created a mixed economy and he believed in giving people a start in life. Of course, at the beginning, people thought he was mad. As he got some tenants in, people started saying 'somethings happening at the Crossley Mill. I've seen peope in there, doing things'. And over the years, this big mill revived [we inspect the mushroom that Trine had found on his way to meet me, growing up in a crack in the tarmac - we found many mushrooms on our walk].

"Last time I went there was a guy with a start up business making furniture. A sculptor using scrap metal. I joined a poetry group there and we met in the board room. There was an art gallery. Classical concerts were held there.

A huge story of revival".

Trine with icecream at the end of our walk

Here is the map of my walk with Trine: It's a lovely walk. You can browse it from a computer or take it with you on a phone. I highly recommend it!

Finding my feet (and getting blown away)

So, as the autumn draws in (terrifyingly quickly), the hours are ticking before my residency starts on Monday. As it is (for me) the best weekend of the year in Llandudno, with the free Llawn Arts Festival in full swing, I thought I'd go and test the water to see what people might think of the project, and to test out a few aspects of it. I hope this quick blog of some of the results might give you a flavour....

With a box full of lovely fliers for the project (many thanks to CALL for making these), I started off by wandering up to y Tabernacl, as I'm going to be based in y Festri there. It had been transformed into a beautiful and surreal haven! Perfect! We'll be hosting the 'Finding the Centre' here at 2pm on Saturday 23rd July, when you can come and get your blue plaque and set off in search of naming and tagging your personal Centre of Llandudno.

Two highlights of the Friday evening were engaging with the Mostyn Portffolio group of young artists, and meeting a gaggle (their chosen collective noun!) of town councillors and the deputy Mayor at the opening of Llawn. Their enthusiasm for the project was a fantastic way to begin! Topics ranged from summer and winter dog walking routes, public toilets known as Bog Island and laylines of the universe running through the Great Orme (good job i've got some divining rods to use in the 'Finding the Centre' event on Saturday 23rd September).

On Saturday, I started off by going to Look Out. A fantastic project created by Andy Field and pupils from Ysgol Morfa Rhianedd, with the pupils talking to you personally about their experience of Llandudno, and their visions for the future (utopian and distopian). As we sat gazing out over Llandudno (the picture above is of the view), I was guided by Ella: here is a little clip of what she said:

You can listen to the results at aplacetolookout.co.uk, alongside similar projects across the world. I really hope we can add this extraordinary work to the People's Map.

On the way back down I meet locals Rebecca (moved here when she was 5) and Steve (born and bred here) on the Zig Zag walk down towards the Grand Hotel.

We walked and talked of hanging gardens or an icerink as an alternative to the proposed flat development next to the Grand (you can see the site above, between the hotel on the left and the arcade on the right), which is very much opposed by residents who are "trying to organise against it", the hospitality and anti-racist nature of Welsh people, wind, floods, and why they alway return to Llandudno.

As I made it to the sea front, I started recording a soundscape on the Esplanade, when I came across Benjamin Buck and Charles Gershom,  Host Operator, making their definitive Audio Chronology Survey of various places across Llandudno.

I'd love these sound recordings to go on the map!

Then lunch with Wanda Zyborska. We talked monuments, monumentalising and naming. I'll be walking with Wanda to find out more, and hope she'll give a talk at some point about her fascinating, long term work with monuments, which has taken a topic turn with recent world Monument - toppling. We even tried out some delicious mini-monuments....

Then, after a quick chat with Mr & Mrs Clarke about psychogeography and 'deep mapping', I returned home, excited and exhausted by all the ideas and connections... I can't wait to start on Monday!