Feather Your Nest Workshops: Find out about when we designed archetypal models of bird boxes to look like three housing types found in Barrow, and invited locals to help build them.

Art Gene are collaborating with The Delfinia Foundation, London and Cooking Sections. For their first project in Barrow, Cooking Sections will be inviting a diverse group of local stakeholders to attend their CLIMAVORE performance dinner (March).

Installed in April 2017, One for Sorrow is an artwork commemorating the WW1 and WW2 practice trenches which now lie buried under sand, plant and animal life on the North Walney National Nature Reserve.

Whilst Artist-in-Residence on South Walney, Hannah Brackston learnt that the island’s population over the years, had each amassed a collection of interesting and curious objects. But there was no place to share these finds…

The final design of the Razzle-Dazzle Hides, by Art Gene and its associate Research Design Architecture, references Niko Tinbergen (1907 – 1988) and his Nobel Prize winning research with gull colonies on South Walney Nature Reserve.

While Artist-in-Residence on South Walney, artist Hannah Brackston heard locals express their desire for a small café for visitors. The Sunday Cake Club was a playful test of that idea in practice.

This page details a small selection of the different kinds of events Art Gene established as part of the Islands of Barrow immersive research programme. This work informs and underpins the design work undertaken by our Art Gene Associates, challenges our approach and keeps our thinking fresh, alive and we hope relavent beyond the period of our active engagement.

The white lime rendered inn looks like a typical south Lakeland farmhouse with barns & outbuildings. Possibly initially a chandlers, an inn is thought to have been on the site since the 17th century. The current building is 18th & 19th century.

Tracks of the Ironmasters – Project Diary

For a brief period following the Second World War until the early 70’s the future was exciting. This excitement found form in the design of everything from furniture, fabrics and white goods to automobile design and architecture. The future was espoused on mass through the interiors and architecture of popular TV & Sci-Fi series’ which not always embraced a clear utopian ideal but at least looked like the future. That future gradually seemed more sinister, we began to fear technology and as the mass housing schemes of the 1960’s began to crumble so did a Utopian dream.

The “We need Creative…Er… Things!”… phenomena is alive and well in seats of power across the world, it seems, but do they really know what they are asking for? The next stage in human evolution (if there is to be one) is, I believe, not about finding creative ways to maintain the status quo. It is about making creativity ubiquitous, powerful, purposeful and ultimately influential in that it should change the why and way we live.

Email responses from participants received following the charrette

Images of the Re-Visioning Utopia Charrette set against the Daily Itinerary of Research Trips and Studio-based work.

This is not a war between Cumbria and Lancashire or Cumbria and Lancashire and Morecambe Bay or all of these, others and the Government – It is not a war between Industry and Nature or birds and buildings, tourists and local communities, it is a war against irreversible Climate Change.

A town can be a work of art – in theory at least – much as a person may be – each have been amongst art’s most common subjects; yet with towns, art and people, as we all know, the true value lies beyond the aesthetic.