Myrtle street 1967

Myrtle Street may have been identified as an area of regeneration, however for many years this was a vibrant community hub or shops, cafes, a bank, houses and viable alternative for amenity and meeting places to the city centre. As we look around now and see shopkeepers and restaurateurs on Myrtle Parade contending with empty premises either side and poorly maintained streets and pathways, it is surprising to think the fortune of a community and its environment can change so drastically in such a small number of years.

Myrtle Street 2009

However, the more digging ‘If you notice…’ embarked on, it became clear that looks can be deceptive and Myrtle Street and its surrounding streets are still home to many lively characters who care a lot about their community and the streets and buildings that make it up. Furthermore, the remaining businesses and community facilities which choose to remain on Myrtle Street, are solely responsible for bringing many of our participants together: it is the very street and its buildings themselves which offer a route for connection between college students and community residents, or Crown Street Resource Centre artists and MOWLL self-advocates.

This was the primary inspiration behind the second ‘If you notice…’ workshop entitled ‘Myrtle Street Retrospective’. With the help of local photographer Sue Millburn (on a slightly less chilly but equally wet Tuesday in November) we gathered in MOWLL’s resource room in the Eleanor Rathbone building on Myrtle Street and set about our task of recording the area as it is now, in reflection of its changing appearance and changing built environment.

Location map

‘If you notice…’ provided participants with a wealth of archive images sourced from Liverpool Records Office, as well as maps to locate the viewpoints depicted. Then, armed with varying sizes of camera, a group set off on a photographic mission to take new archive images from the same viewpoints captured many years before. The results were very revealing of the degree of change experienced in this small area, with some buildings having completely disappeared of altered beyond recognition.

Those who chose to stay in the warm were guided by our artist facilitator Tracey Eastman, the group explored creating collage pieces that captured the concept of change in a still image. People were encouraged to use photographs of the area to create repetitive patterns. We wanted people to think about how they could combine elements of new and old images to continue to think about how the area has changed.

After returning from the cold and having a spot of lunch the group continued working on indivdual and group responses to Myrtle Street.

All in all a great day despite the shocking weather and we recieved lovely feedback from all the groups. Big thanks to Sue and Tracey for their support on the day x

Our Community Aspirations workshop explored our group’s ideas about how we could make regeneration more inclusive and beneficial to all. The session was led by Liverpool architect Su Stringfellow with support from the ‘If you notice…’ team and our wonderful volunteers on the day Hannah and Anna.

During the morning we asked the participants to think about the positives and negative of the built environment around Myrtle Street. Su suggested four key areas for consideration: Access, Safety, Design and Mission. Using photos of the area each group highlighted the changes they felt needed to be made before coming together to share their ideas.

For the second part of the morning we asked each participant to create an individual mood-board considering the changes they felt were necessary. We asked people to assume a role such as; developer, local resident or local business. This will enable people to consider what regeneration priorities are from different perspectives.

After a very large lunch we asked people to present their ideas to begin to form our masterplan. Using stickers we prioritised which ideas were the most important to us all, for example is it important that we include a community centre, or a college, or both?

After defining our priority buildings and spaces to include in our masterplan, we set to building our ‘texture map’. This involved tracing the outline of the Myrtle Street area from our baseboard, and breaking down into smaller groups we defined zones on the map including an area for retail and residential development, an area for a community centre and communal garden space and a refurbished community college with more accessibility and a friendlier aesthetic.

Each group excitedly ploughed into our ample piles of resources including recycled cardboard, photographic images of textures found around the area such as bricks and leaves, which were then ripped and torn and applied to the baseboard to create layers and textures. Some group members responded to the question by imagining structures which they would like to see in the area, others by adapting the structures and the street scene that exist.

After an hour of cutting, and gluing, and building in our smaller groups, we came together for a period of consultation – the zones were brought together like jigsaw pieces on the baseboard and for the first time we took a bird’s eye view of our masterplan in 3-D. This was really useful for all the groups to take a look at each other’s parts to check if all aspects of our imagined ideal community had been included, and also simply to check whether it all fit on the baseboard without gap or overlap. We then spent the last hour in a creative and rather hectic state hurriedly bringing our parts of the map to a point of completion and then glued it all down to the baseboard.

A fantastically creative day, with real and tangible results; the process of working together and our brilliant ‘3-D texture map’ for our new and improved Myrtle Street!

It was all to do with what we would like the Myrtle Street area to be like. What we aspire it to be like. The group consisted of MOWLL members, Liverpool Community College students and members of Crown Street Resource Centre and professional architect, Su, guiding us through the day with activities.

We started by looking at images of Myrtle Street and thinking about the negative and positive points about each focusing on four key aspects – ACCESS, SAFETY, DESIGN and MISSION. By doing this we were able to recognise what we all think should be on Myrtle Street and see other people’s perspective and priorities of what they think is important to have in a community.

Creating mood boards from our own specific ideas of what we would like to see, some taking on different roles of members of the community, we presented and decided what would be most vital.

Thoughts on renewing the parade and making it in to a nice shopping and eating area with a square in the middle for socialising or possible market, student accommodation to also be behind this and the derelict building (the old boys club) on the corner of Myrtle to be made into a multi-purpose youth centre that could open up on to the new parade. The Eleanor Rathbone building would be removed and created in to a nature and environment filled area with a community centre and housing for families. However some educational sources would still be there for University students and parking would be underground so as for more space. The college would just have a complete facelift and keep up with the ‘green’ theme of the new Myrtle Street.

Splitting in to groups of the area on Myrtle Street what we were most interested in, we began to try and create our ideas and form them on to the maps of Myrtle Street by building mini structures and collecting textures and colours to represent ideas.

Myrtle Street Retrospective Workshop

Tuesday 10^th November 2009

This is the second of the three workshops being held and today we were situated in MOWLL’s space in the Eleanor Rathbone Building. With a photography based workshop and some very capable helpers, the main outcome of today was to recognise the change in Myrtle Street over the years and curate images and photographs acknowledging this.

The weather was not the nicest to be taking photographs in, so Sue, a very good photographer, took a selection of the Liverpool Community College students and MOWLL members out on to Myrtle Street itself with archive images in hand. It was their mission to find the locations of some of these old photographs and take new ones of how it is today for us all to look at and then be used as recent archive collections.

There was also some really interesting ideas of incorporating the archive pictures into the new photograph to give an interesting, unique effect where the old and new were combined. This came out really well and showed the regeneration and change of Myrtle Street as a whole rather than separately.

Whilst the group were out taking new pictures all morning, the rest of the group were looking through the archive images and some from recent years and created some sketches and line-drawings of their own including different areas and ages of the community.

In the afternoon, we looked through the pictures taken that morning and then discussed what we could make as the final piece for the day. Using a huge piece of paper, we decided to draw and paint our own Myrtle Street including the old and new parts of it.

Community Unity Workshop

Tuesday 17^th November 2009

The third and final workshop today was held in MOWLL again in the Eleanor Rathbone Building. The purpose of today was to create a 2D Perspex sculpture whereby each participant would have their own personal thoughts and image drawn by themselves onto a piece of Perspex and then they would be combined together in rows to create one huge layered piece.

After a quick catch up we all got stuck into a selection of archive images, new images, photographs taken from last weeks workshop and different structures and textures with the aid of Tracey, an artist. Each choosing ones that appealed to us personally we all set off on an independent task of drawing onto tracing paper a particular part of Myrtle Street or building renewed and altered to how we would like it. Creating abstract, completely original drawings. Using the tracing paper to then convey this onto thick paper and then acetate, we used colours and lines to build up our ideas.

At the beginning of the afternoon part of the session we had a visitor, Steve Binns, a local historian for Liverpool Council, came into talk to us about Myrtle Street and its history, both of what he remembers and has discovered. Being able to discuss our thoughts with him as well as the arrival of a local resident, opinions were heard of the regeneration of Myrtle Street and whether there is a positive or negative change.

After lunch and our interesting hour with Steve, we got right back into the creation of the sculpture. Using the projectors we transferred our acetate drawings onto separate pieces of A1 Perspex using marker pens.

Collecting all of our separate pieces at the end of the day, Tracey started attaching a selection together on rods in layers forming a block. These then made a really abstract sculpture that incorporated all of our ideas of Myrtle Street. It really summed up the entire project and our focus on Myrtle Street and its regeneration within the community for our last workshop.

Getting the Community to notice…

MOWLL come to us with an idea for an exterior exhibition to go alongside a wall on a derelict building on Myrtle Street. They wanted us to incorporate the three themes, REGENRATION, INCLUSION and COMMUNITY into three boards where we could creatively express these and grab the attention of the people of Myrtle Street.

On our first board we wanted to represent community and inclusion, the idea of two completely different things coming together which would never normally, we thought could portray this really well. We decided upon the idea of a monkey and dove, two animals that you would never see so close is like the same idea of certain groups in the community which would never be seen, for example, the elderly and students.

first board

For the second board we thought of the idea of a quote to explain our thoughts on community and regeneration. “ARE WE NOT LIKE TWO VOLUMES OF ONE BOOK?”  portrays the idea that the community is the ‘book’ and two or more different groups of people within it are the ‘volumes’, and these are needed in order to make the community, or ‘book’, what it is. It also gives the impression of regeneration whereby the ‘volumes’ are like two periods of time, now and then, and the ‘book’ is the area and its history.

The third board was a photograph taken in Liverpool city centre of a man isolated from the rest of the community. This represents inclusion as it shows the complete opposite, exclusion, as he is not part of the area and everyone else in it. The people in the background are also staring at him which emphasises this point and the idea of people not coming together in the community.

The three boards being visible on Myrtle Street will hopefully show our representation of what the themes mean to us and find out the reaction from the rest of the community.

Images and words created by Diploma students at Liverpool Community College

The ‘If you notice…’ project was first inspired by a module within the Jigsaw programme at MOWLL called community and identity. Among the ideas raised and explored by the Self advocates who participate within the programme were ideas about inclusion and exclusion within communities. The themes are strongly represented within this project.

This week myself and Gemma facilitated an introduction to the ‘If you notice…’ project to participant from MOWLL. Within the session we explored the idea of ‘community’ further and began working on moodboards.

We also visited the nearly installed noticeboards on Myrtle Street and recreated the snapshot workshop photographs taken during the Hope Street Feast.

On Tuesday 22^nd Sept myself and Gemma met with a group of students from Liverpool Community College, the ‘If you notice..’ project will be working in partnership with the college through this project. The students will be participating within our workshops as well as responding to set briefs through the creative partnership in order to complete their learning module at the college.

Student's labels - we asked the students to think about their roles and characteristics, then made them wear that label. These are some of their labels on Myrtle Street.

After bombarding the group with a vast about of information and all the enthusiasm we have for the project, I think its fair to say we were all a little overwhelmed. From our perspective we learnt some valuable lessons about our own expectations for the project. So after a little re-shuffle of format and dates we wandered into town to do a little promotion. Followed by a recover brew in a cafe were we met a local Liverpool artist who had plenty to say about our project. He turned downed our offer to participate in any workshops but assured us he would participate from afar.

Then two days later a letter arrived at our office.

So thank you for noticing our notice and we hope you don’t mind us sharing your ideas.

Front of envelope one

Back of envelope one - shows the photographer's plans for a piece of public art outside of the Walker

Front of envelope two

Back of envelope two

His ideas for the future of Myrtle parade

His ideas for the future of Rodney Street Youth Centre

The complete package, including the photos he took while we were in the cafe chatting

Chat anyone??

An impromptu visit to The Hope Street Feast armed with a shopping trolley full of flyers and a basket full of questions.

We wandered the festival stopping for chats with members of public (we decided to call these chats ‘snapshot workshops’) and asked the people we met to respond to one of the questions in the basket.

All in all a great success with some really interesting points being made and lots of inspiration for myself and Gemma to keep us motivated for the upcoming week of preparation and chaos!

What makes for a healthy community?

What do communities need?

What is a community?

What does the word 'inclusion' mean to you?

What do you think about regeneration?