Do you remember at the start of the year we ran ‘What Should York Remember?’ and the Archives Roadshow? We mentioned there could be an art project in the pipeline and that you should wait for details….well your wait is over!

I’m pleased to announce the results of the Roadshow and to launch ‘What York means to us’, a visual representation of York’s past, present and future through the voices of 600 York residents.

We gathered a total of 600 spoken, written and artistic responses from residents aged 3-90 across York. These responses were then presented to local artists who pitched their ideas for a piece of legacy artwork, to tell a very local story of York revealing how the City sees itself.

We chose Emily Harvey to scope, create and install the artwork as a legacy of the York: Gateway to History project. Emily has experience in community arts and one of her most recent projects was the collaborative creation of the banners that hung along the city walls during the Tour De France.

Emily is creating a coloured textured panel made from resin plaster, based on the City Walls with the stones illustrating aspects of York that local people shared with us during the project. The mortar will contain text to link the words and voices of today’s residents to the images in the stones. Emily shared her ideas, and inspiration with us as a taster of what’s to come:

“I am really excited to be starting work on the panel for York Explore Library and Archives. This project brings together a lot of things I am interested in especially community arts, design, architecture, history, and public art.

I started by reading through all the stories about York collected over the last few months, these have inspired a lot of images already which I have been sketching and researching.

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I got some funny looks when I was out taking close up photos of the walls – I must have looked like a very short sighted tourist! I particularly like the ones with accidental faces in them.

I also have a life size drawing on the wall of the studio to I can collect all the ideas together and get them into a coherent design. I am sure this will change and evolve over time.

In order to get the technique and the measurements right I have done a few test pieces – I find that more ideas come while actually making things so the process is a mixture of planning, doing and thinking and eventually the final piece starts to take shape.”

 

Emily has created some mood boards showing how she has been inspired, not only by the responses but also by the City Walls and our archive collections. These are on display on the 1st floor landing at York Explore where the final piece will be installed.

What York means to us will be launched in November 2015 and be available to everyone to enjoy. If you or anyone you know contributed to this activity, pop along and see if anything you said is featured!

Watch out in The Press over the next couple of weeks for a feature revealing even more about this exciting project!

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