1 Square Mile Bradford

Commissioned by Visiting Arts

Our local square mile, the Little Horton and Great Horton area, is one of the most deprived areas in the country. It has a big textile industry past, and a high concentration of migrants from many different countries including Germany, Ireland, Poland, Pakistan, India and so on. It also covers the National Medium Museum, the Town Hall, the University of Bradford and Bradford College. In one word, it is a small area with a big cultural diversity. In terms of biodiversity, Horton Park is located at its centre, small pots of plants, hedges, and nature reserves can also been seen in this area. However, compared with some areas in the city where more investments have been put in to improve the parks and general environment management, this area can benefit from a lot more attention. As the delivery team, Charlie and I worked closely with the council, the Delius Arts&Culture Centre, and many community organisations. We saw the project as a participatory, voluntary, creative, and educational process. We were responsible for the overall activity design, recruiting participants, workshop delivery, and communication with local groups/residents. For this pilot year, we concentrated on developing as many local interests as possible, and on finding participants from an organic process. Our local theme was ‘Food, Land and Photography’, which came from Charlie’s speciality in ethnobotany and my photographic experience. Obviously this was a starting point, not a finishing goal. Many aspects of plants, environment and multiple art forms were explored during the project. Activities were designed to encourage different levels of public involvement, some aimed to face the general public, while the others paid attention to small targeted groups. For the project launch, we invited the public to write their answers of our two questions ‘what is biodiversity’ and ‘what is beauty’ onto autumn leaves, as a way to find out public opinions about the project theme. For our Christmas Tea Tasting Stall, fresh teas collected from the local area were displayed with tea cups lent to us from the community members. The general public who were shopping at the council’s Christmas market were free to pop in and have a nice cup of tea with us. They were also invited to leave messages, comments and recipes onto our snow flakes and note cards. Hangfeng’s video Santa’s Little Helpers were played timely at the stall, and people were invited to add their rubbish onto his ‘Rubbish Christmas Tree’. Other workshops were delivered to much smaller groups with more specific local interests. For example, the children and adults from Great Horton and Little Horton area joined our ‘Door Spotting’ day. During the workshop local historian Nafees Nazir from Claremont Community Centre showed us around the Little Horton Green area; Charlie also talked about the plants on the way. The children were given cameras and took photographs for the ever-changing doors, hence ‘Door Spotting’. At the Ukrainian Centre, many elders talked to us about their knowledge of teas and edible plants, they also told us many recipes! In the next phase, we are hoping to link more local people and groups. Hopefully, we will also start growing something. 1mile2 Bradford was delivered in partnership with Bradford City Council, British Council, University of Bradford Ecoversity, Bradford Museums and Galleries, Bradford College, Delius Centre, Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Visiting Arts.

1 mile2 is a global arts, ecology and community programme that encourages people to explore their neighbourhood, communities and environment through mapping the diversity of their local mile.In 2009, 10 communities in 8 countries participated in 1mile project. These included Edinburgh, Bradford, Waltham Forest, Smethwick, Shanghai, Delhi, Dhaka, Johannesburg, Karachi and Tehran. Communities are linked across the world through a unique website, where they can share and challenge each other’s ideas, experiences, perceptions and creativity. In each city, a local artist, an ecologist and an international artist-in-residence worked together to deliver the project. In Bradford, I worked as the local artist, together with ecologist Charlie Gray. Artist Chen Hangfeng from Shanghai later joined our team.

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