Below the Belt

Urgent news has arrived of another assault on Newcastle's Green Belt.

The Green Belts were a post World War II planning concept, successfully ending uncontrolled housing sprawl that many commentators had predicted would ruin the landscape and put the experience of walking or cycling, the chief recreations of the urban working classes in the early decades of the last century, out of reach. By this measure this our cities and large towns were given 'green lungs', an extraordinarily far sighted policy at that time.

Muted noises from commercial interests (and some maverick academics) have have sought to challenge this presumption against development. In more recent times the motor car and trunk road have made commuting from "the country" in to work an aspiration for some who can afford it, so much so that commercial developers have seen a potential gold mine beckoning. Persimmon Homes now wishes to build 500 homes on green fields next to Gosforth Nature Reserve, effectively walling it in and ending the mammalian interest of the reserve. Other, smaller, schemes would complete the encirclement: Builders Bellway are applying for permission to build a further 100 "executive houses" on a separate but adjacent site. (1)

A number of organisations have banded together to fight these proposals. Details of the issue are to be read here.

I note only that this scheme has all the hallmarks of the City Council on it. Stealthy and, presumably lengthy, meetings have ensured local councillors learned only lately of the scheme, a scheme that seems well advanced. Public consultation is a low priority and the time allowed for objections brief.

These homes are for well off aspirational buyers; they will have no effect on the sector that requires urgent attention: Low access cost housing and homes for rent. Tyneside has extensive former industrial land (so-called brownfield sites) in locations close to existing infrastructure that should be developed for affordable homes. There is no need to encroach on the Green Belt, except only for the opportunities it represents for maximising profit.

If you live in or near Newcastle please consider writing to the Council. You never know, they might even open your letter.

UPDATE

Images from the meeting at Gosforth Nature Reserve on Sunday 30th October 2011. (© Judith Anne Tomlinson with acknowledgement.)

Site visits were guided by volunteers. Detailed information on the past and present status of several important mammal species was given. Otters are now resident on the reserve, possibly for the first time in over a century. They are known to venture down existing waterways into Newcastle's Jesmond Dene. Building over adjacent farmland would end their tenure.

Some of those who came to hear the opening speeches from Northumberland Wildlife Trust and Reserve managers were able to walk the one and half mile circuit to see the issues for themselves. If the proposals were to be given Newcastle City Council approval, then quite shortly the view over the heads of those walking nearest the camera would be one of rooftops.

(1) Sentence corrected 6th November 2011 following further information.

Art for art's sake Part II

The second part of this review of Newcastle City Council's efforts in the arena of 'public art' could be said to resemble "Hamlet" without the ghost. The most egregious example of their astonishing record of under-achievement is no more to be seen. It was swept away to the relief of many when the Haymarket Metro station was redeveloped for vacant office space. It comprised five foot high linked concrete cut outs forming a ring fence around the traffic side of the site that wraps around the South African War memorial in the Haymarket. Accompanying these – supposedly 'tributes to the fallen' – were water features. Space does not allow for a complete description; the associated fountain was turned on once, I believe, but winds whipped spray over the unfortunates using the Metro. Rumored costs were said to have been in the region of a half a million GBP at then ruling prices.

Northumberland Street sculptural features that complimented the Haymarket Metro fiasco are still in place. These have always reminded me of the kind of public art popular on the Continent in the 60s to provide cover to those localities where citizens with the wrong sort of grandparents where rounded up for transporting to death camps.

In straight forward financial terms, according to what has been made public at any rate, the re-development of the Laing Art Gallery must be at the top - 1.4 million GBP.

The Laing's entrance suffered from 'looking the wrong way' tucked down a side street. A sensible plan was made to change this and a brand new entrance was constructed on Portland Place, immediately visible from several points. The result was pleasing and, I am reliably informed, successful in attracting more visitors. The Laing goes about its work quietly and shows (for free) many touring exhibitions of national and international quality. The arrival of the Blue Carpet was a another matter.

 It was decided by someone or other, that the pedestrianised space outside the gallery's new entrance had to be something more than pavement, seats and trees. The concept that won the day was artist architect Thomas 'Bing of the Bang' Hetherwick. Mr Hetherwick was then at the beginning of his public career and netting him seemed to many in authority to have been something of a coup. The original concept was of a spangly 'carpet' that would glow with reflected light at night. Problems - and I am treading carefully here - arose. So did the costs. At the time it was reported that the material used to produce the spangles was not easily contrived. The final result was mixed. Essentially what was got was less Blue Carpet, rather more Grey Blanket. The trees are nice.

Looking down on all this from his column is Lord Grey, he of the famous blend of tea and 1834 Reform Act, also known as the Great Reform Act. He is rightly commemorated and stands tall, a testament to something beyond money and shopping.

Art for arts sake Part I

Blazing sunshine and an oft delayed project not only became possible but enjoyable.

I have wanted to write something about the truly amazing recent public art record of Newcastle City Council. It is amazing for scoring a hundred per cent flop rate. Each and every attempt to do something artistic on the streets has resulted in failure. Every time. That has to be a record for anywhere. Just simple laws of averages must mean one of these projects turns out well, surely?

No.

Once upon a time however, things were different. Statues were placed around towns and cities that celebrated local heroes. (Usually, it must be pointed out, male) These were sculptures put in place by people who believed in something more than money. It is possible, but rarely happens today that an art commission makes a contribution to the space it inhabits and thereby somehow invests it with greater significance, that and a general sense of a place.

Cardinal Basil Hume (1923-1999) in this memorial that stands beside the city's Roman Catholic St Mary's catheral church is both bold and humble; the well loved cleric is not raised above us on  a plinth, but on our level.

The space in front of St Mary's is a newly created public area and today plenty of people came to sit in the very warm sunshine and share in something – well being, ease or simply peaceful relaxation. Whatever one's views, faith or no faith, this is now a place with meaning and grace.

St Mary's architercture helps. The spire was designed by AWN Pugin, the Victorian enthusiast for the Gothic Revival.

Round the corner from St Mary's, alongside the line of the old city wall at the junction of Westgate Road and Pink Lane, is a 'thing'. I suppose it is meant to convey something, but I cannot say for certain what that could be. It gleams like some missile pinning the streets together. It is simply, in that phrase used to cover a multitude of possibilities going no where fast, an "art object"? It reminds me of a pen holder, the kind used by the more pretentious business person.

The feeling of overwhelming contrivance must be obvious to any one. Happily, since it is essentailly meaningless, it threatens no one, which I suppose might be the point (no pun intended).

Further along Westgate Road is another 'representational' statue, this one to a forgotten son of the city, Joseph Cowan. An elected Member of Parliament, Cowan's first speeches in the House of Commons had some of his hearers believing he was speaking in Latin, such was their unfamiliarity with the local Geordie accent. Cowan represents a moment when the wider populace in the large industrial cities around Britain and Ireland were making their voices heard in the seat of power. His life and career mean something to those who can bear a little learning.

However ... That was an age when people felt civic pride amounted to more than shopping.

Outside 'The Gate' entertainment complex stands this obelisk. Less '2001' monolith, more chief executive officer desk ornament. Like the gleaming pin beside the city wall, it is essentially devoid of significance and therefore, 'safe'.

Which reminds me. The famous London Festival of Britain 'Skylon' (1951) was also abstract in concept yet had some kind of memorability. Destroyed by reactionaries as soon as possible after the exhibition it stood over closed down, the Skylon never was forgotten by those who saw it and with it a sense of renewal and hope for a war devastated country.

Now guess which of the above public art ventures were the result of the City Council's initiative? No prizes.


COMING SOON

Part II of Arts for arts sake and –

– Jesmond Old Cemetary.

Another perspective on a sore point

I had once a conversation with one of the original Amber film making collective on the subject of T.Dan Smith. Amber had just finished shooting a film on Smith's career following his release from prison where he was sent after being convicted of corruption in a public office, a charge he admitted.

Smith, so my informant told me, had simply operated within the existing 'culture' to achieve the out comes he though overdue for the city in which he had been born and worked (and where he died). These 'rules' were a fact of the 'ecology' of planning; the back scratching and palm lining of jobbery in local government contracts. No doubt it is a common defence. The rub in Smith's case was that he never benefited himself by these means. He never gained a place on the boards of the companies he 'flattered' with his patronage as so many others had (and still do). Smith had a vision for Newcastle, and he wanted to build it come what may.

Discredited, much of what Smith did summarises what I dislike about 60s planning. In terms of this fine old city, it well nigh killed it. Yet, I must confess, Newcastle and Smith were not unique, and I am not referring to Smith's claim here, that "everyone was doing it". No, I am referring to concrete and tarmacking one's way into the 21st century pursued up and down the land. After my conversation (and a viewing of the film) I appreciated another way in which "everyone was doing it". Cities and towns across the United Kingdom, irrespective of local political allegiance and control, had joined in the post War passion for destroying what little the German Air Force had left standing.

Today comes further confirmation of this fact in an article on the B.B.C.'s web site.

Southampton is at the other end of the country from Newcastle but shared a similar history and now looks back on what went wrong with the often laudable aspiration to do good to the many by the few.

Bridge work

The precarious summer weather has blighted my attempts to date to expand on the architectural merits and de-merits of this fair city. A break in the rain (it is teeming down again today) let me out with my camera anxious to capture before it's too late the elaborate work presently being undertaken on the Main Line Bridge of the Lower Ousburn.



The slideshow is taken from images on this site's flickr collection. I have written there more information on each photograph in the comments section.

The walk took me past the old paint factory and I made a foray to take some shots of what looks ever more a bomb site from my distant childhood; heaps of shattered concrete mixed with dirt and plentiful, grateful one might note, weeds in full flower. More on that soon.

In fact, I was dazzled by the colours of the flowers and berries seen along the way. A special post on this also comes to mind. I saw a lone worker dressed in bright orange overalls and wearing a white hard hat stroll past me along the pathways (still open) and not for the first time wondered when the work is actually done. Whenever I pass big building projects very little seems to be happening.

Yet, evidence of great effort there is aplenty, not least the staggering spectacle of the massive tracery of scafolding required to completely fill the voids between the graceful arches of this Victorian Listed structure. Even with out the passing reference to the work of the famous site specific artists' Christo, with much of the western end of the bridge now wrapped up tight in white plastic sheeting, the whole construction site seems to be a kind of giant artwork. Perhaps one of the triumphs of Modernist pratice has been to help us make such connections.