ENCOUNTERS SHOPS

Encounters take up residence in disused shops working with local people and visitors to create multi authored artworks exploring the themes of people, place and community. We also deliver mobile shop projects that tour to different locations within a neighbourhood.

The shops become meeting places in which to collect and exchange experiences, memories, objects, journeys and thoughts about everyday life in an area. We use performance, film, photography, visual art and text to collect material and create interactive and evolving displays within the shop. These projects are listed below, with the most recent shown first:

Encounters’ Shop in Dewsbury

March - June 2010

From March until June Encounters hosted a new shop in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. Kirklees Council commissioned Encounters to create a place in Dewsbury Town Centre where people of all ages and cultures could be together, exchange stories and ideas about the past, present and future, and feed into the development and regeneration of Dewsbury to ignite a two year Ambition and Aspiration project funded by Yorkshire Forward.

A remarkable 4,000 visitors took part in an overall creative programme comprising: participatory invitations to join in in the Encounters shop including collecting memories and stories about Dewsbury, sowing seeds and ambitions for the future, chalking answers to weekly reflective questions on a wall-sized blackboard and creating recipes for working together across cultural divides; pro-active engagement activities around the town centre; a series of experiential community exchanges on identity with inter-cultural and inter-generational groups; an artists’ mentoring programme on creative relational practice with local artists; and a pilot partnership with Kirklees Neighbourhood Learning Network during Adult Learning Week.

Our residency culminated in a verbatim performance - What’s the Spirit of Dewsbury? – which shared some of the stories and responses gathered in the shop, with presentations of our findings and insights to residents and other key stakeholders, including an evening shared with internationally renowned place-making researcher and writer Phil Wood.

Visitors’ Book comments included:

"A very welcoming inspirational space. Comforting to witness how much people actually do care about each other, community, environment. A great experience. Thank you."

"An interesting concept. Probably a better exercise in democracy than the Council election."

Useful links:

• During the final week, we were visited by Jocelyn Cunningham, Royal Society of Arts (RSA). Head of Creative Learning. who added this to her blog
• Encounters’ weekly blogs for Dewsbury Reporter
• Encounters’ presentation of findings and insights

For info, contact ruthN@encounters-arts.org.uk or 07951 578208.

---

Invitations to Join In
Oct 2008 – Mar 2009

The Invitations to Join In programme was a series of participatory projects delivered collaboratively by Encounters and an open group of local artists, organisations and individuals interested in participation and dialogue.

The programme included a number of projects which invited local people to come along and join in with a wide variety of events:

• Abundance, a swapping of the glut of local autumn fruit for stories and ideas;
• Love Shop where visitors came along to talk about, reminisce and proclaim feelings of love;
• One Word, passersby left words which were randomly selected and projected onto the shop window;
• Swap Shop, visitors were invited to a series of events where they could swap items, share their stories and histories and take away something new.

Abundance	Love Shop
One Word	Swap Shop

For further details on Invitations to Join in, email Invitationstojoinin@googlemail.com or stay in touch via Facebook .

	BACK TO TOP
	ENCOUNTERS @ CORNERSHOP 27 St Thomas Street, Winchester October 2008 We set up shop at Cornershop, a new artspace in Winchester, in October 2008. The shop was transformed over time as visitors added to evolving interactive artworks that mapped and revealed traces of everyday life. Daily questions, evolving collections of lost objects, playful interventions and performative engagements out of the shop all added to this process of forensic art that investigated and peeled back the layers of Winchester, taking a snapshot in time. We worked with performing arts students from University of Winchester to deliver the project that animated both the shop and town centre locations. Click here for more info
	BACK TO TOP
	THE MOEY FOUR CORNERS, LIVERPOOL Encounters are in South Liverpool as part of Capital of Cultures Four Corners project 07, where we will be modifying a police pod transforming it into a mobile shop and touring it around the area for five weeks. Click here for more info
	BACK TO TOP
	ENCOUNTERS @ Sheffield Crucible, Sheffield City Centre Feb - March 2007 Encounters with writers from Go took up residence in the Crucible Theatre shop, creating interactive artworks with and in response to staff, visitors and the physical environment. The project peeled back the layers of the theatre, gathering images, samples, objects and observations that captured a unique snapshot of the life of the theatre at this unique moment in time before it is re-developed. Click here to find out more.
	BACK TO TOP
	ENCOUNTERS @ 127 Club Garden Road, Sharrow, Sheffield Nov 2004 - March 2005  Encounters' at Club Garden Road built upon the first two shop projects by involving a larger team of artists, and taking place over a longer period of time - six months. Hundreds of people took part and the project was funded by The Arts Council, Home Office Refugee fund, Local Network Fund and Neighbourhood renewal fund, Click here to find out more.
	BACK TO TOP
	ENCOUNTERS @ Lansdowne, Sharrow, Sheffield (Pop's mini market, 106-108 Sharrow Lane) July & August 2003 Encounters were commissioned by Yorkshire Artspace and Sharrow Community Forum to deliver a new audience action research project focused on the Lansdowne Estate. To build on the success of their last project, and to develop the audiences reached, the artists decided to conduct the research from the empty Pop's mini-market on Sharrow Lane.
	BACK TO TOP
	ENCOUNTERS @ Wostenholm Road, Sharrow, Sheffield April & May 2003   The first Encounters shop was a pilot project funded by the Arts Council of England in Yorkshire. It was a means through which the artists' could creatively explore the area in which they lived, and the relationship between themselves as artists and other local residents.
	BACK TO TOP
Below are some of the activities and project strands that ran throughout the shops.
	LOST AND FOUND This was an ongoing activity that sought and found 'hidden treasures' on the streets, which had been lost or discarded by other people. In the first shop, objects were collected and displayed in sample bags in the shop window, labeled with the place they were found, the date and time of discovery. As the display grew, local people began to bring objects they had found in the area. In the second shop, objects were displayed on shelves, along with photographs of where they were found. In the most recent shop, we continued to collect objects, arranging and categorising them in a large shop display counter. Click here for images of the display.
	"I thought what an interesting shop as I looked at the window. Then I thought you can't sell half a rotting strawberry in a little plastic bag. Then I walked in and found a world of objects and stories - and was very moved. What a magic shop!" Visitor
	Work with toy farmyard animals began when Encounters artists were walking in Sharrow and came across first a miniature cow, then a pig, then some chickens and finally a small female figure with a bucket. We decided to share the experience, giving others a chance to discover the delight in finding these objects. We placed a selection of plastic toy farm animals around the area, along with instructions of how the finder could return the animal to the shop. People of all ages and backgrounds brought the toys back, and received a small artwork as a reward. Click here for more images.
	BACK TO TOP
	SHARROW STORIES   A large map of Sharrow was displayed on the wall and visitors were invited to mark particular places with miniature flags, along with a memory or story associated to that place. Sharrow is a diverse area and we wanted to unearth and bring together individual stories and everyday human experiences that happen within shared spaces. The work viewed as a whole reveals the universal stories of hope, fear, love, sadness, anger, loss, grief; all of which could either define or transcend age, culture and social status. Click here to see images and transcribed stories collected at our most recent shop in Club Garden Road.
	BACK TO TOP
	JOURNEYS   Sharrow is home to a very culturally diverse community, with many people who have settled from different countries for a variety of different reasons. We were interested in creating a visual representation of the journeys that some people and their families had made. Click here for images and text of Journeys collected from our latest project at Club Garden Road.
	Using a map of the world, the UK and Sharrow we invited people to chart where in the world they had traveled from, where in the UK they had moved to and whereabouts in Sharrow they now lived. Using different coloured thread and pins people marked out their journey across the maps. Using small luggage labels we wrote the persons name, address and year of journey. A suitcase was filled with neatly folded clothes and on each piece of clothing was the information about different peoples journey.
	BACK TO TOP
	SHARROW SHOPKEEPERS   To celebrate becoming shopkeepers for the first time at Wostenholme Road, Encounters introduced themselves to shopkeepers in the area. The aim was to ask them questions, take a photograph of them in their shop and ask them to donate an object that reflected what they sold. Over forty shopkeepers took part and the display in the Encounters shop reflected the huge diversity of traders in the locality.    The questions we asked them were: What makes you smile? What annoys and/or upsets you? What would improve your life in Sharrow? What does it mean to you to serve people?
	BACK TO TOP
	THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF LITTER   This part of the project focused on the issue of litter. We selected an area of Sharrow for 'excavation' and dressed in protective clothing and masks. The archaeological site was divided into fifteen sections and photographed, and carefully the litter was removed, placed into sample bags and labeled. The whole process was recorded on film, and artists used Dictaphones to verbally record each item found. Click here for images of artists working on the site.
	The area was recreated as an installation in the shop, which displayed the bagged litter, the looped film and the artists' recordings. Lists of the litter and street names in Sharrow were written on two of the protective suits. On the final day of the project we created a large circle of gravel and planted flowers on the archeological site, along with white plantmarker sticks onto which we had written items of litter found.
	BACK TO TOP
	THE ART OF GRAFFITI   We photographed examples of wall art and graffiti in the area of Sharrow and these images were recreated and presented back to the visitor. Twenty images were digitally created and transferred onto small wooden blocks that were displayed at the shop. The intention was to recreate the graffiti images and encourage people to view them in a different way. Click here to see the artwork.
	BACK TO TOP
	COLLECTING ACTIVITIES   We decided to take Encounters out to residents and deliver work very close to where people lived. Dressed in blue suits with a 'collector' sign on our backs, we ventured into specific neighbourhoods'.   We asked people for stories about LOVE, and created an installation in a small derelict garden area. Wooden hearts were put on sticks and we asked people to leave a comment, story or memory about love and then plant the stick in the soil.
	We asked people for stories about PLAY, using a drying area near the rose bushes in the middle of the estate. We put a washing line between the drying poles and on long sheets of fabric we asked people to leave a comment, story or memory about play and then hang it on the line. Abandoned toys were also at the site and we asked people to attach these to the line.
	BACK TO TOP
	THE BLACKBOARD   We transformed the free standing advertising hoarding outside one shop into a blackboard, on which we wrote different questions for people to respond to every few days. We asked:   What makes you smile? What annoys or upsets you? What do you fear? What would improve life in Sharrow? Who or what do you admire? What are the best bits about Sharrow? What do you feel about the war? Who or what do you miss? Click here to see how people responded.
	BACK TO TOP
	PEOPLE AND PLACES On taking over the shop in Sharrow Lane, we were left with many shop items, including a cigarette display case. The display unit, with its different sections and rows, made us think of the structure of the Lansdowne estate. We therefore used the case to house an evolving collection of photographs which would reflect the local area and the people who lived there.
	The collection of photographs built up and grew throughout the project. We took photos of visitors, and went out into the neighbourhood. We also worked with families, and gave disposable cameras to groups of children who regularly visited the shop and asked them to take pictures of the area. The display was largely made up of people and visitors to the shop, interspersed with images of the texture, pattern and shape of the estate and neighbouring streets.
	BACK TO TOP