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Our Programme
Super/Collider at Harwes Farm
We spent the autumn Equinox weekend with art-science duo Super/Collider at Harwes Farm CIC in Colne for an immersive time in nature, exploring local woodland and the night sky using alternative photography.
The astronomy activities also offered a first time camping experience for local families. After pitching supplied tents and helping each other cook, we shared stories of the moon and explored how to view and capture the night sky using telescopes and polaroids. The next morning we investigated the unseen ground beneath our feet with microscopic photography.
Image: Super/Collider
In Translation: International Residencies
with Art of Small Talk, Islamabad
In-Situ is collaborating with Islamabad based collective Art of Small Talk on an international group residency for artists and practitioners from UK and Pakistan, supported by the British Council.
Two selected local artists, Zara Saghir and Jamie Holman along with In-Situ's Zoya Bhatti are spending one month immersing and working alongside a group of artists in Islamabad to explore artistic boundaries, language and intergenerational relationships across geographic locations. Each artist will make work in Islamabad, working in dialogue with local artisans, communities and with each other. In October, the group return to Nelson for further embedded research and an exhibition of the new work created during the residency, hosted at Nelson Library (18-19 Oct)
Image: Art of Small Talk
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Climate Conversations
How can we hold space for people to come together to learn and also share and process their feelings about climate change? We are hosting a series of Climate Fresks* and Talkaoke conversations around Pendle, and gathering a picture of barriers to climate action and engagement through audio documentation and commissioned writing from the community.
Lead by thinking around climate psychology, this programme has been co-developed by In-Situ and climate educator and activist Tom Deacon and is funded by Pendle Borough Council and will feed into Pendle's the climate action plan.
* Climate Fresks were developed by a University professor in France, as a way of making simpler for his students the hefty IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. Cutting out the report's main graphics, he asked the students to sort these into cause and effect. This has now developed as an open source activity takes groups on a journey starting with basic human activities like building and eating, slowly unfolding a picture of where we are heading. Millions of people around the world arnow taking part in Climate Fresks.
In-Residence: Nazia Sultana
Nelson-based artist Nazia Sultana is our current artist in residence. Throughout the summer she has been working in our project space and out and about with artist-mentors exploring ceramics as a new part of her practice. She has learnt how to construct prayer balls, imprinted with natural materials, and is now hosting workshops with a group of ten local women to do the same. These mindfully created objects of contemplation will be glazed and fired and form part of an immersive group performance and profession of faith in a cave in nearby moorland.
This is Nelson
This partnership programme between In-Situ, Building Bridges and Super Slow Way is taking place over the next 3 years, bringing artists to help us re-imagine Nelson, open up underused spaces, think sustainably and support ground-up community activism in the town. The overall aim to our approach is to embed art and artist's processes into civic decision making, for greater democratic engagement and to amplify and support community interests. This is with a radical intention for transparency, equality and sustainability. This is Nelson is part of the Nelson Town Deal programme.
This Was Althams
This is Nelson has temporarily taken over the old Althams' Travel Agents in the town centre. The empty shop space is on loan from Pendle Borough Council until businesses start using it again. While we're here, we're creating space for conversations about Nelson with the people who live here.
As well as a window display showing what is currently happening on the different projects, we have furnished and decorated it inside for events including pop-up cinema screenings, a talking lounge, exhibitions by local artists and as a large open space for community groups.
We're also calling out to see what local people want from this space while we're here - have you got an idea for something that could happen in this space?
Please let us know by emailing paul@in-situ.org.uk.
It's Nelson Innit
The This is Nelson youth group are now meeting every Tuesday evening upstairs at 3B-Systems in a pop up space they co-designed and made with RESOLVE Collective to reactivate the disused upstairs floor of the old methodist church building.
Over a 3 month period together they thought about safe space, sustainable materials and social issues relevant to them here in Nelson. They created the interventions in the space from local sourced reused and salvaged materials. The space has loads of hanging forms as well as places to sit, read, play music or hide out. In the coming months the group will continue t work with RESOLVE as their mentors to programme the space.
Its Nelson Init Image: Diane Muldowney
Future of Work
Continuing a long term project developed with In-Situ and students at Nelson and Colne College, artist Andy Abbott uses VR technology and play to support young people to consider options for their future work, whilst also considering the sustainability of work in Pendle way into the future, and options for how we might approach the labour market and pay differently.
Future of Work Image: Diane Muldowney
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Hodge House Allotments
Grow with us! Along with partner organisations including The Good Life Project, we are thinking about what a Food Strategy* might look like for Nelson.
We are re-activating an allotment site at Hodge House Community Centre and are running sessions about nutrition and herbalism, to learn about the many different uses of local plants.
* A Food Strategy is a co-authored action plan to improve the healthand wellbeing of local people, which values the knowledge ofeveryone: whether your relationship to food is professional (forexample, you run a catering business) or personal (you cook for your family at home).
Dana Olarescu, Experimental Food Festival Image: Diane Muldowney
Contact Aaminah for more info
aaminah@in-situ.org.uk
Pendle Festival of Culture
Now in its 6th year, Pendle Festival of Culture is being developed as part of This is Nelson. This year we are partnering with National Festival of Making to co-commission a festival arch for the entrance to both festivals, working with Dualworks.
This year's festival was full of fun and glorious moments (despite the showers) and featured a global array of fresh food, live music, dancing and spoken word performances, stalls, local crafts, activity about the Climate challenge in Pendle and Talkaoke. There was even a dancing giant snail!
Every year the festival begins with welcoming the arrival of the Peace Walks; two banner processions walking from opposite directions along the canal and symbolically meeting in Nelson. This year the meeting was spectacular and moving, with banner-components for the festival arch arriving with the march and being added to the structure , created in response to the town with local people and which filtered coloured light on the pavement and people as they walked under it. The festival arch, by Birmingham-based Dualworks, is a co-commissioned with The National Festival of Culture in Blackburn.
Dualworks, Pendle Festival of Culture, Image: Diane Muldowney
Dualworks, Pendle Festival of Culture, Image: Diane Muldowney (2)
Dualworks, Pendle Festival of Culture, Image: Diane Muldowney (8)
Dualworks, Pendle Festival of Culture, Image: Diane Muldowney
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Nelson Festival of Culture 2023 Image: Diane Muldowney​
Pendle Festival of Culture 2024, Image: Diane Muldowney (1)
Pendle Festival of Culture 2024, Image: Diane Muldowney (2)
Pendle Festival of Culture 2024, Image: Diane Muldowney (12)
Pendle Festival of Culture 2024, Image: Diane Muldowney (1)
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Nelson Re-Imagined
The artist-led strand of This is Nelson, artist-producer Andy Abbott invites artists to undertake live action research residencies in the town in response to key themes, including neighbourhoods, food growing, disused spaces. These projects involve local residencies in explorations of new possibility for the town as well as sustaining ground-up activity that is already happening.
These residencies take place alongside a talks programme that brings visiting artists and speakers in dialogue with local experts.
Artists commissioned for Nelson Re-Imagined so far include Dana Olărescu, Kristina Borg, Michael Powell and Sam Jones, in Year 1 and Hwa Young, Rob St John and Tommy Perman in Year 2.
Click here to find out more about these residencies and the questions they've reflected back to the programme.
Nelson Re-imagined Image: Diane Muldowney
Dana Olarescu, Experimental Food Festival, Image: Diane Muldowney
First Play Response Unit
Part of Nelson-Re-Imagined, artist Hwa Young is thinking about the role of play in civic life. She has come to Nelson with an invitation to local residents to join in forming a 'play response unit'; like the volunteer fire service but for play. Through sessions and workshops in venues around town, play forms a point of meeting and opens up a different public space with different rules and possibilities.
Image: Hwa Young
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Nelson Overheard
Over the past few months, artists Rob St John and Tommy Perman have been inviting local people to get involved in researching and recording soundscapes of the lesser known parts of Nelson to create a sound map of the town. The sound map is now live but you can continue to upload your phone recordings of sound in overlooked or underused spaces in the town. This research project is part of Nelson-Re-Imagined.
Image: Rob St John and Tommy Perman
PRINT! at Nelson Library
A series of window commissions for Nelson Town Centre featuring work of local artists.
First up earlier this year, poet Aijaz Quereshi's words filled the window, chosen rom a book of poems he had written dedicated to the town where he grew up, published by Pendle Press.
Currently on display is Amina Desai's 'In Bloom', which takes direct inspiration from the incredible variety of plants, flowers and foliage grown in Nelson's very own allotments through Garden Able and The Good Life Project.
In Bloom also brings attention to the huge work taking place in Nelson around plants and their uses, growing for wellbeing and for sustainable food production here in the town.
Amina Desai and Ajaz Quereshi installations at Nelson Library
Images: Diane Muldowney
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In-Residence: Ellie Barrett and Nora (2 yrs)
Our most recent artist residency in Brierfield was with Ellie Barrett and her pre-school daughter, Nora, working to introduce creative play between parents and their toddlers at local play groups. Working in our project space, Ellie and Nora worked and played experimentally with everyday materials that can be bought at the supermarket, creating 'bundles' (pictured) and also a toolkit for sculptural creative play.
Image: Ellie Barrett
Read texts by Ellie Barrett and Anna Taylor, about the artist and the organsiation's experiences of this mother-child residency
Hillo Hub
Hillo Hub has been recently established in Nelson with a group of women in response to a local need for a space for women to prioritise their own health and wellbeing.
The hub has created a manifesto of shared values. Activities range from cycling and teaching women to ride bikes and then become bike leaders, walking, running and addressing issues such as chronic pain, menopause and women’s health through connecting to nature and creativity.
Contact Zoya for more info
zoya@in-situ.org.uk
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