Postcards from the Park

Last Friday I popped down to the Martin Harris Center to sneak a peak at the artwork generated by local schools around the Whitworth Park Community Archaeology and History Project. Schools were invited to respond to the Park’s Victorian and Edwardian past using artwork, poetry and storytelling. Many of them visited the site during the excavations and all groups had ‘hands-on’ workshops using Edwardian postcard images and modern replicas of clay pipes, glass medicine bottles and Victorian children’s toys. Back at school, the students were challenged to produce their own modern ‘postcard’, on which they also wrote a poem or short story. The workshops highlighted the use of parks as community spaces where people of different backgrounds mingle, and the past formed a point of departure from which to analyse the changing meaning of these vibrant urban green spaces. The pictures speak for themselves…