Reflections

I’d been a member of the Old Fire Station for a while because I really believe in the ethos. But it wasn’t until I did the Atlantis project that I understood a lot more about the organisation. Atlantis was a promenade theatre show about the aftermath of a flood. I took part in workshops, script readings, and eventually the show itself. Afterwards I presented a reflective paper on the play and its environmental themes at the Royal Geographical Society Conference. The conference themes were about disaster and recuperation, so the show fitted exactly. Through doing the Atlantis project and that paper, I understood more about the Old Fire Station and how it works. It's the two organisations under one roof, and it's just really unique.

After Atlantis, a creative collective was established at OFS. Earlier this year (2024) there was a meeting to discuss what the next project would be. Staff led the meeting at OFS, and each member had a role, for example, someone was creative lead. I had these photos I’d taken of some displays on Queen Street. The displays were about the archaeology of the locale and the relationship to producing textiles, and I wanted to do a visual arts project with this. At the meeting there was discussion of a scope of ideas, they decided to go with this idea of hidden histories because of the idea and photos I’d brought. Eventually each of us produced a chapter in a book with our work. 

We were sent emails every week, as I remember, about what we were going to be doing. Since we were working in a collective, other people had their own ideas, and there weren't any two ideas that were very similar. The meetings weren’t just a social gathering. There was a good balance between formal and informal. We might chat about each other’s chapters. And in a way, it did make me feel like I was working at a publisher and that was an ambition in my life. There was a chapter about Shakespeare, which I thought was really interesting, and a chapter about the record shops of Oxford. For me it was a bit different as I'd already taken my photos, so I took more photos to develop my ideas in between the sessions.

I took photos around the displays on Queen Street and the actual area, thinking about the people and reflections. In some photos the buildings were wobbly, they made interesting shapes. There was imagery of spinning ephemera, which I think were drop spindles and the shop front of The White Company store was reflected in this display. Some photos had visual echoes, like round shapes in the Westgate shopping centre. I didn't take loads of photographs, but I took photographs from a few different angles. The final part of my chapter is about how I took photos of shop windows on the opposite side of the road, where the historical displays are reflected in the windows with displays of contemporary textiles. I wanted to think about how things had changed. Clothes aren't made in the area anymore. It's now a contemporary shopping area. These displays helped show how much history is part of the locale.

I experimented with writing on the images. I came back to one of the sessions and the artist had arranged this style with text arranged using a computer program. This was much better, and made it easier to change things around. The text is arranged in these opaque shapes in contrasting colours, blue and red, because they're reflecting some of the colours in my photos. There are some aspects, like the orange lights on as part of the displays, which really stand out, or the blue of the sky. What I like about the photos is that anyone can go and look at Queen Street and the displays are still there.

The name of the project, ‘Hidden Oxford’, linked to the name ‘Hidden Spire’ – you know the poem, ‘The Dreaming Spires of Oxford.’ 'Hidden Oxford’ encapsulates the themes of the project. I know there are art projects that engage with history, but this was unique. It originated outside of a museum, it was organised by arts professionals, and their training wasn’t in history. So the project had its own unique focus and flavour. Museum displays are awesome and very valuable. The way

this project was organised meant there were unique opportunities for interaction. It's about the development of the city. It was also a unique opportunity for my personal and professional development, because now I've got the book to show people. And it was exhibited in the gallery which is awesome, because I could invite people to go and see the book. People were impressed by it.

The session leaders and facilitators were very encouraging. They really thought about how to develop my work. And I really liked the idea of this book as well. When I was a child, I wanted to be an author/artist. That’s not actually my career, but that was a special aspect of the project for me. I haven't really told anyone it. But through the Old Fire Station I got a chance to be part of a book. What was also special to me was that, because I'd studied Fashion Curation at London College of Fashion when I was younger, I felt this a unique opportunity to make a contribution about that. I don’t know of anyone else has done this kind of work before. It's not like organising an exhibition or writing an exhibition review. It's about reflecting on my own experience. And that's a really special opportunity.

I took some photos recently of roadworks, and I’m thinking about a future project where you can see this scratching of the surface, or getting underneath the roads. In Oxford, there's loads to explore in the colleges – that's another hidden aspect. Every time I enter a college, I seem to go into some new garden. If you just walk around Oxford, you might not be aware of those spaces. I recently went on a trip up north to Halifax, and the landscape is totally different. There's loads of old mills and stuff and the historical buildings are so visual. And it made me think about the differences in the visual landscape between Halifax and Oxford. Where the old mill buildings in Halifax are so obvious, in Oxford, the spires are famous.

I'm glad I found a use for my photos, because I felt these displays were worth engaging with. That they took this idea about hidden histories and produced this whole project made me feel I was contributing something meaningful. And now I've got this book that I can have at home, and I still find it interesting to look at now. I hope that people reading this would just go there, and they'd see the displays and they'd have their own engagement with them.

Sometimes people think arts aren’t as important. Why would you prioritise arts? It's more important to have enough to eat. I know other aspects of society are important, but at a time when there's cuts in arts, the Old Fire Station is making a real difference to people. It’s especially helping the homeless to develop and feel valued. I've got a career in arts, and just because there have been cuts doesn't mean that arts just stop automatically. There's still arts happening. And because there have been these cuts, it is even more valuable and important to create and display art.