It’s the start of day 3 of my residency at Metal Southend. Day 1 was a travel day that ended with ice cream and fish and chips by the sea, so Day 2 was the first proper day. I spent it getting orientated to the area with a walk west from Chalkwell Hall to Leigh on Sea, then a short train ride to the centre of Southend where I spent some time in the library. I looked over some of the maps of the area to get a feel for how populations have moved here. I love reading maps, especially looking for traces of changes. So seeing how the railway stopped at Southend, then other lines carried on through later, how development was focused mainly around the ‘industry’ of the time. Leigh grew around the fishing village, Southend around the tourist industry of the pier and railway.
My aim in being here is to look at how population movement is visible in the housing of a place and to be in a different place to the northern post-industrial towns that are normally on my doorstep. So to see how populations congregate around different ‘industries’ will be interesting.
I’m feeling a bit lost with this piece of work at the moment, so the plan is that being here for an intense period of time will free me from those insecure shackles and just make me go and ‘do’ stuff.
So, a plan:
– photograph details from houses around the area. Bricks, textures, fencing, patterns, architectural details. Play around with these as a collage by the end of this week. (I’m a bit concerned about photographing bits of people’s houses, feels a bit intrusive, hopefully everyone is nice about it)
– sit in the park/beach and read some of the books that I’ve been hoarding.
– visit some of the places that I read about in the local development plan to see if they developed as planned.
