Monthly Archives: May 2015

Seven Bridges, Two Cities

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The Shipley Street Arts Festival is coming up at the end of June (26th-28th), and this year is taking the river and canal as a linking theme. We’re delighted to announce that the Multi-Story Water project is working actively with Q20 Theatre to make this happen. In case you’re wondering whether there is any “street art” in Shipley, well lookee here…

DSC_0320A genuine (as far as I can tell) piece of Banksy graffiti, tucked away on the footpath that goes up to Gallows Bridge – across the canal – just up the hill from where Aldi and McDonalds sit by Bradford Beck. In case you don’t know his work, Banksy is a famously anonymous, Bristol-based artist whose graffiti has become internationally renowned. People sometimes rip down entire walls so as to be able to flog things he’s painted on them… This particular metal panel looks like its secure enough where it is, though. I’m not sure how long the painting has been there, but it’s tucked away in this wonderfully unassuming location… Here’s the image in close-up:

DSC_0318OK, that’s all I have to say about Banksy. But Gallows Bridge will be featuring as one of Seven Bridges in the Shipley area that will be linked by a looping promenade performance that we are making for the Street Arts Festival. I’m pleased to confirm that this will be performed by David Smith and Lynsey Jones (both of whom co-created and performed in our original Multi-Story Water tours back in 2012), and will be directed by Simon Brewis (who directed them). Always nice to keep things in the family…

Meanwhile, though, we are getting delusions of grandeur. Because simultaneously with the water-themed Street Arts Festival in Shipley, the Leeds Waterfront Festival will be running the same weekend. So to provide a kind of conceptual “bridge” between the two festivals, we will also be presenting another performance — with the same title, Seven Bridges — in Leeds. If you’re really keen, you might want to see both… (!)

DSC_0285This is me being anonymously artsy (if not banksy) while researching the Leeds end the other week. That’s Leeds Bridge you can see reflected in the plate glass — the crossing where the city began. Leeds’s whole history was built around the river, which is why it’s so strange that the city has sort of turned its back on the waterfront: you can live there for years and barely even be aware of its existence…

DSC_0304Here’s another of the Seven Bridges — Victoria Bridge, which was built (unsurprisingly) in the 19th Century to replace a longstanding ferry service. It’s one of the major road links to Leeds station … right beside Bridgewater Place — the unnecessarily tall building better known as “the Dalek”! But even though there’s a clue in the name — Bridge — water — place — you can drive across Victoria Bridge a thousand times and barely even notice that you’re crossing a river…

Now… notice the white, ‘canal style’ railings to the right of the shot above. That’s because this image was taken at the junction where the River Aire (aka the Aire-Calder Navigation) connects with the Leeds-Liverpool Canal. And here it is…

DSC_0303… the footbridge that crosses the end of Lock 1 on the Leeds-Liverpool… the very, very beginning of the 109 miles of canal, that goes through Shipley and all the way to the Mersey… Meanwhile, if you turn through 180 degrees and move upstream on the Aire a little (also in the direction of Shipley, of course…) you come to this…

DSC_0298This is the brand new entrance to Leeds Station, currently being built by Carillion. I like the sign on it: “this is civil engineering“! (as opposed to uncivil engineering…?) Notice that because space is so tight around the station, the building materials are having to be floated upstream on pontoons (in the foreground of the shot) in order to get to the site. Notice also the angle this shot is taken from… I was standing on – you guessed it – a bridge. Granary Wharf Bridge, to be precise — quite a new, modern one… That’s the western end of our Seven Bridges route… and here’s (almost) the eastern end…

DSC_0256This is the entrance to the weir and lock at Crown Point (Clarence Dock), with the Crown Point Bridge arcing overhead… another road bridge that you can merrily drive across without ever noticing the river… And in the shot below is the weir itself, viewed a little further downstream from Knights Bridge (footbridge)…

DSC_0261Notice the black holes in the middle of the shot here. Not technically a “bridge” perhaps, but this is where Meanwood Beck enters the Aire… a rather lovely beck that flows down through Meanwood Park and its attractive, surrounding valley, but then disappears into underground culverts before it gets close to the city centre (shades of Bradford…).

DSC_0259

This is Knights Bridge itself, viewed from the Clarence Dock side, and looking across to the building that operates as the headquarters for the Canal and River Trust in Leeds (hub of the CRT Northeastern partnership, if that means anything to you). Some very nice people work there… This bridge, as you can tell, is pretty modern, but I need to do some more research about it…

What strikes me here is the proliferation of white-painted metal, which even extends to these cage-like railings in front of the CRT building itself…

DSC_0262I like the little bit of signage here, pointing you to the next bridge (“hey, you’ve just crossed the river, fancy doing it again in the opposite direction?”). But there’s no shortage of signage in the vicinity of the river in Leeds… Check these out, for instance…

DSC_0239DSC_0242DSC_0251DSC_0272 DSC_0243Everywhere you go, it seems, you’re being warned that you’re on private property… that you are walking at the permission and indulgence of property owners… that you are on CCTV… There’s no sense in Leeds at all that the banks of a river might be public space, for anyone to walk along. The riverside paths are constantly broken up, interrupted by buildings or private spaces that you can’t enter. There is no “ancient right of way” here, in the way that there is in Shipley… And then the city wonders why people don’t engage more with the waterfront…

O Banksy, where art thou…?

 

Community consensus?

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The Multi-Story Water project, in partnership with Kirkgate Centre, has recently been working actively in three different communities in the Shipley area… These are:

(1) the flats at Crosley Woods (actually Bingley – right next to the canal just past Dowley Gap locks);

(2) the Dockfields area (Dockfield Road, Dockfield Terrace, and the flats on Dock Lane);

(3) the Higher Coach Road estate (between Roberts Park and Hirst weir).

We plan to keep blogging about all this, while also of course seeking to respect the privacy of the residents and their discussions with us. Obviously we have to be a bit careful about what is said on a public forum like this one.

It’s fair to say, though, that our most recent meeting with Higher Coach Road residents — last Saturday morning (May 16th) at Bradford Rowing Club — was a very positive one, and that those attending now seem to have arrived at a good degree of consensus about what they’d like to achieve together. So it’s worth trying to briefly summarise what was agreed on, in order to share the plan more widely. Here goes:

1. Footpath project.  There seems to be universal agreement that the riverside footpath, running alongside the estate between Roberts Park and the rowing club, should become a proper footpath rather than just a track or “desire line” in the grass. This would have multiple benefits – including providing a safer, all-weather walking route; ensuring safer access (stepped and/or ramped) to the raised footbridge area near Bowland Avenue (currently quite treacherous to get up to from the grass); and finally, filling in a “missing link” in terms of local waterside paths — so as to create better connectivity for everyone around Shipley/Saltaire/Baildon. In this document, Stewart Gledhill, of Troutbeck Avenue, presents his own views on the potential of such a plan… he imagines a hardcore path like the one that runs past the rowing club, and that could potentially be built as a community project… Stewart’s suggestions have been greeted warmly by other residents attending our meetings. Everyone seems to agree that a project like this is one that might generate engagement and support not only from other residents on the estate, but from other people in the local area generally. Of course, the tricky part will be to get enough momentum going behind this that lots of people will want to invest their time and energy in actually making this happen…

2. Wildflower meadow. The flood plain area next to the estate has traditionally been just plain old grass, and gets very boggy in wet weather. Last year this grass was left to grow into a bit of a meadow because of council cuts to the lawnmowing staff, and this has inspired some residents to argue for a more permanent, planned wildflower meadow – to make the area more attractive. This is a bit more controversial than the path idea (e.g. concerns about dog fouling in long grass?), but there was general support at the meeting for the idea of creating a small, temporary “wildflower meadow” area this summer just to get a sense of what this might be like — and spark further conversation in the community. We have been promised poppy plugs by the council’s parks people, and as a group we’re hoping to plant these shortly to see what happens…

3. General care and maintenance. The main problems with the public areas on the estate at present are to do with a certain lack of care and respect in some quarters — littering, flytipping by the river, etc. But if the whole place looks a bit more cared for and planned out (see 1 and 2 above!) then maybe this will inspire a bit more respect from all concerned? (Just as Roberts Park has been much better treated by all, since it was refurbished under the Heritage Lottery Grant.)

4. Bins, signage, etc. If the footpath is made more ‘official’, this might also create the context for better provision of bins (for litter, dog muck etc.) along the way. And what about some signs to point the way or provide some information about the estate — make it part of the ‘heritage narrative’ in the area? (There is lots to justify this… e.g. see this previous blog post.) There has even been a suggestion for putting in simple exercise equipment at intervals along the footpath, just as you find in some parks. Obviously all this would require discussion with the council, and in “austerity Bradford” it might be tricky… but if we can get some real momentum behind the campaign, some of this might be achievable?

5. One way system? Finally, moving away from the river and grass up to the road, there is much consensus that Glenwood Avenue and its linked roads get too clogged up with traffic and parked cars pointing in different directions. The remarkable Stewart Gledhill has again suggested a simple but perhaps workable solution — by proposing that you could have two one-way loops. You would enter the estate at Gorse Avenue, and then turn either right or left along Glenwood Avenue, before exiting back onto Coach Road at one end of the estate or the other. This would ensure traffic flow and parked cars were always pointing in a single direction, and so hopefully reduce congestion. Again, there seems to be general support for this idea, and it wouldn’t need to cost a lot in terms of signage etc. We are hoping to raise it with Paula Truman, the new ward officer for Bradford Council, but in the meantime we need to keep talking to other residents to see if there would be any objections to the idea that we haven’t thought of.

There’s quite a list of ideas here, and the important thing to underline here is that they are just ideas at this stage. This means that:

(a) Nothing has been finally decided on … so there is lots of opportunity for other people to make their views heard …

(b) None of this can or will happen unless we can generate enough support and interest from other residents to really get the ball rolling. All that Kirkgate Centre and Multi-Story Water can do is try to facilitate the development of that community conversation…

One way we’re hoping to get more involvement is by organising some events this summer that will create the opportunity for some fun and some discussion… So keep an eye out!