Darwen Vale High School, Darwen, Lancashire.

Lead Artist for the redevelopment of Darwen Vale High School as part of Blackburn with Darwen’s Building Schools for the Future Programme.

Darwen Vale High School was redesigned and rebuilt between 2010-12, as part of Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council’s Building Schools for the Future Programme.

The historic 1938 building was largely retained and integrated into a bold, innovative design for a new building and landscape  scheme.  I was contracted to work as Lead Artist with the design team of architects John McAslan & Partners and landscape architects Plincke with main contractors Balfour Beatty Construction . The building was reopened in September 2012 and I worked over the 2 year design and construction period to create a number of artworks integral to the school’s new building and landscape design.  I set up an artist’s residency space on site, which acted as a base for public engagement.  Through this process I developed five artworks based around two distinct themes: Memory and Commemoration and Creative Engineering.

The five artworks, all shown here are:

1. Museum of Memory – a museum built into cabinets designed by the architects and integrated into the main entrance lobby.  The museum displays a number of artefacts and photographs from the school’s 130 year history and is curated by a specially-convened curatorial committee comprising teachers, pupils, community members and the curator of history at Blackburn Museum.

 

 

2. Reflecting path – a mosaic in 100mm grey paviers along the main approach path depicting an abstracted reflected image of the main school frontage as it appeared prior to demolition and rebuilding work in 2010.

3. ArchiShelters – a series of bespoke shelters  – for bicycles, for the SEN garden, for general rain shelters, for the amphitheatre seating.  Each one is designed using a common visual palette of bespoke-designed engineered elements and the roof plan of each depicts a different a section of the architects plan for the new building in a subtle reference to both the redesign and the school’s status as a specialist engineering college.

 

4. A Century of Students – a light projection artwork filling the large glazed panel above the main front door and depicting a changing slideshow of images of pupils taken form the school’s 100 year-old photographic archive.

5. Concrete Letters – a typographical installation etched into the concrete walls of the amphitheatre steps.  Each line of lettering references a drama production from a different decade in the last 80 years and concludes with 2013’s forthcoming production.