Nor (no pronouns)
Buildings and Development Manager & ResidentCould you tell us a bit about yourself and your connection to Braziers Park?
I'm an artist and resident at Braziers, where I work as the buildings & development manager. This involves project managing the improvement and refurbishment of our lovely buildings, including some which have fallen out of use as the estate has evolved from a place with a large workforce, to the community it is today. These days there are are more people wanting to live here than we currently have rooms for, so I am helping - along with a large team of others - to bring more spaces into use.
Could you tell us about your work outside of Braziers?
In my creative practice I specialise in placemaking, and creating site-based projects with groups who are based in specific locations. I am interested in vernacular, or locally rooted, design - though at the same time I have come to be frustrated with it as a creative approach, although it is highly fashionable at the moment. How does it serve those of us who do not any longer feel rooted to specific places, whose first sense of home comes from international migration? This question is what first brought me to Braziers, when I came as an artist in residence in 2023. I was inspired by the early 'Gothick' revival architecture, which recreates a fantasy of Englishness which never really existed. This architecture continues to attract utopian dreamers to the place - including a large number of attendees to the UK Communities Conference, which was spearheaded by Braziers before growing into an event which travels to different venues. I used the residency to develop my approach to site-specific art; widening it to include 'places' which are imaginary and unreal. Through being at Braziers I learnt that imaginary, made-up places - utopias in fact - can be very real, and are a vital part of inspiring people to create alternative ways of being. I continue to develop my research on this topic, developing the notion of 'alien vernacular' to describe a type of local design by and for people who are restless nomads. These people are overrepresented in the intentional communities movement, which I find very interesting. We are in a paradoxical quest to find home.
How would you describe Braziers to someone who has never heard of us before?
A silly fairytale castle, which distracts from the important parts: biodiverse parkland, and wonderful people.
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