Building on some of the work created through the Weston Shorescapes project, we designed a series of murals for five of the Tower Blocks in International Way, Weston, Southampton. We incorporated work from children and other residents to produce images which brighten the foyer area of each block.

We designed a series of large scale murals for the tower blocks. Work done with local schools and residents was used to create a montage of images which brightened up the foyer area of each block. The digital artwork was printed onto tiles and was given a graffiti proof treatment to ensure that the murals have a long life. This project was delivered for Southampton City Council Housing. The aim was to improve the local environment and install pieces of public art, lead by the local community, that is relevant to the heritage of the area.

We enjoy working on large scale projects like the murals because it gives us a chance to work with communities to create a lasting piece of artwork which can improve the environment in which people live. We can help with everything from consultations and running workshops to develop the artwork, through to the logistics of getting work printed and, in this case, finding a tiler who was willing to take on a large scale mural! The feedback we have had from those living in the Weston Towers is that the murals brighten up an otherwise dull space, they reflect and document the memories of the residents old and new, and they are something interesting to look at whilst waiting for the lifts! Not only that but the residents feel some ownership over them as they were involved during the creation process.

This project used photography and oral history to enhance a cooking project and culminated in a book of recipe postcards which enabled women at the WEA Clovelly Centre to not only share food but to share their recipes a little further afield by sending their recipes to friends. The groups taking part were the Milan Group and the Wednesday Women’s Group and the women cooked and noted down favourite family recipes, as well as sharing cooking stories. The women also shared their recipes through the Unity 101 community radio station.

The WEA in Southampton asked us to help create a poster promoting the . Some of the women from the group suggested using objects and items that they felt most summed up Somali Culture. Many of the final objects on the final poster were kindly brought in from the women’s homes.

The Media Workshop joined forces with the Community Languages Service to create . Children wrote about why they felt it was important to learn languages and then decorated huge banners in a series of arts workshops. Over 100 children took part from language groups including those learning Farsi, Somali, Urdu, Mandarin, Punjabi, and Polish and the banners went on display in Southampton’s Art Gallery foyer as part of the city’s International Mother Tongue celebrations.

Down Memory Lane and A Trip to the Beach are two linked projects being undertaken by The Media Workshop on behalf of the Oral History Unit, as part of the Weston Shorescapes Heritage Lottery funded project. The project has been ongoing in Weston working with many of the residents in the area of all ages

Down Memory Lane has concentrated on recording Oral Histories and photographs from residents in Weston, looking at the changing face of Weston since the 30’s from small country village to the densely residential area it is today. Among the wonderful memories, residents have had stories to tell about the village life in a seaside village during the war, the Rolling Mills, the famous Seaweed Hut and what life was like in the new Tower blocks.

A Trip to the Beach was undertaken with Weston Park Junior School taking children to the beach and then working on projects to learn more about the history and the environment through arts activities. The children made sculptures of their experience of visiting Weston Shore, made informative lift-a-flap posters about the shore and used some of the Oral Histories and old photographs to find out more about the area. The schools work has been collated onto a CDRom to be used as a resource for future work at the school.

In a project funded by the Wessex Cancer Trust, The Media Workshop worked with young people at Southampton General Hospital to develop ideas and create artwork for the Oncology Department. In a series of workshops children from the Bursledon House School, G level and Piam Brown wards, worked with various media, including screen printing, print making, photography and digital manipulation to develop ideas for art work which would link with existing work in the department. Elements of the children’s work were then developed by MW to create 15 large scale prints which are on permanent display in the corridors leading to the treatment rooms.

In the last five years, the ethnic diversity of Southampton has changed dramatically. From a city that was overwhelmingly composed of a white, English population, and a small, mainly Asian population from the Indian subcontinent, it’s ethnic makeup has widened dramatically to include residents from all over the world. A small but significant number came as refugees, others came to study and later stayed to work. A much larger group has come from those central and eastern European countries that joined the European Union in May 2004, particularly the polish.

All these new migrants have played a vital economic and cultural role: not only have they addressed a serious labour shortfall in certain key sections of the local economy such as construction, agriculture and catering, they have greatly enriched our city by making it truly multi-cultural. These changes have equipped Southampton to take its place in a globalised world where those who embrace diversity and build on it, will be the economic winners.

It is in this context that this CD Rom has been published: to promote awareness of the changing face of Southampton and the rich social and cultural capital that these new communities bring.

Southampton City Council New Communities Team

In 2003 our festival of digital imaging had expanded to include video with our friends from City Eye. We had workshops and talks in traditional photography, digital photography and video. The exhibition included some fascinating work and was well worth a visit.

We teamed up with the John Hansard Gallery, Fotonet-south and St Mary’s Church for the use of their Community Gallery space and there was something for a variety of ages, interests and pockets from the very young upwards.

An eye-grabbing display of kites was the end result of a project working with WEA at the Clovelly Centre and the Community Language Service. We made Memory Kites in and around the Newtown Area with people of various cultures and languages.

The Kites were decorated with a photograph of the maker and memories were written on the tails of the kites in whatever language people preferred to use to tell.