Sticking with the original idea

I peeked to the calendar and noticed that I have only 12 days till the video deadline. At this point I already want to be doing something, not just wondering around and thinking of a new ideas. I really enjoyed making that one minute video, working on an old picture, putting colour into it, changing old fashioned clothes into bright, sometimes crazy new ones. I got some feedback when I showed my video and it said that I am kind of stuck with the Bournville, why not changing the location, find a better picture. And yes, I would love to find a bit more fascinating picture then the one I used.

In the depths of  the Internet I have lost a track of time while roaming through an old pictures. Here are a few that I have found :

Old London

Camden Town Five Ways junction 1920's

The Odeon Cinema, Great Victoria Street, Belfas, 1962

Royal Avenue, Belfast, from Castle Place looking towards North Street (from first floor level) 19/5/1936

These are all fantastic photographs but later on I stumbled upon this one:

Warwickshire, Birmingham, New Street c. late 1950's

I was shocked to see Birmingham and not even because I found this picture so randomly but the fact that the New Street looks so familiar to today's one is fascinating. And I thought why not Birmingham? Especially city centre - Victoria Square. After all, the firs time I came to Birmingham I was not pleased with the city until I saw The Victoria Square and The Council House in it. This would be a perfect opportunity for me the get to know more about it. 

I started to look for more pictures and I found this lovely website that has a lot of pictures of old Birmingham. Here are a few :

Warwickshire, Birmingham Broad Street with merchant horses and carts. I love that this picture has Boots store in it already. 

Warwickshire, Birmingham, New Street.

Warwickshire, Birmingham, Council House 1900's

Warwickshire, Birmingham, Council House c.1915. 

The last picture was my favourite one so I tried to look for more photographs with Council House in them. Here is what I found:

The Town Hall and Council House on Victoria square.

Birmingham Council House, early 1900's.

Victoria Square and the Council House, 1912.

This view of Victoria Square and the Council House from around a hundred years ago gives the impression of being pedestrianised as it is today, though in fact the Council House was surrounded by roads and Victoria Square was criss-crossed by roads too, there was just a great deal less vehicular traffic, with cars still being something of a minority on the roads. The land for the Council House and Museum and Art Gallery was purchased in 1853, and in 1870 the Council finally agreed to build offices for the Corporation on the site. H R Yeoville Thomason was appointed architect in 1871. The Mayor, Joseph Chamberlain, laid the foundation stone in 1874. The building was completed in 1879, and at the opening ceremony 'dancing continued with vigour till midnight.' Only 20 years later an extension was needed; this was completed in 1912 and can be seen in the background, behind the Clock Tower. 

via

This is how I found Digital Birmingham Photo Archive. You won't find much, even they say that it is only a small collection and you can find more at Birmingham Central Library, but I like the neat way of displaying the photos - everything is in chronological order and if you need a specific year they are nicely  separated in folders. I haven't found anything else useful in there but the photographs were still fun to watch. 

One more really nice webpage is www.historypin.com where you just need to zoom in on the map and you will see some photos are pined to a different places all over your city.

At the moment I am struggling between the two last photographs. I am leaning toward the last one more, but I am still not sure. 

Inspirational Artist

Today in university we had our presentations. I thought that our videos have to be related to Bournville but as our tutor informed me - it doesn't! My mind is blown away right now. I have a few ideas already but I am worried that they are too simple, with no deep meaning and so on.

But at first my inspiration - Thomas Lamadieu (also known as Root Art).

“My artistic aim is to show a different perception of urban architecture and the everyday environment around us, what we can construct with a boundless imagination,” says Thomas. 

I can choose any photograph/place that I feel inspired by and change it as I see it. I have a few ideas of what I will be looking for:

• I wanted to find some abandoned or poorly maintained places and fix them up a bit.
• Or a really dark and sad places that needs cheering up.
• Another idea is to find some weird looking buildings that in my eyes look totally different. For example, new Birmingham Library for me looks like a giant wedding cake so it would be fun to draw a giant man trying to cut the library and eat it :

Changing

These are a really extreme examples of how cities are constantly changing. If not because of a natural growth then there is a history behind the change. Quite often a war like in Dubai or Dresden. But the point I am making is that this change is a part of the city, part of the town being alive, moving, growing.

Dubai

Shenzhen

Dresden

Las Vegas 

Warsaw

London's Barbican Center on Blitzed Area

And this is an example that I am going to use in my essay, It is my home town in Lithuania :

Old and new Church of Gargzdai 

Everything is changing. It is natural. More people means more needs and because of that towns have to adjust. 

We are used to see images like this - old, historical buildings with Starbucks or McDonald's in them. Nowadays, these things are ordinary to us. A lot of cities or towns have changed drastically during a decade or two.

You might think that it happened only to a large city's but my small home town is a good example to prove it wrong. It changed not only appearance but a function too and it even happened a few times. At first Gargzdai was a really empty town with only the main bread baking factory in it. After my country got independence in 1993 a few shops and restaurants started to appear. Later on young people having nothing to do organized something like a night club only with no bars or dancing till the morning (closing at 12). Unfortunately, the majority of people living in the town were pensioners and they made the club to close down. The youth still had their small skate park and some drawing, dancing, singing clubs. Only recently Gargzdai renovated the whole city centre. It is now unrecognisable. I started to notice how the government is trying to make the town look modern

with strange houses, weird looking street lights and uncomfortable benches.

After a while skate park was closed down. Then a bunch of cameras were scattered around the town. Later, the park (place where youth were gathering around) started to turn off the outdoor lights at 11pm. Also, government build a children play ground in a middle of it. This year it was announced that Gargzdai is in the third place from all Lithuania's towns that has the biggest population growth. And everybody knows why: it became a bedroom area where people working in a bigger towns come to grow their family's and have a good nights sleep with no traffic noises. 

There are a lot of examples like these, but what about the towns that haven't changed? How did they managed to keep their citizens happy and not only that, how did they manage to keep them from moving away? What is their scheme? If it is based on a quite town module how do they keep the youth entertained? Could utopian towns really exist? 

Research Utopian Towns:

Bournville Village: 

• American Towns. A lot of utopian towns no longer exists.
• American Utopian Town that still exists.
• American Towns. No longer existing towns, but this article has more information.
• Towns all over the world. No longer existing.
• NEIGHBOURHOODS THAT WORK

1 minute video

This is a bit better video that I made to show my idea:

'Sorry for the pixels' from Valda Repcyte on Vimeo.

Second Idea

This is a really rough video that I made to capture my idea:

The main idea is to show how The Bournville Village changed, to be exact, how it didn't change. Bournville has a really straight rules of what to do, build, open and even more rules of what is strictly forbidden. For example, George Cadbury's idea about not having any pubs in Bourville still exists. Even after almost 200 years  Bournville Trust tries to maintain the village as G. Cadbury imagined it to be. 

What I would like to show in the video:

• A really old picture of Bournville ( preferably black and white) whit some people and cars in it.
• Erase the cars and people clothing.
• Redraw them into 2013 cars and clothes; make the redrawn things in colour.

Research

It seems that I have done an unbelievable thing in nowadays world. I started my research by bringing home two books from our new Birmingham Central Library instead of using the Internet. One of the books has everything that you need to get to know The Bournville. It was written by Margaret A. Broomfield in 1995 and is called 'A Bournville Assortment'.

You can understand from the given contents at the beginning of the book that you will get not only the historical facts (which are very important), but some of the insight from the writers perspective too.  

The other book is by the same author - M. A. Broomfield ( and Janette Denley) and I did not found it as useful as the first one. 

The main thing written in this book is a meeting of Bournville citizens (the ones that moved away and the local ones as well) in 2001. They brought some pictures and written material from their past with them and some people wanted to have all of it in one place. That is why this book was created. Apart from containing some photographs that I could use I have not found anything else in this book.

I wont have the first book available for me all the time, that is why I made this list about where I can find the main information online:

1. The main points of Bournville History, Demography, Education, Transport, Religion.
2. George Cadbury
3. Cadbury World History
4. A bit more personal view to Cadbury's and Bournville (BBC article)
5. Cadbury's and the Quakers' vision of Utopia that built a British institution (article)
6. Bournville Village Trust
7. Bournville Ward Attractions

The Brief

Our role on this module is to negotiate a specific site, to find things that awaken our curiosity, and maintain our interest. We need to negotiate strategies for communicating our findings in a responsive way. 

The Site

Given site is the Bournville in Birmingham. We must identify what is interesting to us about this site and allow ourselves to sink into it and to share this interest through the production of new work. We will work collaboratively where it is needed and support each other by offering technical assistance and critical appraisal. Consider these broad questions as starting point:

• What is Bournville?
• What is its use?
• What is beneath its surface?
• Is it important?
• Why is it important?

For assessment we need to produce:

1. A video response to the question (2 min)
2. A printed response to the question
3. An edited blog that documents our research material 

We needs to show evidence of Extended knowledge, developed skills and critical understanding.