Lady Bay Urban Island

In and around Lady Bay... preparing urban island project for Lady Bay Arts Festival... A visual artist and writer with skills and experience in management and working in partnership with people. Highly organised with excellent communication abilities with a strong motivation to engage audiences in practices that question the significance of the therapeutic and cultural importance of art and literature in relation to meaning/memory of places.

In order to make a response to the uncertainty of our urban surroundings, I interrogate metaphorical possibilities by creating imaginary islands in real urban places. I involve audience through discussions and tours guided by maps in a repetitive action of returning and reinterpreting, asking them to consider the possibilities for recurring and overlapping realities to be found in particular places with island characteristics and geographies. 

About The Lighthouse Installation

The Lighthouse installation
The Planter
(next to St Peters Church/M&S)
8th February
6-10pm


The installation is an experiment in interaction with the ever changing and erratic face of urban life - to which lights at night add both comfort and confusion - and to provide some semblance with the functions of lighthouses at sea. 

The public are asked to consider the ambivalence of meaning the lighthouse portrays both as a protector to those who are lost and as a symbol of danger. The artists Brenda Baxter and Loz Cliffe explore whether it's possible for the Lighthouse, in an urban setting, to offer direction to a place of safety and act as a warning of danger and uncertainty.

The Lighthouse’s positioning brings attention to the historical gateway of the city and offers the public a rare chance to participate in sharing whether it offers them protection or not.

Example of a lighthouse as part
of urban development
(not by the artists)
Kings Cross, London 2013
Photo © Brenda Baxter

“so that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again ... murmured by nature, ‘I am guarding you—I am your support," but at other times suddenly and unexpectedly, especially when her mind raised itself slightly from the task actually in hand, had no such kindly meaning, but like a ghostly roll of drums remorsely beat the measure of life, made one think of the destruction of the island and its engulfment in the sea, and warned her whose day had slipped past in one quick doing after another that it was all ephemeral as a rainbow..." Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Urbanisland

Urbanisland

A visual and written account of a journey to an island of buildings situated in the centre of Nottingham. Conversations are recalled through writing whilst surveillance and forensic encounters are captured with photography. The book is a poetic experience of a journey through a decaying urban landscape. It's a story of hopes and dreams buried in bricks and mortar and what is happenings with the passage of time.

Nottingham Night Light

Nottingham Light

The Lighthouse

8th Feb 6-10pm

The Planter/ Albert Street
Outside St Peters Church NG1 7DB

City Council has this allocated this location for the Lighthouse - the car park was too inaccessible and no power. Loz Cliffe now working on the sound component. I have come up with a design using found objects.

The light will be provided by a 30W LED spotlight but whether its competes with urban lighting in the area is to be speculated. About to have to do a test run… will just have to get folks involved with concept in other ways. I want to add sound of foghorns and suspend some groundsheets from the trees to enclose the lighthouse and to cut out some lights from area and display a map of the island. We hope the groundsheets will sound like the sails of ship or the use of polythene sheeting to wrap the trees and create shrine of light.

And if it rains - well thats another story!

The Lighthouse

Nottingham Light Night

8th Feb 6-10pm

The Planter

Nottingham Night Light Initial Proposal

Proposals accepted for the Nottingham Night Light 8th Feb 2013

For further info click

This is how it's starting to look...

The Lighthouse installation will be situated overlooking an urban island. It will transform this traffic bound area – one that has been subject to much controversy from its inception and now its future – with its rotating beacon lights. The inventiveness of its structure will provide a correlation with lighthouses at sea inviting a spectacle of hope and positivity to the public. Viewers are invited to consider the ambivalence of meaning the lighthouse portrays both as a protector to those who are lost, bringing them to a place of safety and as a warning of danger and uncertainty.

The Lighthouse’s positioning brings attention to the historical gateway of the city and offers the public a rare chance to participate in helping to both illuminate and protect it.

Only 15-20 words for brochure - "Come visit The Lighthouse overlooking an urban island inviting us to consider its ambivalence of meaning - as protector and warning of uncertainty." 

Public access to the area Level 5 car park as main viewing point. Also visible from the streets below and the castle.

Proposed siting of Installation

View upwards to site from Collin Street and Broadmarsh

The Lighthouse - the Concept

The plan would be to construct a temporary lighthouse on top of Nottingham’s Broadmarsh car park. The rotating beacon light would be fixed to one of the two-rooftop access blocks. It would be powered from the mains. It would be possible to add sound and consideration is being given to transmitting intermittent foghorns.

The public could access the area but the main viewing point would be from the streets below and most significantly would directly communicate with events happening at the castle. The beam can radiate for 10/15 miles and this would draw in the surrounding areas and be seen as far over to Wilford Hill/Colwick Hill and the East Leake Hills.

The concept of the lighthouse is that by being based upon an urban island it will transform this traffic bound area – one that has been subject to much controversy from its inception and now its future. Its physicality will provide a correlation with lighthouses at sea inviting a spectacle of hope and positivity to the public. Viewers are invited to consider the ambivalence of meaning the lighthouse portrays both as a protector to those who are lost, bringing them to a place of safety and as a warning of danger and uncertainty.

The beacon light will radiate so powerfully to act as a reminder of the continuing strategic importance of Nottingham. It will bring attention to a part of the city that has prominence as part of the historical strategic gateway to the centre yet it is also housed upon an urban island whose buildings are subject to demolition plans and redevelopment and hence uncertainty. 

Island ley lines and building lines...

To examine the location of the Nottingham Island and how it's viewed by city planners demonstrates both its strengths and its vulnerability...it falls into a "Zone of Reinvention" - In 2005 Nottingham City Council produced its aspirational report on its vision for Urban Planning and Development here

"This Urban Design Guide has been published by Nottingham City Council to promote the highest standard of urban design and architecture in Nottingham City Centre. Nottingham is a beautiful city that has developed over more than a thousand years and is today an eclectic mix of the ancient and modern. This design guide is rooted in a careful analysis of the city centre and the characteristics that make it work and make it special. These are developed into a series of rules to guide development in the city centre. The rules are not considered to be a blueprint and are intended to be used to promote good design, so that our generation can leave a positive mark on the city just as previous generations have." 


Zone of Reinvention: 

This covers the southern part of the city centre around the Broadmarsh Centre, the Waterside area running down to Trent Bridge and the Eastside area running from the Island development to the Victoria Centre (but excluding Sneinton Market that falls within the zone of repair). The urban form of this area, in as much as it ever existed is largely beyond repair. In this zone we are therefore proposing a new urban form. In the regeneration areas this will be based on the strategic proposals. Broadmarsh is being reinvented through the proposals for the shopping centre and its surroundings at some point in the future the same may happen for the Victoria Centre. 

AND

 In the Zone of Reinvention the building line hardly exists in places and there was rarely a strong historic line that could be followed. The building line in these areas is therefore determined not by the existing or historic condition but by the strategic proposals that are being undertaken. This line is indicative and developers will be expected to undertake a masterplanning exercise to establish how their scheme will re-establish the building line in these areas.

All new development in the city centre should build up to this building line. This is described in the rules on the following pages. The building line also cross references to other guidelines such as active frontages and levels of enclosure. 


Maps 1895, 1915 and 1930 below show that Carrington Street coming from the south northwards formed a direct and natural building line from the Nottingham Station to the city centre. No 1 and other island buildings such as Bhatia Best were strategically placed on this line. The reason the line has been severed if that a problem occurred with the building of the Broadmarsh centre in 70's across the line - a possible ley line. This not only blocks the path of this natural pedestrian line to the centre but the vista over the city itself.

1895

1915

1930