Art and the Cultivation of a NeighbourhoodOliver Bennett

Hom

e Grown: Art and the Cultivation of a Neighbourhood

Home GrownArt and the Cultivation of a Neighbourhood

Home GrownArt and the Cultivation of a Neighbourhood

First published 2009 by South Cambridgeshire District Council and Commissions East

South Cambridgeshire District Council Commissions East

South Cambridgeshire Hall 46 St Mary's Street

Cambourne Business Park Ely

Cambourne, Cambridge Cambridgeshire

CB23 6EA CB7 4EY

www.scambs.gov.uk www.commissionseast.org.uk

Tel. +44 (0)3450 450 500 Tel. +44 (0)1353 669094

© South Cambridgeshire District Council and Commissions East

© Design by Sugarfree, www.sugarfreedesign.co.uk

Cover photograph: Orchard Park, Cambridge © Richard Heeps

End paper image from a photograph of Orchard Park, Cambridge 2007 © Patrick Squire

Image courtesy of Gallagher Estates

ISBN 978-0-9541447-5-3

Copies of this book are available from the Arts Development Officer,

South Cambridgeshire District Council

Contents

i Foreword 9

ii Welcome to Orchard Park 10

1 Making a Place The birth of a neighbourhood 14

2 Breaking Ground A guide to the art of Orchard Park 30

3 From Iron Age Fort to Silicon Fen The location revealed 42

4 Seed and Stem The development grows 54

5 Making Visible the Invisible The art of Patricia MacKinnon-Day 66

6 Orchard Park by Richard Heaps In development 82

Acknowledgments 104

Orchard Park, Cambridge Photograph Richard Heeps

7

When my wife Wencke and I moved to the UK from Germany in March 2007, we moved straight to Orchard Park, Arbury Park as it was called at the time. There were probably fewer than 50 occupied houses back then, surrounded by patches of wasteland and grass. It was a strange experience, with a feeling of detachment. The few residents started to meet at introduction events and a certain solidarity came out of that experience. Since then, little by little, the place has grown up around us. We have come to know a lot of people here, and the whole place has a sense of interactivity – a sense that life is being built into it.

The art is an incredibly important part of this process. I freely admit that earlier, I hadn’t thought much of the plan to include public art in the development. What use could it possibly have? Now, although Orchard Park remains in some ways the same place as it was nearly two years ago when Wencke and I first moved in, I think that the art – in particular, the work produced by Kirsten Lavers’ on-site arts unit, known as the ‘Banana’ – has been instrumental in breathing the first signs of life into what sometimes felt like an occupied building site.

We look forward to the rest of the work being installed, to Orchard Park acquiring a sense of itself, and of course, to many more years watching a new urban community being forged in front of our eyes.

Jens Kirschner is a founder member of the Park Arts Group.

Forewordby Jens Kirschner, resident of Orchard Park

9

Back in 2005, when Orchard Park was called Arbury Camp and was still on the drawing board, it had the air of an experiment, albeit an extremely controlled experiment. After all, it must have appeared a reasonably safe bet to create a development on this site. Combine a dire national housing need, a regional growth plan, plentiful local employment and a well-connected if overlooked location to the north of prosperous Cambridge, and all the various conditions that have given rise to Orchard Park (the ‘fundamentals’) were present and correct.

With these bases covered, from those early days Orchard Park also expressed a larger ambition. Instead of being a mere collection of dwellings, it hoped to come into the world as a fully-functioning community. This settlement did not plan to be stranded in the middle of nowhere like some of its cul-de-sac dormitory forebears, without amenities or culture, suitable only for sleep and the evening’s television after work. Rather, it would be outward-facing, engaged with the world, landscaped so that it was in itself worthy of local people’s leisure time, and sporting a travel plan that linked it to Cambridge and beyond by way of a novel guided bus network. There was also to be a school, a hotel, local play areas, mixed tenure housing that would bring a sense of social pluralism to the neighbourhood – and a programme of public art.

The latter, in particular, has given rise to this book. From the early consultations onwards, it was envisaged that Orchard Park would incorporate a design plan that would include contemporary art. As well as being a way of adding visual interest, the art would also encourage the development to acquire a sense of identity. After an agreement between Gallagher Estates, other landowners and South Cambridgeshire District Council, the decision was taken to create a publication that would act as a link to the artworks – to give them a frame, so to speak.

This book looks at the story of Orchard Park’s art, and attempts to put it into some kind of context: historical, geographical and social. This aspect is crucial, it shows how settlements are planned in the early 21st century – and how art can and has become a constituent part of that process.

Welcome to Orchard Park

10

Ultimately, it is a story about the search for identity. After all, Orchard Park is a development that some would regard as the size of a small town, or at least a pretty substantial village. Prior to it arriving on this plot between the A14 and Cambridge’s northern fringes, there had been no built settlement in the area. So, to employ the maxim coined by lead artist Patricia MacKinnon-Day, it was determined that the art would do some of the necessary work in ‘making visible the invisible’. From an unpromising parcel of ground, Orchard Park and its artists have had to conjure a sense of place offering a storyline for the development itself.

The artworks are discussed here at some length, as are the historical ways in which public art has been used to root a new settlement to the soil upon which it stands. There is also an examination of how the art commissioned for Orchard Park is expected to contribute to the site. After all, it is a matter of great public concern that art should have some kind of a beneficial role; also that it should add value in various ways that go beyond prevailing assumptions and expectations.

Unlike some earlier manifestations of public art, it could hardly be argued that the Orchard Park artworks are expected to produce a beautifying balm, or express regional pride. Instead, the art at Orchard Park hopes to provide a means of appreciating the resonances of the site; to reveal its unexpectedly deep history, which includes the remnants of an Iron Age fort and a long link with horticulture, hence the settlement’s name. The long view is to invite the inhabitants to feel that Orchard Park has some kind of historical continuity; to propose a kind of geographical DNA.

At this point, it should be recognised that Orchard Park has had a more difficult gestation than many would have wished. It has faced local criticism; to be expected in a large-scale building project, perhaps. But in 2008 the ‘credit crunch’ hit Orchard Park as it did many other construction projects, and delays have occurred in the placement of some of the facilities.

Some of Orchard Park’s parts have not yet contributed to the sum that will be the finished development. But the long term beckons, and Orchard Park is still in gestation. Meanwhile, this book sheds light on the forces that have contributed to this new area of Cambridge, and bids welcome to Orchard Park.

11

12

AFFORDABLE

HOUSING

ORCHARD PARK

PRIMARY SCHOOL

A

B

C

PREMIER INN

HOTEL

MARTIN G

RANT

HOMES

F

13

Making a Place1

PERSIMMON H

OMESLAIN

G HOMES

AFFORDABLE

HOUSING

E

D

PREMIER INN

HOTEL

MARTIN G

RANT

HOMES

PUBLIC O

PEN SPACE

G H

GEORGE W

IMPEY H

OMES

– SOUTH MID

LANDS

Outside Cambridge there is an edge-of-town housing development, with 900 mixed dwellings arranged around curving roads, squares and circuses. It would be difficult to call it a village, or a town, and yet it doesn’t quite fit the idea of a suburb – and the word ‘development’ itself is short-termist and unappealing. People involved with the development sometimes use the word ‘settlement’, for want of a better term, as if to describe its nascent state. Called Orchard Park, it is part of the greatest growth spurt in the Cambridge region for many years.

The development itself is nothing out of the ordinary. Indeed, such places are being built across the country as towns expand to accommodate housing demand. The credit crunch that began in 2008 has slowed this process down, but many Orchard Park-style developments have already been built in the UK, and in due course, they will surely come to mark this era, just as the semi-detached homes with mock-Tudor gables on ribbon developments mark the 1930s, and the late Victorian brick terraces marked the burgeoning urban populations of that era. At present their position is unidentified in terms of architectural genre or some historical identifier such as ‘Georgian’. Some still refer to such developments by populist names such as Brookside Close, after the television soap opera. They are mostly, and more generically, known by the unsatisfactory epithet ‘new builds’.

Either way, these developments will in time acquire maturity. Like its sibling developments, Orchard Park’s trees will grow, its bricks will weather, and the current feeling of just having been unwrapped will dissipate. Already, with its multifarious houses, community centre, school, hotel, play areas – and its yet-to-be-installed aspects like public art, shops, sports grounds, and guided bus system – the development is slowly coming into life as a living, working, functioning settlement. There will probably be unexpected uses; people will probably create ‘desire paths’ (the name for informal paths caused by people

The birth of a neighbourhood

14

Orchard Park, Cambridge Photograph Richard Heeps

taking short cuts) rather than stick to designated pathways; cars will be parked in places different to those that were planned. But in time Orchard Park will live up to its planning ideals and gradually assume the aspects of a district, the hope being that it will acquire what is commonly described as a ‘sense of place’.

Orchard Park has a few hurdles to overcome. It inherits a complex history from itslocale as part of Cambridge’s northern landscape; a reputation that relates to the historic word ‘Arbury’, which was part of the area’s name until recently, first as Arbury Camp, then as Arbury Park. After all, most Cambridge residents know the district from its neighbouring entity the Arbury Estate, the large council estate nearby: a typical post-war zone of low-density semi-detached and terraced housing, plus a few blocks of flats built by the local authority to house the expanding city’s workers. Yet, as in other British towns, the ambitions that fuelled the Arbury Estate fell into disfavour and the area suffered a serious loss

15

of local prestige. It is the residue of this reputation that influenced the renaming of Arbury Park to ‘Orchard Park’ in the autumn of 2008.

A fuller exploration of the Arbury area, including the earlier estate, is in Chapter Three. However the building of the Arbury Estate has had one effect: it set in motion the process of extending Cambridge to its (previously) less desirable north-eastern reaches, to house the city’s growing population – a process that continues today. The area now developed as Orchard Park became a kind of buffer zone between the Arbury Estate and the A14; a green belt site that at various times in its post-war existence had hosted many informal uses: a bus depot, an oilseed rape field, a used car dealership, and an area of wild play, alive to the sound of trail bikes. The area had also enjoyed a long association with fruit growing, seed production and market gardening.

While it was given value by its location on the outskirts of Cambridge, few apparently thought it a world-beating piece of landscape. In 2001, planning experts David Counsell and Graham Haughton noted that the flat Fenland green belt of Cambridgeshire doesn’t enjoy the “mythological status” afforded to other landscapes in the South East, and was therefore unlikely to be held back by

Orchard Park, Cambridge, 2007 Photograph Patrick Squire Image courtesy of Gallagher Estates

16

claims that it was special, or by what we call nimbyism (that is, ‘not in my back yard’). It was an inauspicious patch of ground.

Clearly, this was a site in waiting for a developer, particularly as for many years Cambridge had been mooted to expand. Orchard Park falls within the area known as the ‘Cambridge Northern Fringe’, identified for development in various planning documents, including the Cambridgeshire Structure Plan, the Cambridge City Local Plan and in the South Cambridgeshire Local Development Framework. In addition, the city is also a centre of a wider geographic growth plan, one that situates Cambridge as a nodal point in the region – indeed, in the country. It is one of the three growth areas mooted by the East of England Plan including the Thames Gateway and the London-Stansted-Cambridge-Peterborough corridor – an area that will accommodate a large batch of the three million houses that the Labour Government notionally pledged to build by 2020. All the pointers suggested that this land would be built upon, sooner or later.

The location was germane to the development, as local authority South Cambridgeshire District Council and Gallagher Estates both saw the site as a place with strong communications – at the confluence of the A14 leading east-west, close to the B1049 Histon Road into Cambridge, and with the M11 nearby. There would also be a new station interchange at Chesterton on the Cambridge to King’s Lynn train leading north-south, and a guided busway system to the city: part of a far-reaching transport plan that would invigorate this side of the city, traditionally less fashionable and poorer than the southern side.

Orchard Park would not be left out in the cold, on the wrong side of the tracks, but be incorporated into the regional fabric. Indeed, its location derives from a long period of reflection about how Cambridge could accommodate a larger

People will create desire paths’ rather than stick to designated pathways and cars will be parked in places different to those that were planned

17

population without affecting its ‘historic core’, as the centre is known by planners. “We believe Cambridge is moving quickly towards a new phase of existence,” it was remarked in the Holford Report of 1950, set up to examine the challenges presented to Cambridge’s green belt. The report further stated that “[Development] should be kept at a level that will retain the special advantages of Cambridge and future development should be compact rather than sprawling.” To keep the character of Cambridge, as well as to incorporate new citizens, has been an acute balancing act ever since, and Orchard Park fits into that long term plan.

The site that would become Orchard Park was first identified as a retail opportunity by supermarket Sainsbury’s, which hoped to build a shopping complex, the idea being both to use this neglected site and ease the retail pressure on Cambridge itself. However the local authority’s planning office didn’t allow it, and in 2000 it was announced that the site would instead become a mixed residential, commercial and public site. Plans were first submitted in 2001 by Gallagher Estates and Lands Improvement Holdings, along with the other land owners Unex Technical Services and Cambridge City Council.

It would be called Arbury Camp, and from the outset it attempted to avoid the pitfalls of the suburbs of the past, including places like the neighbouring Arbury Estate – the lack of landmarks, coherent travel arrangements and amenities; the sense that it only provided housing and nothing else. Therefore, the planning agreement included a Section 106 requirement (the planning law that allows for community benefits), a travel plan, play facilities and as this publication explores, a public art strategy. Controversial to some, Section 106 is related to the earlier ‘percent for art’ schemes, which stipulate that a certain amount of a development budget be spent on contributions by artists.

Orchard Park, Cambridge, 2008 Photograph David Houghton

18

Such schemes have their critics, of course, but advocates point out that without them, the ‘quality of life’ factors that are an essential part of a place would not exist. It could be argued that they create value, by making the difference between a collection of dwellings and a fully-realised place that has a symbolic as well as a functional presence.

In July 2003 full planning permission was granted for Arbury Camp and work started in September 2005 by contractor Galliford Try, the completion date being 2011. As well as homes and offices, there were to be the County Council’s Historic Resource and Cultural Centre, areas of recreation and open space and access roads leading into the estate from King’s Hedges Road.

As the work started, the development became known as Arbury Park; the name moderated due to fears that the word ‘Camp’ sounded too militaristic. The construction of new housing began in July 2006, the first homes went on the market in the summer of 2007, and the Orchard Park Community Primary School was ready for term-time in September 2007 – named in order to distinguish itself from the nearby primary school in the Arbury Estate, but presaging the development’s name change. The place formerly known as Arbury Camp was taking shape.

The plans for the development were arranged around a number of key open spaces, including a circus, a square and other informal areas. The open spaces, sport, recreation and play facilities would be both hard and soft landscaped that is, they have built and planted areas – and there were to be locations for public art. The hotel and other businesses would mean that people who didn’t live in the development would pass through, and the secrets of the landscape would be alluded to in the public art.

Orchard Park, Cambridge, 2008 Photograph David Houghton

19

The original Public Art Strategy was formulated by lead artist Patricia MacKinnon-Day with public art organisation Commissions East, under the title ‘Making Visible the Invisible’. This was chosen as it referred to the sense of a history of human activity hidden beneath the inauspicious turf of the site, and its stated role was to create ‘aesthetic coherence’ and ‘foster a sense of integration’. These values were to be found beneath the surface of the development – in some cases literally, as the archaeological developments were incorporated into artworks and place names. However, it was not to be done by way of stand-alone pieces of commissioned art, but by a more integrated approach, and MacKinnon-Day’s maxim became a guiding principle, a hidden hand that would help to ‘forge character’ in the new development.

Orchard Park would hit the ground running; a new kind of settlement that would come to represent this era and demonstrate that it had learned from the problems that afflicted earlier post-war estates: the lack of transport, amenities; and the over-reliance on cars. The aim was to engineer a more connected, forward-thinking settlement that would serve its inhabitants well, a scenario alluded to in a Cambridgeshire County Council planning review of 2001 which spoke of the need to discourage “social exclusion by maximising proximity of affordable new residential development to jobs, facilities and services” and to “reduce lengths/time of journey to work and to shops/leisure/schools from social housing.” Orchard Park would attempt to design out those problems that had arisen in the earlier wave of local authority building and, like many of its contemporaries, would try to surpass earlier settlements such as the Arbury Estate.

The difference between a mixed tenure, 21st century development and a post-war local authority estate is not an exact comparison, one might argue, as their purposes are different. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that since the 1960s,

Orchard Park, Cambridge Image courtesy of Cambridge 2000

Orchard Park, Cambridge Image courtesy of Gallagher Estates

20

the notion of ‘place-making’ has become fashionable. This social science grew up as a response to various factors; a vital one being the problems facing the earlier era of development which, as well as the detrimental aspects listed above, lacked something yet more important – a sense of being a true, authentic place. This value is never so much as questioned in the older medieval-derived settlements like nearby Histon, with its green, churches, social hubs and ancient lanes. Why should this be?

As architect Bernard Hunt lamented in his Millennium speech of 2001, “We have lost the simple art of place-making. We are good at putting up buildings but we are bad at making places.” Orchard Park and its peers, it was hoped, would help correct that assumption. It would also place an emphasis on the idea of ‘community’, and the collective needs of a group of people defined by shared geography, and hopefully, by a shared commitment to their new settlement. To put a collection of homes in a blank space and let the residents move in was no longer enough. As a spokesperson for CABE (the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) articulated, this era is “a great chance to get urban design principles right” after the detrimental lack of planning in the equivalent estates in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the US, the idea of ‘place-making’ is more mature than in the UK. The creation of destination – that is, a place is somewhere you go to, as well as live in and leave – is one of its platforms, and the ‘new urbanism’, an urban design movement with similar objectives to Orchard Park, is a political force. In the light of the earlier Arbury Estate, where, in general, non-tenants didn’t enter except to visit relatives and friends, this notion is changing the tenor of the housing estate, instilling a sensibility of movement, of public conviviality, as well as providing dwellings in which people live. Orchard Park is a dormitory development to some extent, but at the same time, it is one that aspires to having its own internal life.

We have lost the simple art of place-making. We are good at putting up buildings but we are bad at making places

21

The ideas behind place-making come from the books of architectural and planning theorists Jane Jacobs, William H. Whyte and Christopher Alexander. Their ideas were to some extent impelled by the technocratic cities of the time, which privileged cars over pedestrians and which therefore lacked the dynamism of lived-in communities, as provided by pedestrians, social areas and public space. It grew into a part of contemporary popular geography. So fashionable has the notion of place-making become that it has also become a bit of a magic word, which some critics believe is deployed to gain an unearned feel good factor. For example, John Sorrell, the then Chair of CABE, wrote in 2006: “To see this useful term hijacked and reduced to a mere brand in order to sell a watered-down or even cynically wrong-headed version of community is sorely disappointing.” The point, he added, is to look at the benefits, build on the values of place that already exist and ultimately, to create a clear identity for a new settlement.

Places that have taken the place-making ethos to heart include the Prince of Wales’ pet project, Poundbury in Dorset and Seaside in Florida, both with hefty inputs by architect Leon Krier. These have been sophisticated if somewhat aloof exemplars of the art of place-making, to the extent that the ex-deputy Prime Minister John Prescott went to Seaside, famous as the location of the Jim Carrey film ‘The Truman Show’, to see how it might influence the huge Thames Gateway development. It also reintroduced certain stylistic features, some of which seem to have rubbed off on Orchard Park, in its variegated street plans, porches, front gardens and curves. Poundbury it isn’t, but a place-making sensibility pervades the settlement.

Public art has become part of the place-making equation. An Arts Council report has said that public art can “help to forge a new identity” and “create a sense of ownership” of public space. In ‘The Art of Placemaking: Interpreting

The point is to look at the benefits, build on the values of place that already exist and ultimately, to create a clear identity for a new settlement

22

Community Through Public Art and Urban Design’, the US theorist Ronald Lee Fleming argues that public art should “foster a powerful civic experience of connection to place” and advocates narrative, site-specific art that engages the imagination; the kind of work that can be seen in Orchard Park, in fact. It might sound pretentious to some, but the principle that civic life could be enhanced by art is obvious to anyone who has been to say, Florence. Why shouldn’t it also be the case in a development outside Cambridge, for example?

There are precedents in recent British history for a more enhanced role of place-making, taking art into consideration. The Garden City movement of the early 20th century, although different in terms of its ambitions than the new wave of development as exemplified by Orchard Park, is generally accepted to have had a far-reaching influence on urban planning. The ideas of Ebenezer Howard, the progenitor of the Garden City movement, and author of the great tract ‘Garden Cities of To-Morrow’, led to the creation of both Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City – not far from Cambridge, incidentally, and linked to the A1 Great North Road and the A10, Cambridge’s two arteries into London prior to the establishment of the M11.

This Edwardian movement, influenced by a certain socialist idealism, was itself derived from the Viennese 19th century architect and planner Camillo Sitte, whose ‘City Planning According to Artistic Principles’ set up, or perhaps revived, the principles that have sustained all the way through to Orchard Park, with pronouncements such as: “Squares and parks should be catalysers of public life.” The idea grew that any new place had to have a civic life designed into it, a notion that filtered through the modernism of Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright in the mid 20th century, and which also drew from historical study of old villages. Art had a place in this civic revival, albeit of a somewhat neo-medieval kind, with crafts such as bookbinding, weaving, pottery and

The Whistling Witch, Poundbury Photograph Zonda Grattus

23

printing being promoted – the idea being that they were to be self- sustaining cottage industries, distinct from the alienating industrial towns of the 19th century.

A more recent influence on Orchard Park, and one that is more in tune with its use of public art, comes from the era post-World War II. The fourteen New Towns planned between 1946 and 1950 were influenced, as it says in David Kynaston’s book ‘Austerity Britain’, by Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City model and took the idea of the perfect contemporary settlement into the post-war period, when cities, and in particular London, were struggling with the effects of the war. “They were to be economically self-contained and socially balanced communities that in national terms would stimulate decentralisation from the overcrowded big cities” wrote Kynaston.

Crucially, the New Towns took the view that public art was a necessary part of their morale, and the various development corporations used art as a composite part of their settlements, to the point where social theorist Colin Ward could state in his 1993 book, ‘New Town, Home Town’ that “If anyone wanted to see contemporary public sculpture in Britain, it would be necessary to

Henry Moore Harlow Family Group Harlow, 1955 Photograph Graham Portlock

24

tour, not our historic old towns, but our New Towns”. It seems unlikely today but Lewis Silkin, minister for Town and Country Planning in Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour government, said in 1948 that “Basildon will become a city which people from all over the world will want to visit.”

With hindsight, it is tempting to scoff at such ambitions, but the public art of the New Towns made a ground-breaking attempt to use art as part of their development – a method that has filtered through to settlements such as Orchard Park. The ways that they used art were as part of the built fabric of the towns, with external murals as well as stand-alone works of free-standing sculpture, trying to knit art into the very development of the new settlements. For example, in Peterlee, County Durham, and Harlow, Essex, sophisticated campaigns of art placement were devised by employing visionary planner/architects. In Harlow, the planner Sir Frederick Gibberd set up the Harlow Arts Trust to purchase sculpture and secure commissions for the town. In Peterlee, the general manager A V Williams, was responsible for the employment of the artist Victor Pasmore in 1955, following the departure of modernist architect Berthold Lubetkin who had been commissioned as masterplanner in 1947 but who left after a conflict in 1949. In a move that is echoed by Patricia MacKinnon-Day’s brief for Orchard Park, Pasmore, then one of Britain’s foremost artists, was incorporated into the very process of development and was employed as a consultant to advise Peterlee’s team of architects in the design of a new housing development.

In the optimism of the post-war period, this was the breakthrough opportunity for an artist to be involved with the planning of a New Town. So integrated was Pasmore into the architectural plan that he became personally involved in the design of the houses and their landscaping. It was a bold experiment and Pasmore brought a modernising influence to the design, informed by the 20th

The ways that they used art were as part of the built fabric of the towns, with external murals as well as stand-alone works of free-standing sculpture, trying to knit art into the very development of the new settlements

25

century avant garde, with an emphasis on formal qualities such as line and mass, monochromatic interplays and contrasting materials. It was highly praised at the time, but has subsequently been criticised as autocratic and unfriendly to the very people whose lives it aimed to enhance. Pasmore was said to have objected to tenants’ own aesthetic choices in their gardens, for one thing. But his links with Peterlee lasted two decades and his most vital contribution, the Apollo Pavilion of 1963, remains a structure of art historical note and according to art critic Richard Cork, “a fascinating example of how contemporary artists can translate their concerns into wholly architectural terms.”

It is worth noting that the problem of place-making affected the New Towns, too. “Each lacks the kind of emotional core or architectural heart that makes many of us think so highly of old towns and cities,” wrote architectural critic Jonathan Glancey in the Guardian newspaper on the 60th anniversary of the New Town movement in 2007. It’s true that while provision might be made for buses, libraries and art, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a settlement acquires a strong sense of identity. The New Towns are not ‘brown sign’ towns, directing visitors to places of interest, and in truth, Silkin’s prophecy about Basildon hasn’t been fulfilled.

It may be naïve to expect that public art can ignite a feeling of community identity and bring people together in some kind of civic concord. But it has become an indivisible part of the art of place-making, and that has to be a process that takes the long view. It is a lesson being learned by Orchard Park, at any rate, where the art is inextricably linked to the site, and which, despite delays, can be considered part of the very essence of the development.

Victor Pasmore Apollo Pavilion Peterlee, 1970 Photograph John Pasmore

Opposite page:

Lynn Chadwick Trigon Harlow, 1961 Photograph Graham Portlock

26

27

28

SCHOOL GATES

ORCHARD PARK

PRIMARY SCHOOL

A

D

LAP PETAL

29

Breaking Ground2

THE GLASS LI

BRARY

THE BANANA

B

C

LAP PETAL

E

LAP TENDRILL

F

LAP SEED CASE

LAP (LOCAL AREAS OF PLAY)

From the outset, the stated policy towards the public art at Orchard Park was that it would be integrated into the very design of the settlement. There was to be no monumental grandstanding, no sweeping statements. Rather, the various artworks would be knitted into the fabric of Orchard Park, and its public areas and infrastructure. The civic basis of the development was to be assisted and informed by the role of artists.

Firstly, a document, the ‘Design Guide for Arbury Park’, was produced by Gallagher Estates to show the philosophy of the development (using, of course, its earlier name). It recommended that “rather than rely on stand-alone pieces of commissioned art” a more ‘holistic’ approach should be taken, setting the tone for an integrated plan that wouldn’t rely on large-scale statements. Landmark sculptures such as Antony Gormley’s ‘Angel of the North’ have a regenerative purpose but in the case of Orchard Park, there was no need for regeneration. To put it bluntly, the north Cambridge area does not need a landmark to sell itself to the world.

Thus a more subtle strategy was declared – and indeed, this is consistent with an emphasis in the public art sphere in recent years. Rather than the ‘statuemania’ that inspired the 19th century builders of public spaces, the public art of today can be many things. It can be permanent sculpture in the middle of a public place. It can also be an event, a piece of street furniture or a common idea expressed in a public scheme, such as Kirsten Lavers’ project ‘SAME & different’ (see pages 37–38). It is not necessarily fixed, permanent, or even very visible. As Orchard Park’s ethos was to “fit art into the place”, there was an understanding that it would be integral to the process of place-making, rather than a central motif around which the settlement would revolve. Josephine Teague, who was a member of Impington Parish Council when Orchard Park was being planned, and knows the development well, has written of the public art: “Many people

A guide to the art of Orchard Park

30

mistakenly believe that public art is just a picture or a piece of sculpture put in place to admire or revile as the mood takes us. This is untrue. Public art can be the entire surroundings or environment of a settlement – the bus stops, the lighting, the pavements and the very brickwork and railings of each building.”

As part of the process, Patricia MacKinnon-Day was appointed as lead artist, as well as two other key artists – Lubna Chowdhary and Kirsten Lavers. There were also individual projects: Adam Booth’s gates for Orchard Park Primary School and Chris Wood’s commission for the new Premier Inn hotel. Indeed, Booth’s welcoming entrance, with its floral motifs, was the first piece to be installed on site. “Gates should welcome people rather than act as barriers,” said Booth, an artist blacksmith. “They should be tactile and enjoyable and foster a feeling of excitement”. As with Chowdhary and some of MacKinnon-Day’s work, the plant motifs have a local resonance: they both suggest a sense of growth and relate to the horticultural past of the site. The commission by Chris Wood for the Premier Inn hotel in the north-eastern part of Orchard Park consists of square pieces of glass in a stainless steel frame, mounted as a large panel on the facade of the hotel. Set at angles, the daylight reacts with the coloured glass, and in the evening timed lighting creates a shimmering effect. Wood has said that she intends it to echo the transient nature of the hotel visitor.

The commissioning of these artworks helps develop what Gallagher Estates calls “an attractive, vibrant, and contemporary neighbourhood”. At the same time, and particularly as far as the work of the three main artists is concerned, it is part of a process that is sometimes framed as ‘utilitarian’. This does not mean that the art should necessarily be useful in a literal sense, but that it should have a benefit to most of the population. These days, this seems an ordinary demand

Adam Booth School gates (work in progress) Image courtesy of Adam Booth

Adam Booth School gates Orchard Park Primary School, Cambridge, 2007 Photograph Adam Booth

31

to make of public art; but it was not necessarily a feature of the public art of the past which was about many things, from commemoration of war, the celebration of an important local person, perhaps an expression of religious duty. Either way, it was usually a top-down experience, while the utilitarian principle accepts that local consultation will be a part of the creation of the work, a notion that is particularly relevant in the work of the lead artist MacKinnon-Day and the neighbourhood artist Kirsten Lavers.

At the same time, the 1970s idea of the ‘community artist’, one that expresses a common sentiment, is now considered a bit threadbare. Lavers deliberately chose the word ‘neighbourhood’ as distinct from ‘community’, feeling that the people in Orchard Park should not be represented as a single bloc. “The word ‘community’ is a denial of difference” she said. “With the word ‘neighbourhood’, you don’t make assumptions that local people share anything apart from geographical location.”

The art was charged with the task of connecting the new population to the site; to give that sense of place. Therefore, there’s a feeling in Orchard Park that the artworks should be part of the deep content of the place: that they should spark a resonance with the past and therefore establish historical linkages that add to the value of the Orchard Park experience. One of the public art commonplaces is that it should refer to local history, sometimes handled in a way that is over-literal. The tendency at Orchard Park is to show not tell – to allude to the past, rather than to make didactic comment – and therefore to create a sense of what one might call a continuity of imagination.

One factor referred to in Gallagher Estates’ design document is particularly intriguing: that the artworks should “provide openings for creative thinking”. It’s an ambitious principle, and one that is almost impossible to quantify. After

Public art can be the entire surroundings or environment of a settlement – the bus stops, the lighting, the pavements and the very brickwork and railings of each building

32

all, some people might not know, when sitting on a seat by Lubna Chowdhary, that it was derived from the observation of plant life, and that it therefore makes reference to Orchard Park’s horticultural past. Few would argue that a specific interpretation is a strict matter; what is important is that the development has some kind of unique characteristic that the user unfolds.

Chowdhary, well known for her ceramic work, trained at the Royal College of Art and has long worked in sculptural ceramics, with several public commissions including restaurants and hotels as well as public art projects in hospitals and housing. However, it was for her understanding of landscape that she was approached to work on the five LAPs (Local Areas of Play) in Orchard Park. These were planned to be spread across the settlement: areas of attractive space to be both planted and in due course peopled, aiming to “stimulate young children and encourage informal play and social interaction”. The LAPs would bring people together, host important civic enhancements such as benches and rubbish bins, offer respite to the harder-edged parts of the landscape such as the roads and pavements, and most importantly, offer visual interest to inhabitants and visitors to Orchard Park.

After observing how the development fitted together, Chowdhary decided to make low seating areas with glazed bricks. “Traditionally I work in tiling, but there was nowhere to apply tiles. So I started to work with glazed bricks and thought of building small wide walls from them.” Based on modular shapes, the walls would provide informal seating for several people and by placing the seating within the middle of each LAP, they would help drive interaction. “They’re specifically designed to bring local people together” says Chowdhary. “I was aware that if a community was just planted in Orchard Park it might not germinate.” Designed to face in many directions, they follow the open, outgoing nature of the overall design plan.

Lubna Chowdhary Untitled St Georges Hospital, London, 2004 Photograph Nicholas Higgins Image courtesy of Lubna Chowdhary

Lubna Chowdhary Untitled Tesco, Slough, 2007 Photograph Nicholas Higgins Image courtesy of Lubna Chowdhary

33

The wider landscape plan was designed by David Hamilton, Landscape Officer for South Cambridgeshire District Council, with Chowdhary working on the LAPs. Chowdhary, a keen gardener herself, has often worked with plant forms in her ceramic works, and immediately saw how the gardens theme could inform this project. “The aim of the artworks was to symbolise the growth of a new community and I wanted the artworks to play a part in creating that sense of place”, she said, adding that the ceramic areas would therefore become part of the endeavour to make the place, to bring people together. As she explains, “It would also offer a symbolic link with the previous land use and the local companies Chivers Jams and Unwins Seeds.”

Chowdhary designed the five shapes for the LAPs by looking at the evolution of growth stages in plants, “simplified to create strong, simple, smooth shapes which would become the focal point of each LAP.” The shapes were based on flowers, seeds, buds, tendrils and seedpods – again, to connect the residents to the horticultural past of Orchard Park and at the same time, connect them with their new neighbours. “My feeling was that people would want a place to sit down, plus I wanted to work on the idea of the horticultural past” she said. Around the seating areas would be hard flooring surrounds that echoed the shape of the seats, consisting of small paving units.

Lubna Chowdhary Designs for Local Areas of Play Image courtesy of Lubna Chowdhary

34

She had the idea to plant native fruit trees to link to the history of land use in the area, the plan being to tie in with a proposed school orchard and potentially create a source of pleasure for local people, who might gather the fruit and even make jams in ad hoc fashion. “I was hoping to plant edible plants – anything from apples to sweet peas – but there was an objection that it would be high maintenance and messy.” Another proposal, which is going ahead, is to plant willow, which might then be harvested and used in basket-making – possibly by the inhabitants of Orchard Park themselves. “The area had apparently had its own osiery [a willow plantation] making willow baskets in which they’d take their fruit to market, and I thought this would encourage community activity.”

Chowdhary is inspired by what she calls the ‘horror vacuii’ – by which she means the human need to fill empty space. As Orchard Park was more or less empty space a decade ago, and Patricia MacKinnon-Day’s guiding maxim for Orchard Park’s public art was ‘Making Visible the Invisible’, it’s an appropriate sentiment.

The most visible artist at Orchard Park, at least during the course of 2008, was neighbourhood artist Kirsten Lavers. Those who have been to Chieftain Way on Orchard Park will have seen ‘The Banana’, a yellow shipping container converted into a studio for the use of Lavers and known more formally as the ‘Neighbourhood Arts Unit’. Indeed, as Lavers says, the Banana isn’t a studio as such; more a meeting point where people can see the evolution of the artworks, including Orchard Park’s public art programme – just as they can on Lavers’ Orchard Park website, www.sameanddifferent.net.

When Lavers came to Orchard Park in 2007 there were around 80 residents and as she recalled, “It felt like a dormitory”. There were few landmarks; indeed, there were no street signs at all. “It was difficult to find someone’s house. You had to call them to find out where they were.” This gave Lavers an idea with practical

David Hamilton Designs for Local Areas of Play Image courtesy of David Hamilton

35

as well as artistic virtue – to get the people in Orchard Park to make road signs: “I thought, ‘What is it like to be here?’ and one of the things that came up was the lack of road signs. From the outset, the idea was to benefit everybody, and it would be fun and practical.” Plus, it was a way to provide context and to assist with the process of place-making. Lavers and two local artists, ghettokid and CJ Mahony, along with Orchard Park residents, made 43 ‘Do-It-Ourselves’ road signs, between August to September 2007, and their efforts can still be seen. “The signs were only supposed to last six days,” says Lavers. “It’s quite complicated to get planners to consent to road signs as they have to conform to visibility standards.” Still, in the autumn of 2008 many remained, particularly in areas where pavements had not yet been completed, although some had been stolen and vandalised. Road signs are now being installed by Gallagher Estates, but as it happened, the art road signs served greater purpose than was expected.

Similarly, another Lavers project involved making mosaic house numbers. The houses hadn’t been provided with numbers, so Lavers held two workshops to make them, plus a sign for the community centre. “Again, it was a way to make something that would bring people together as well as attend to a need on site. Now at least ten homes bear the numbers.”

The Banana was opened in 2007. Lavers had wanted it to be orange not yellow, but its name quickly followed its colour. It was positioned on Chieftain Way and stencilled by artist Maya, who sealed the yellow shipping crate’s identity with a banana stencil. As part of her work Lavers was keen that the ‘urban artists’ were given space, as the bridge under the A14 at the eastern end of Orchard Park – now to be used for the guided busway – was one of Cambridge’s more significant open-air graffiti galleries. This could have created diplomatic problems with more conservative inhabitants, but Lavers accepts that not all will be pleased by her interventions. “I think that art should be a bit of an irritant, not a balm.”

Kirsten Lavers & Maya The Banana (Neighbourhood Arts Unit) Orchard Park, Cambridge, 2007 Photograph Kirsten Lavers

Kirsten Lavers SAME & different Frames Project Orchard Park, Cambridge, 2008 Photograph Kirsten Lavers

36

During the summer of 2007, Lavers had the idea of making a beach in Orchard Park using imported sand that would be a summer meeting place. It was rejected in 2007 on health and safety grounds, but by the summer of 2008, Lavers had resuscitated the idea, had it agreed, and installed a beach by the Banana from July to August.

The idea of the beach was fun – a place to play in the summertime, and Birmingham had made a beach in its Bullring area earlier in 2007, which had been a success. At the same time, Lavers was also inspired by a passage in Charles Leadbeater’s book: “Beaches are ordered without being controlled. No-one is in charge. Beaches are model civic spaces; tolerant, playful, self-regulating, democratic in spirit, mildly carnivalesque. Underlying the beach’s appeal is a simple idea; the beach is a common space where people can self-organise in play ....”

The beach used 29 tonnes of real beach sand, laid in place for five weeks, with barbecues, film screenings and social events, like kite-making and flying. Lavers was particularly impressed with the sandcastle building competition: “It was interesting to watch, as they’d been watching the development being built. It was as if it was their turn to build.”

Then came the ‘SAME & different Frames Project’, in which Lavers gave all residents square wooden picture frames, into which they could put a memento – anything, really – pertinent to their move to Orchard Park as a ‘housewarming’ gift.

The project was still in progress at the time of writing, but a similar scheme came a year before the model for the frame project with artist Mark Dixon’s ‘Network VIII’, in every occupied house in Orchard Park received an interactive

Kirsten Lavers Mosaic Workshops Orchard Park, Cambridge, 2008 Photograph Kirsten Lavers

Kirsten Lavers Do It Ourselves Roadsigns Orchard Park, Cambridge, 2007 Photograph Kirsten Lavers

37

‘Conversation Star’ to hang in an exterior facing window during the Christmas of 2007. “Each of the 200 households was asked to hang it in a place visible from the road,” says Lavers, who said that most people did, and that some of the residents still have them up. As well as providing some festive light, the idea was that they would twinkle in windows as a response to wireless activity: a graphic display of growing communication across the site, and by visualizing transmissions, a clear case of making the invisible visible. Dixon also created a light installation in the window of the Banana, where residents would be able to complete the phrase “I hope Arbury Park will be ...” by text message, which would then spur the lights into what Lavers calls a ‘fleeting dance’. One of the messages finished the sentence with the words, “here forever”. As resident Jens Kirschner says, “They were installed in the run-up to the first Christmas but still decorated many windows in the following summer. Nobody seemed to want to remove these stars, as they had been given, not simply as Christmas decorations, but as a little sign of a growing community.”

The most recent manifestation of public art might prove to be the furthest reaching. Since September 2008 the Park Arts Group has had a written constitution, the idea being to promote arts activities in the area of Orchard Park. Its work, according to member David Houghton, a designer who lives in the development, will continue the work of Kirsten Lavers. The inaugural meeting in November 2008 featured singers, dancers, artists and many residents, and there was a sense that connections were being made. The art in Orchard Park is all about the creation of connections – with the present as well as the past.

Mark Dixon Network VIII Orchard Park, Cambridge, 2007–2008 Photograph Richard Heeps

Mark Dixon Network VIII Orchard Park, Cambridge, 2007–2008 Photograph Kirsten Lavers

Opposite page:

Kirsten Lavers Banana Beach Orchard Park, Cambridge, 2008 Photographs Kirsten Lavers

38

39

40

IRON FORT R

OADA

ICENI W

AYB

41

From Iron Age Fort to Silicon Fen

3

UNWIN SQUARE

CCHIEFTA

IN W

AY

D

The art of Orchard Park often refers to past usage of the site, a common enough working process, and the various aspects of land use have proved fruitful for the artists’ ideas. On the ground, however, it had been difficult to see any evidence of historical importance. In recent times, the area that became Orchard Park had the air of being a no-man’s land of sorts, between Cambridge and the two villages of Impington and Histon. Indeed, prior to its redevelopment, it had the feeling of a patch of waste-land, a contingent area, without specific purpose other than being a kind of buffer zone between the Arbury Estate and the A14.

It also operated as a kind of unofficial boundary between city and countryside and this aspect of the site, whether it was urban or rural, was reflected in its administration. Although south of the A14, and therefore on Cambridge’s side of the track, responsibility for it fell to Impington’s Parish Council. This aspect of the site has now changed; it has acquired its own community council. But it somehow added to its sense of dislocation, and may have exacerbated the feeling that this area didn’t quite belong to anywhere.

Yet the land was once important. Firstly, there was an Iron Age fort at Arbury, which is understood to be the reason for the name – the word ‘Arbury’ means ‘earthwork’ and the common surname ‘Arberry’ is thought to denote ‘dweller by the earthwork’. The name is thought to have been corrupted from Hardburgh, to Arborough then to Arbury, and indeed there are other Arburys in the UK, most notably at Arbury Hall in Warwickshire where writer George Eliot was born, and also at the Arbury Banks Iron Age settlement near the village of Ashwell, in north Hertfordshire; the source of the Cam.

Arbury Camp, the original name for the development, reflected the fact that this was once a defensive site, about 250 metres across, with signs of old usage,

The location revealed

42

such as funeral urns, flint tempered vessels and large architectural components such as a rotary ‘quern’ stone, used for grinding food and other materials in the past. It’s a history amply referenced in Orchard Park, in Chieftain Way and most obviously in Ring Fort Road, which transverses the school and houses the central apartment blocks from the second phase of the development.

The notion that the parcel of land had this exciting history filtered through to the first naming of the development, Arbury Camp. Although compound-like, it conformed to the expectation of a place with a deeper history than that of a post-war council estate, still the main resonance of the name in the local area and remaining a bone of contention.

The Iron Age fort is thought to have been built by the Iceni tribe as a defence against incoming Celts. After the Roman invasion, it was taken over by their forces, which has also left a legacy of Roman names in the vicinity, such as Akeman Street, Verulam Way and Mere Way, named after the part of the Roman road, Akeman Street, that led from northern Cambridge through to the Fens.

This era left another archaeological layer, and in the 1950s evidence of a Roman settlement emerged when the Arbury Estate was being prepared, with houses dating from AD130–44 in the vicinity of Arbury Road – proving, perhaps, that the location was once considered a splendid and prestigious address. Archaeologists from the University of Cambridge found Roman buildings dating back to the 2nd century – a villa site, a well, a mausoleum, and artefacts. It is thought the area was the major source of agricultural produce for the Roman town based at Castle Hill, where Castle Mound now sits near Shire Hall. Two stone coffins were found at Humphreys Road in Arbury – containing the bodies of a man, a woman, a mouse and a shrew. The female can still be seen in Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology on Downing Street,

Archaeological dig at Orchard Park site 1998 Image courtesy of Cambridge Archaeological Unit

Arbury skeleton Image courtesy of Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge

43

where poet Sylvia Plath saw her skeleton on display, and was moved to write ‘All the Dead Dears’:

Rigged poker-stiff on her back With a granite grin This antique museum-cased lady Lies, companioned by the gimcrack Relics of a mouse and a shrew That battened for a day on her ankle-bone.

The site was clearly vital, and it is believed that the Arbury Ring fort stood at one end of a causeway leading into the then marshy Fens, following the general line of the road from Castle Hill to Ely. Gun’s Lane in Impington is said to be the heir to this high causeway, and it is also believed that William the Conqueror and his army passed this way chasing Hereward the Wake and rebels into the Fens following the Norman Conquest, after which Castle Hill had become the centre of Norman Cambridge.

So, a trading post, a defensive zone, and an agricultural centre, too. It has been suggested that Impington was named after the ‘farmstead or place of the Empings’ – the Empings being a 6th century Saxon tribe that lived in the area. It has also been proposed that ‘Emp’ is an Anglo-Saxon word for ‘honey’, perhaps indicating a link to honey production, which would add long roots to the area’s tradition of market gardening.

The medieval years in the area are relatively hazy, but the beginnings of modern Arbury came in 1806, when the Impington windmill was built, marking the area’s debut into the modern era of agricultural production, when it started to grow as a population centre. The real push came in 1850,

The medieval years in the area are relatively hazy, but the beginnings of modern Arbury came in 1806, when the Impington windmill was built, marking the area’s debut into the modern era of agricultural production

44

when Steven Chivers bought an orchard next to a new railway line, opened three years earlier by the Eastern Counties Railway Company.

With this industry as a lure, the area began to expand further, and Chivers gained access to the London market. Chivers’ sons started a jam factory in Impington in 1873, and by 1895 the firm made marmalade, jelly and jams, using the railway as a distribution network. Of the local fields, a contemporary Kelly Directory claimed: “The soil is very rich, producing excellent crops of grain and turnips, market garden produce, and a great quantity of fruit from which Cambridge, London and other markets derive great supplies.” For over a century, Chivers thrived, and in 1950 it employed over 4,000 staff, who sent its jams around the world.

A scion of the family, John Chivers, documented the process with many bucolic photographs of women working in bonnets and aprons, picking the fruit in neat rows. The work was no doubt harder than it appears in the posed images, and as fruit-picking was the domain of itinerant labour, much was made of their respectability. In a local history book, ‘Photographic Memories of Histon and Impington’, there is a 1902 quote about strawberry pickers attributed to an anonymous visitor: “The pickers in the field were healthy and respectable looking, and of a far different stamp to those I have seen gathering in other localities.” In 1959, the conglomerate Schweppes bought up the factory and farms but the Chivers family bought them back two years later, and the Chivers horn could still be heard in the 1970s, summoning workers to the jam factory. In some ways, Histon was a company town, Chivers even supported avant-garde architecture in the form of Impington Village College, designed in 1939 by the Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius and the British modernist Maxwell Fry in the International Style, which can be seen a few fields to the north of Orchard Park. Impington thus established itself, thanks

Impington Village College, Impington Image courtesy of Cambridge 2000

45

to the visionary progenitor of the village college system Henry Morris, then secretary of education for Cambridgeshire, as the centre of a new kind of progressive schooling.

As well as Chivers, the other agricultural entrepreneur of note connected to the site was William Unwin, who grew sweet peas at the turn of the last century, selling seeds from 1903. Unwin’s son Charles became the country’s leading sweet pea breeder, and the business branched out into general seeds. It is still trading, and there is a Sweet Pea Drive in Orchard Park. There were other market gardeners with names that still chime locally – Papworth, Carters, Steads – and the clay bats, coppices and jam-making have informed the naming of Histon streets, and are now doing so in Orchard Park, whose new name, of course, recalls its fruit-growing past.

The railways became less fashionable in the 1960s (the rail system ended in 1992, although part of it is being used for the guided busway) and the roads took over, including the bridge road bypass, opened by the Queen Mother in 1970. Chivers’ business continued until 1983, when the factory was sold to a developer. But the labour market in the area meant that the villages of Histon and Impington became built up into the substantial twin settlements that they represent today.

At the same time, Cambridge was expanding northwards. Chesterton, the inner ring area of Cambridge, expanded into New Chesterton as the suburban growth of Cambridge grew in the 19th and 20th centuries. The area started to be built; firstly following the Victorian ring as yellow-bricked houses from local pits were put up by the Cambridge volume builders. The suburb had been set for development after several sales of parcels of land some 200 years ago, when Chesterton had been enclosed. In the 1830s surveyor William Custance

Early Chivers point of sale advertisements Photograph Richard Heeps

46

proposed to build “substantial houses for respectable tenants” – despite the intervention of certain colleges, which rallied against the creation of suburbs abutting the river.

In 1870, New Chesterton was built and parcelled up – indeed, in a similar way to the process taking place in Orchard Park now, with several developers building in the same area. Those moving from over-occupied homes in Cambridge were pleased with the low rents and rates. The town was moving northwards. Local estates started going up in the vicinity, including the McManus Estate west of the Histon Road, and the privately-built Fen Estate near Cam Causeway.

Cambridge was expanding and the seeds for the development of Orchard Park were being sown. In 1947, Cambridge City Council bought the unused northern part of the former Hall Farm from St John’s College, and in the 1960s bought most of the former Manor Farm from the County Council – the same ‘Manor’ that lent its name to Manor Community College on Arbury Road.

To be fair, this was not the most prestigious part of town. Cambridge was growing inexorably closer to Arbury Road, the key artery that runs north-west from Union Lane and Milton Road towards Impington – and passes close to the Orchard Park site. This was becoming Cambridge’s next growth area after World War II, when the recent history of Arbury began.

Thus, from 1957 onwards, both north and south Arbury began to be developed between Gilbert Road and Arbury Road, with a network of roads between those arteries, hosting some 2,500 dwellings. They were followed by extensive building in the King’s Hedges estate to the east of Arbury (an estate that similarly, has suffered image problems down the years). So Cambridge expanded, and along with the population of Cambridge in flight from the unfashionable older housing

Cambridge was expanding and the seeds for the building of Orchard Park were being sown

47

stock in the city, London population overspill also started to move into the three Cambridge working class areas: King’s Hedges, East Chesterton and Arbury. They came to be known collectively and pejoratively as the ‘north side of the city’.

At first, the Arbury Estate was understood as being a necessary part of Cambridge’s inevitable expansion. As it said in the Cambridge News of 1962: “In Arbury Road, the countryside has rapidly disappeared from the doorsteps, but the city with all its amenities has come to replace it. Early residents have come to accept the newcomers and both can enjoy the benefits of one of the most up-to-date estates in the country.”

Yet, by 1970, the News had acknowledged that “living on a spanking new housing estate is far from being a bed of roses… a sense of community is not generated overnight.” By then, the estate had a population of around 6,000, yet was criticized for having a lack of amenities like shops and a playground. More difficult yet was a report in 1972 that discussed “the loneliness of living on a completely artificial new housing complex [where] residents travel to town for increased human contact and sense of identity.”

As with similar suburbs in the UK, the dreams of the 1950s and early 1960s didn‘t take long to unravel, and there were many complaints of lack of social facilities, of loneliness among the old, and of vandalism by the young. Even in 1999, it was being referred to as ‘the notorious Arbury Estate’ in a BBC crime report.

The estate matured, however, attracting up to 20,000 inhabitants, four primary schools, a large comprehensive and more recently, the Cambridge Regional College on its periphery on King’s Hedges Road. There were attempts to instil local pride and identity in Orchard Park’s neighbouring estate, most notably with a project called ‘Arbury 1980’, which coordinated the work of the schools in the

Archaeological dig at Orchard Park site, 1998 Images courtesy of Cambridge Archaeological unit

48

area in an endeavour to build an identity for the area and culminated in a 1981 book, called ‘Arbury Is Where We Live’. This positive reinforcement also drew on the Iron Age origins of Arbury. “We have reasons to be proud to live in Arbury with such a rich history,” wrote one child, “People have lived here for thousands of years.”

Perhaps the problem was, as Lynsey Hanley wrote in her 2007 book about social housing called ‘Estates’: “Breaking out of [the estate] was like breaking out of prison. For all its careful planning and proximity to the city and the country, the estate was ringed by that invisible, impenetrable force field: the wall in the head. That may say as much about the closed ranks of the working class as it does for the failures of town planning. But I know that I will never scale another wall quite so high.”

This background brings the argument back to the lessons learnt on the Arbury Estate, and how they have been absorbed by Orchard Park. The cohesive devices – that is, the garden clubs, the schools, the community centres, the very public spaces that the place-makers desire – are present.

By the 1970s the north side of Cambridge was to experience an entirely different force, known as the ‘Cambridge Phenomenon’ and presaged by the Mott Report of 1969, which proposed the development of science and research industries, using the resources and prestige of the University of Cambridge with which it shared links.

In fact, with factories such as Pye, Cambridge already had a light electrical base to build on, and post the report, the idea to give employment to a proposed 30,000 people was taken. An early manifestation of the phenomenon was the Cambridge Science Park, founded in 1970, and located near to King’s Hedges

Living on a spanking new housing estate is far from being a bed of roses… a sense of community is not generated overnight

49

Road close to Arbury and Orchard Park. The phenomenon is also called the ‘Cambridge Effect’ or ‘Silicon Fen’; the reference being the industry that makes computing, biotechnology, electronics and scientific instruments.

Rather than being a poor town with a bit of light electrical industry supported by a paternalistic university, Cambridge had something new to offer; it had become a regional, near-eastern hub, with 1,500 high tech companies as a pull factor. The Cambridge Sub-Region, as local planners call it, has come to represent one of the UK’s local economic success stories, making a counterpoint to the city’s touristic core and the heavy-weight of its main university – and bringing a new energy to the north side of the city.

The Cambridge Phenomenon works alongside the Cambridge Sub-Region’s ‘growth containment policies’, which are designed to preserve the special character of Cambridge and its surroundings, control urban expansion and prevent settlements becoming part of a large, unwieldy conurbation. Inevitably, however, it has meant that the Cambridge economy has boomed, at least before the recession, and as a result there have been ‘growth pressures’. Traffic, a lack of affordable housing, environmental degradation versus economic growth – these are the issues that have led to what local planners call ‘growth conflicts’. The Financial Times of 14 June 2008 quoted a local estate agent as saying, “Cambridge has changed from being a university and market town to being the centre of a major new growth area.” It has been cited as part of an effect called the ‘Oxford Cambridge Arc’; a corridor of knowledge-economy industry backed by three regional development agencies and with Cambridge its high tech head. This, too, created a requirement for homes, which chimed with the mandate of the local population.

Cambridge has changed from being a university and market town to being the centre of a major new growth area

50

In addition, Orchard Park with its big sister new towns of Cambourne and the yet-to-be-built Northstowe are part of the London-Stansted-Cambridge-Peterborough (LSCP) growth area with 47,500 homes due to be built by 2016.

In a 2002 broadcast for BBC Cambridgeshire, in which the panel discussed the ‘Cambridge Phenomenon’, the city was cited as being a possible victim of its own success, with house prices soaring and traffic congestion increasing, while housing and infrastructure needs were left unattended. “Much more housing needs to be built, in market towns and villages (with transport improvements) and in Cambridge (even at the expense of the Green Belt). Affordability is key for academics, students, and the rest of the community alike,” wrote a resident of Waterbeach in the comments box to the programme, in consensus with other commentators.

Hence the need for Orchard Park – the development that would cap the north-eastern border of Cambridge. It appeared to be a very good fit.

Napp Pharmaceutical, Cambridge Image courtesy of Cambridge 2000

51

52

THE PARK

A

53

Seed and Stem4

THE CIRCUSTHE SQUARE

THE HEDGES

B

C

D

Since 2005 Orchard Park has arisen, as developers sometimes put it, from ‘out of the ground’ and the first residents moved into Arbury Park, as it was then still known, in 2007. Now, many of the dwellings have been sold. But at the time of writing in the autumn/winter of 2008, Orchard Park remains incomplete. There is still a sense that it hasn’t quite been reclaimed from the countryside. Oilseed rape has blown in, dusting the un-built parts of the development with yellow buds, and despite the housing, most of which is built, it hasn’t quite shaken off the less favoured legacy of the northern edge of Cambridge – where the suburbs cleave to the Fens. Somehow the traffic is still as prominent as the architecture.

Arguably this is a function of maturity – of trees, plants, traffic, pedestrians – and in ten year’s time, it will be different. The area is unrecognisable from ten years ago. Orchard Park does appear to be fusing town and country, and may yet be part of the redefinition of Cambridge’s boundaries. Although it currently sits in the Impington Parish, a possible redrawing could bring it under the jurisdiction of Cambridge City Council – a development that acknowledges the A14 as the city’s northern boundary, yet which leaves some in Impington unhappy. After all, the Iron Age fort straddles the A14, and the parish is an ancient parcel of land. Orchard Park, in pushing the city’s envelope, is helping to create a sense of ‘Greater Cambridge’, as a city developing into the hub of a metropolitan area.

Many will object to these notions. After all, the Holford Report’s proposals back in 1950 were supposed to contain the city’s boundaries. Perhaps there are good aspects of it, and one of the benefits of all the planning work was to avoid the sense of isolation and seclusion that had afflicted a previous generation of suburbs. Orchard Park is a mixed development with integration as part of its plan and unlike the Arbury Estate, is not primarily composed of social housing which in the earlier Estate’s day would have been called ‘council housing’,

The development grows

54

suggesting segregation from the predominantly owner-occupied city. To be avoided was the discredited idea of a Levittown, the developer settlement created outside New York by developer Levitt and Sons, which created the generic image of the modern sprawling suburb. Such mistakes of the past were to be avoided, while the best parts – the communitarian aspects of the Garden Cities; the pro-social aspects of the New Towns – would be updated and incorporated. The vision for the Arbury Park development, as expressed in the design guide, would be to achieve an “attractive, vibrant and contemporary” addition to the city, which will provide, “much-needed housing, employment and community facilities.”

Gallagher Estates, as part of its development work around the country, had been scouting various sites. The Arbury site came up and cost in the region of £100 million. At the time, the site was being pursued by the retailer Sainsbury’s, which wanted to build a ‘retail warehouse park’ on the land. But the company didn’t get planning permission, due to fears that the plan would end up generating too much traffic. “We then bought the land from Sainsbury’s, having established that there was a housing demand in Cambridge,” said Andy Lawson of Gallagher Estates.

The planning document was comprehensive in its summing up of the place: “Land bounded by the A14, Histon Road, King’s Hedges Road and the former Cambridge–St Ives railway line is allocated for a sustainable housing-led mixed-use development providing a minimum of 900 dwellings, a public transport interchange on the proposed guided busway along the former railway line, up to 18,000m² B1 development of offices and light industry, car showrooms, a primary school, a local centre, public open space, and the preservation or enhancement of the Arbury Camp site of archaeological interest (if preservation in situ is found to be essential).”

Orchard Park, Cambridge. Images courtesy of Gallagher Estates

55

There it was – the template by which this somewhat abandoned inter-zone could finally come into life as a settlement. As one of Europe’s prime growth areas, any developer would have been confident of its ability to deliver a functioning community on this site, connected indelibly to Cambridge by that travel plan, using a guided bus service whereby buses run on a track with their wheels in troughs, a model for which can be found in Adelaide, Australia, Essen in Germany, and Crawley in Sussex.

The site itself had to be planned. So about seven years ago, Milton Keynes-based town planning agency David Lock Associates designed the masterplan for Arbury Camp, followed by John Thompson and Partners. A road layout was devised, itself careful to design around the Iron Age Fort which, as a historic site, is protected. Half of the fort had already been lost under the A14, and some of the rest has been to an extent destroyed by farming, but it is still a visible semi-circle in the ground, close to Orchard Park school. Archaeologists were invited on site and found what they called in a report, ‘a monumental architecture’. A huge triumphal gate was discovered, alongside Roman coins and Iron Age pottery, attesting to the two early waves of settlement in the area.

Aside from the fort, the road layout has a strong east-west orientation; what the designers call a ‘spine’ route. The reason for this is that the planners wanted a strong sense of flow through the site, notably of pedestrians and cyclists. Human activity would populate the LAPs, the community centre, and the stops for the guided busway, creating a place that had dynamism and human interest. Indeed, the roads themselves are a departure from the cul-de-sac model that prevailed in the 1980s, and which led to a lack of connectedness; even in some cases to a concentration of social problems. At the same time the layout – with its corners, curves and visual and textural cues – is designed to limit cars to 30mph or less; devices often used in urban areas.

Orchard Park, Cambridge, 2008 Image courtesy of Gallagher Estates

56

Conservation kerbing, hardy shrubs in different varieties according to location, a temporary acoustic barrier along the southern side of the A14 were installed to enhance the development, and make it feel less windy, less unused. There would be ‘character zones’, namely the Circus, the Square and the Hedges, and the north-west corner would be the Hub. The Hedges and the Square would ensure ‘active frontage’, so that the development put up a friendly, open face to the world. All in all, this would be a place that enticed people in, rather than one that repelled, and once inside, the cohesive devices – that is, the LAPs, the school, the community centres – would all present the agreeable public spaces that the place-makers desire for a functioning community, rather than a collection of houses. It was also, as John Pym, Senior Planner at South Cambridgeshire District Council said, important that the houses ranged against the King’s Hedges Road should be outward facing. “It’s very different to the King’s Hedges Estate, which turns its back on the road. You will see the faces of these houses, which introduces a sense of openness, so it wouldn’t be insular.” To help with this plan, the traffic was slowed down on King’s Hedges Road, the road bordering Orchard Park, intending to help the sense of community.

This was to be a porous estate, open to the outside world, with shops and places that would invite people in. “We considered that traffic generation could be a problem with this approach,” says Andy Lawson. Then again, the benefits of luring economic activity on site would outweigh such considerations, and would also have the effect of decreasing the sense of isolation that was a problem with the previous generation of estates, such as the nearby Arbury and King’s Hedges Estates, which have never quite become integrated into the city of Cambridge and have been somewhat neglected as add-ons to the city’s periphery.

The character zones of Arbury Park Image courtesy of Gallagher Estates

Orchard Park, Cambridge, 2008 Image courtesy of Gallagher Estates

57

Gallagher Estates had the responsibility for leading the development and took the percent for art option, adding public art, as well as other amenities. Discussions were held regarding everything from the style of the brickwork, to the overall look and feel of the settlement; the motivation “allow… sufficient difference” while seeking to “avoid a boring banality of design.”

Were the house-building companies keen on providing the basic structure? Arguably their remit was more profit-oriented. But the estate agents seemed to recognise the value of having a neighbourhood that was ready-made. As a sales document for Savills stated, “Arbury Park is quickly emerging as a new neighbourhood on the northern edge of Cambridge. The current construction period follows many years of negotiation to ensure that the scheme will provide a suitable mix of residential, commercial and community uses to sustain this neighbourhood now and for the future.” Road names were chosen for the development, to provide the vital identity markers that Arbury Camp needed. Chosen by Impington Parish Council, they related to the Celtic and Roman aspects as well as the horticultural land use: Iceni Way, Ring Fort Road, Unwin Square.

Some plans fell. It had been mooted that the Cambridge Historical Resource and Cultural Centre (HRCC) might also be located here, which many felt appropriate due to the archaeological presence of the ancient ring fort. But in 2005 it was decided that this would instead be more suitable as part of the area around Cambridge’s railway station. Also, plans for an ice rink were scuppered in 2006.

Gallagher Estates didn’t prescribe the exact form that the architecture would take, as it was handled by each builder, and there is a wide variety of housing styles on site, from apartments, two-bedroom coach houses and five-bedroom houses, made with articulated frontages to increase the visual interest.

Orchard Park, Cambridge, 2008 Image courtesy of Gallagher Estates

58

The show homes were dressed for sale in a kind of boutique hotel-style – a bottle of new world Chardonnay, a lemon squeezer and a bowl of Granny Smiths – a salesperson for Laing Homes, one of the house builders on site, said that there were 68 different house types for Laing alone. There are nods to tradition; the Inscape houses on Sweet Pea Way have prefabricated chimneys, made from fibreglass and faced with bricks, lowered in their entirety onto the roofs of the houses, a requisite of planning and a slight absurdity. In general, while the housing is varied, one striking factor is that the development includes several three-storey homes, a planning decision, according to John Pym: “We’ve tried to deliver an urban streetscape.” That they offer a higher density development may also have been a factor; that they nod to the three-storey houses in the centre of Cambridge certainly was an influence.

Some have pointed out that Orchard Park could be a housing development anywhere in the UK. As such, it illustrates some of the problems with contemporary urban design, in that it suffers a lack of a sense of locality. For example, although local motifs might be used, the building materials are not likely to be locally sourced. But as Andy Lawson says, the north Cambridge vernacular is, “a bit of an intangible. The northern part of Cambridge has so much housing of different types that it’s a bit difficult to define a common theme or style.”

Many houses in Cambridge and its environs were historically built in the local yellow brick, derived from the gault clay that was used as a building material. The palette of colours and materials are designed to acknowledge the locality. However, as Lawson argues, “The yellow bricks have long gone out of production in this area, and could only have been imported from the Netherlands. There would have been pressure to explain why the carbon rating had been raised.”

Launch of Topper Street play area, Orchard Park, Cambridge Photograph Kirsten Lavers

59

There’s another aspect of Orchard Park – that despite the variety of housing on display, it’s a mixed use development, with social housing and affordable housing. “The design standards are the same, and you won’t be able to tell the difference,” says Lawson. This is a housing practise called ‘pepperpotting’, whereby the various kinds of housing become ‘tenure-blind’, to use the jargon. Still, there are already different characters of the estate, depending on where you are. The eastern end of the site, for example, is more of a residential dormitory. The western end, meanwhile, is expected to be a gateway site, with shops, businesses and in time, with some kind of a landmark statement expected from the local authority.

Yet a kind of class consciousness has dogged the development. One of the first things that the developer ran up against was the problem that has vexed Orchard Park from the beginning – the reputation carried by the words ‘Arbury’ and to a lesser extent, King’s Hedges. “Our confidence in the market was there,” said Lawson. “But local estate agents were adamant, ‘Don’t call it King’s Hedges or Arbury’.” The residents of the existing Arbury Estate were no more encouraging, with one saying “You won’t be doing it any good calling it Arbury.” Gallagher Estates at first used the name Arbury Camp, the better to disclose the connection with the old Iron Age site, and offer a kind of working title for the settlement. That was considered difficult, so other names were tried. King’s Park took the least pejorative part of King’s Hedges but didn’t stick. Then came Orchards, then Arbury Park and finally, Orchard Park.

The word ‘Arbury’ was meaningful, historic and with its Iron Age connotations had strong links to the site. As it had taken just 30 years to attach itself to a poor reputation, it would surely take a similarly short while to dispel any negativity. Plus, it had the word ‘Park’ to distinguish it from the Arbury Estate

Show Home, Orchard Park, Cambridge Photograph Richard Heeps

60

on the other side of Arbury Road. On the other hand, in 1910 Chivers renamed their factory the ‘Orchard Factory’, so one could find a lineage for the use of the word ‘Orchard’. Plus, the school was called Orchard Park Community Primary School, to differentiate itself from Arbury Primary School on the Arbury Estate. Still, the naming of the settlement has undeniably been a spiky issue, with lots of questions about how the name impacts upon its reputation.

There have been other problems, too. As far as the residents are concerned, it is the small aspects, the ‘snags’ as they call them in the construction industry, that are the stuff of conversation in the new development. The houses are too close to the bins. The bins are too evident. The ceiling in the community centre is too low.

Furthermore, during the course of its build Orchard Park has attracted wider criticism, and has been pejoratively compared to various places, including Beirut and Moscow. An early indication of antagonism was on the front page of the Cambridge Evening News on 3 November 2005. “Russian Ghetto Blasted”, was the paper’s banner headline, accompanied by a photograph of Moscow flats and the caption: “Grim: Flats in Moscow”.

Clearly the birth of Orchard Park was not going to be easy, and the first planning application was discarded, with members of South Cambridgeshire District Council’s Development and Conservation Control Committee describing initial designs as “appalling”. “I cannot support such an awful sight. I looked for a chink of light but found none,” said Councillor Sebastian Kindersley. Councillor Dr David Bard, then Portfolio Holder for Planning and Economic Development, said: “These are not modern houses but more like what used to go up in Communist Russia. If this is the sort of thing in the design guide, then it should

The western end, meanwhile, is expected to be a gateway site, with shops, businesses

61

be revisited.” The Moscow idea took hold, augmented by another brickbat from Councillor Mike Mason, Member for Histon and Impington, who said: “It looks like a three-storey chicken shed.”

There were redesigns and resubmissions. These concerns seemed, like the name, to relate to the negative perceptions that had grown around Arbury Estate and which now threatened to attach to Orchard Park. The notion that it would become a twin ghetto, albeit on the other side of the road, became perilously close to taking hold in the public imagination.

Orchard Park now faces a big civic test. It has to knit itself into the life of Cambridge, fulfil its promises, and start to convince people of its worth – as a necessary addition to the housing stock of the area and an attractive place where people want to live, rather than a place where people go to for want of a better solution. Its chances of success are high, but they will take time, particularly given the intervening recession. Some of the art proposals and community aspects of Orchard Park may still be in abeyance, but Andy Lawson is confident. “We have collectively built a community,” he says. The rest – character, identity, a real sense of location – should follow.

We have collectively built a community. The rest – character, identity, a real sense of location – should follow

Opposite page:

Mark Dixon Network VIII Orchard Park, Cambridge, 2007–2008 Photograph Richard Heeps

62

63

64

PROPOSED

TRIAL G

ROUND

C

65

Making Visible the Invisible

5

PROPOSED

JELLY PLAY FO

RMS

A

THE GLASS LI

BRARY

B

The mental asylum, the ship yard, the housing estate: whatever the place, artist Patricia MacKinnon-Day’s work has the overriding aim to unearth and visualise the commonplace aspects of local culture and history. In MacKinnon-Day’s own words, her task is to investigate “the insignificant and incidental rather than the heroic and monumental”, an ethos she has applied to her work for the Orchard Park settlement.

As such, MacKinnon-Day’s may be the opposite of the earlier, top-down public art tendency – to place a monument in a prominent part of the site, and trust that the locality somehow then revolves around it. Her approach is far more integrated, and she hopes not only for “aesthetic coherence” but for her art to “foster a sense of integration, relevance and continuity”, even to instil a sense of pride among the new residents. They aspire to be part of the very fabric of the settlement; one of the factors that will take Orchard Park from being a bland new-build suburb to a place that can build on a sense of its own identity.

Since she began working at Orchard Park in 2005, MacKinnon-Day has had a guiding slogan-cum-strategy: ‘Making Visible the Invisible’. But what does it mean? The answer, as MacKinnon-Day’s work for the development reveals, lies in an artistic inquiry that takes cues from a painstaking exhumation of source material: in this case, from a site that was until recently perceived as inauspicious waste ground, and yet was host to millennia of human activity, from Iron Age forts and Roman encampments, to Medieval feasting and fairgrounds and, from the 19th century onwards, as a place of pioneering market gardening. Yet as the area became stuck in a traffic-bounded limbo between Cambridge and the southern Fens, these human aspects had lapsed, leaving the low-value land ready for development. The place was ready to be remade, with MacKinnon-Day involved in all aspects, including masterplanning and urban design through to proposing landmark features.

The art of Patricia MacKinnon-Day

66

The story of MacKinnon-Day’s involvement with Arbury Camp (to use its earlier working title) goes back to 2005, when she was appointed as lead artist by Gallagher Estates, South Cambridgeshire District Council and Impington Parish Council. The process, project managed by Commissions East and Shape East, was ambitious: to incorporate MacKinnon-Day’s research and resultant artworks into the whole process of place-making. It was also hoped that her work, as well as her way of working, would unite the various forces around the site, and eventually help the emerging settlement to acquire a sense of coherence. The ultimate aim would be to connect Orchard Park’s residents with their new home ground, then known blandly as an ‘urban extension site’ but expected to grow into a recognisable settlement as it gained maturity.

Given her track record as a public artist with a reputation for undertaking deep investigations into site, MacKinnon-Day was an appropriate choice. “Arbury Park offered a blank canvas to really explore a context like a forensic scientist really, trying to connect with people and place” she said at the beginning of her involvement. In this way, she felt that the artworks will reveal themselves as integral to a site, rather than acting as prettifying embellishments. “It’s a case of forging an area’s character,” she has said, and in this sense, her attitude is closer to that of the ‘place-makers’ from the world of planning and urbanism, rather than that of the artist who opts to work autonomously. With the lead developer, Gallagher Estates, it was decided that this ‘character’ would be helped by an artist invoking sensory connections to memory, associations with the site, and public discussion.

Faced with this parcel of land upon which building had barely commenced, MacKinnon-Day started work. Far from being the blank canvas that she had anticipated, she found that the Arbury Camp zone had roots reaching back to the Iron Age, with much evidence of human activity in the intervening period.

Patricia MacKinnon-Day Phosphorescent Levels Cammell Laird Shipyard, Birkenhead, 2001 Photograph Dick Hodgkinson Image courtesy of Patricia MacKinnon-Day

67

Still, as MacKinnon-Day found, the new housing development might yet introduce the first inhabitants. As she points out, “the records show that people have always worked on but never lived on this area of land”. This made it all the more exciting that the area was about to be settled.

MacKinnon-Day’s working process became one of intense research, looking into the human background of the site. She met local people – councillors, workers, local residents – before drafting her various artistic proposals. There were consultations with archaeologists, community and local history groups, the Cambridge Folk Museum, the Central Library: places where the history of Arbury and the Orchard Park area had been filed away. She paid particular attention to the two key firms in the modern history of the area, Chivers and Unwins, talking to ex-employees and looking into their archives.

She found that Chivers had been a paternalistic employer. “They embraced the whole person, looking after their needs, from their spiritual lives to sporting events,” she says. Publications she found dating from the 1950s showed employees enjoying a fun fair and works outings, and there was even some artistic encouragement, with a photographic competition and the Chivers Awards, where one-off illustrations were awarded to workers “for a job well done”.

MacKinnon-Day spoke with Chivers and Unwins personnel and pored through company archives. “I found someone who had all these original documents, with original handwriting,” she said. Some were secret colour formulas for making jellies taken from Chivers old logbooks, and MacKinnon-Day had the idea to turn these documents into text-based artworks, which could be directly inscribed on to different surfaces – pavements, walls, windows – throughout the development. “The idea is to surprise the viewer,” she says, “to reveal the sense of place to them.”

Chivers logbook Image courtesy of Patricia MacKinnon-Day

68

The idea that her work would become part of the built fabric of Orchard Park was enshrined as part of her working ethos, and another idea occurred to MacKinnon-Day as she gathered material – to bring maps onto the walls of the community centre, which would at once provide a sense of location and also alert residents and visitors that Orchard Park indeed had, perhaps unexpectedly, a deep history. “In the Public Records Office I saw hand-drawn maps that showed the land use around the Iron Age fortress in Arbury Park and wanted them to be integral to the structure,” she says. The idea grew to gather maps from the various different ages, Iron Age to Medieval to modern era, and etch them onto street lamps, gates, entrances and wall surfaces. The work has now been installed in the community centre.

There were also products associated with the firms. MacKinnon-Day picked up on the jams and jellies that were Chivers’ lifeblood, locating old advertisements (‘Never Go Without Chivers Olde English Marmalade’) and artefacts associated with the industry. “I discovered logbooks with the colour recipes are in the safe keeping of a former Chivers chemist and have never been on public display,” says MacKinnon-Day. “Then I found jelly moulds, and started playing around with them. I thought they could be made into a fantasy material, made of coloured resin, to act as a play area.”

The jellies would have a link to childhood and play, and as seats they would be useful, conforming to the utilitarian notion that the art should benefit the development. In addition, MacKinnon-Day’s jelly moulds would refer to the jams and jellies that were the product of the district, and would make the public aware of the secret sophistication of the jelly-making process, another aspect of making visible the invisible.

Patricia MacKinnon-Day Ground Text (work in progress) Images courtesy of Patricia MacKinnon-Day

69

MacKinnon-Day’s own childhood in the Glasgow docklands of the 1960s, prior to the tides of regeneration that have changed that city, influenced her working practice, which is to seek a kind of essence of locality. “As a child growing up in this area of Glasgow I was exposed daily to a distinctive industrial environment,” she said. This world of tenements, heavy industry and house-keeping led MacKinnon-Day to her interest in social archaeology, influencing her role as a conduit of community experience – she has since undertaken much research into the transformation of Glasgow.

She trained as a painter, and was drawn to landscape subject matter, such as botanical gardens. But, seeking a deeper human and societal relevance, and following a residency at Vauxhall car plant, MacKinnon-Day began to make sculpture and installations from industrial materials. “My interest in the urban context developed into a real need to understand better the social, historical and political forces that forged such landscapes,” she said. This idea has engaged her since. A project in Newport, Wales in 2005, for example, commissioned by the Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds and the Council for Wales called ‘Wetlands’, grew from the placement of bird shelters in the area, but while MacKinnon-Day was researching in the field, her attention was inexorably drawn to the less pastoral industrial content in the area: the steelworks, sewage works and power stations.

This investigation into the un-celebrated human factors of a landscape started to translate into an investigative working practice. “I begin in the manner of an archaeologist or forensic scientist,” says MacKinnon-Day. “I consider it important to unearth clues about each of the subjects I am investigating, and I’m fascinated with what has been left behind and survived through the years – how time has touched the texture, colour and form of the site I am investigating.” It’s an approach that has won her plaudits among colleagues as well as critics.

Patricia MacKinnon-Day Blue and Pink (work in progress) Image courtesy of Patricia MacKinnon-Day

Patricia MacKinnon-Day Jelly Play Hoops (work in progress) Image courtesy of Patricia MacKinnon-Day

70

“MacKinnon-Day is an artist whose work explores the relationship of art to place and community”, says Martin Downie, Director of Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University (where MacKinnon-Day is a lecturer). “Her work has the ability to find underlying narratives of place. The Arbury project reveals the richness and breadth of that discourse.”

In 2000 MacKinnon-Day took on a year’s residency at Cammell Laird shipyard on Merseyside, close to Liverpool School of Art where she studied, and to Liverpool John Moores University where she is currently a reader in environmental art. Here, in the confines of the declining shipyard, she recalled that she was initially concerned that the dockers would not get the point of her work. “For the first piece [Yellow Line] I inserted ragwort for a mile on disused railway tracks throughout the shipyard,” she says. “It was partly that ragwort grows on railway lines, but was also a gender piece, based on my being one female amid 5,000 men; as if a symbol of soft structure in contrast to hard landscape.” She recalls thinking that the shipwrights might have been expecting figurative artworks, and now considers this piece a personal milestone in her working practice.

In the event, there wasn’t really a sense of opposition. She set up a steering group, and eventually produced seven installation works at the Birkenhead shipyard, which were shown at the Imperial War Museum in 2004, alongside Sir Stanley Spencer’s shipbuilding paintings of Glasgow in World War II. After leaving Cammell Laird, MacKinnon-Day felt that perceptions had shifted, and that the role of the artist in such a scheme had been made more apparent. She had gained from the process of consultation.

The Orchard Park project, while it didn’t have a steering group in the same way, was similarly consultative and transparent, although as ever MacKinnon-Day

I consider it important to unearth clues about each of the subjects I am investigating, and I’m fascinated with what has been left behind and survived through the years

71

insisted upon retaining her artistic independence. “I only take on commissioned projects where the client has no preconceived idea regarding the outcome,” she says. If she doesn’t find favour with her proposals, rather than modify her ideas, MacKinnon-Day returns to the source materials and develops new directions.

Indeed, to use the language of art criticism, MacKinnon-Day’s work has been located as part of the tendency to ‘post-autonomous’ art; that is, the artist is not the lone figure of romantic legend, producing work solely from his or her own volition, but someone engaged in a relationship with other agents: a community, a workforce, a political process. “Many of my installations emerge from discussion and interview,” she says. “I am concerned with human motivation and the complexities of different social communities. Memories, echoes or hidden behaviours are researched and catalogued until their qualities take on a new meaning. As with any investigation or piece of research I often have my intended line of enquiry changed or altered.” It is also reminiscent of the field of ‘connective aesthetics’, expounded by the influential critic Suzi Gablik, whose 1991 book ‘The Re-enchantment of Art’ addressed a more socially engaged model of artistic activity, as distinct from the solitary model of the heroic artist-creator.

At Orchard Park her work has had to respond to the interactions between artist, public and the overall developer, as well as the wider local sphere of Cambridge itself, the city to which the site ultimately relates. Seeking more specific material about the area, MacKinnon-Day went to Cambridge’s libraries and its Folk Museum on Castle Hill, and consulted with local archaeologists and residents to gather Cambridgeshire folklore. She found nuggets of wisdom: if two women pour tea from the same pot during a meal one of them can expect a child within the next twelve months; that rough music would have been played by neighbours outside the houses of unfaithful spouses; that the mixing of red and white gladioli in one vase was thought unlucky; that a nosebleed

I only take on commissioned projects where the client has no preconceived idea regarding the outcome

72

could be cured with cobwebs. Finding these adages compelling, she decided to put them onto various ground and wall surfaces throughout Orchard Park. Like the maps, these would be captured in the fabric of Orchard Park, chronicling local folk wisdom.

This use of hidden script was also employed in another piece MacKinnon-Day made in Glasgow: ‘High Riser’ of 2002. “I was commissioned by the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow to work with asylum seekers in Sighthill in Glasgow and at the time in the high rise flats there was quite a lot of bad feeling towards asylum seekers,” she said. “I kept a notebook with me and I just asked them to write down in their own language where they were from and what they did.” She then transferred their handwriting onto panels, which she later illuminated in the gallery using ultra-violet light, exposing the invisible writing of the community. MacKinnon-Day is currently involved with the Back Bittern Opera in Liverpool, which similarly seeks to raise awareness of an overlooked group.

MacKinnon-Day also became impressed by the seams of local creativity at Orchard Park, such as the Cambridge Self-Build Society. In the spirit of self-determination following World War II, some people built their own houses. Indeed, she found that one family, the Allens, were still there. “Thirteen individuals formed a collective and supported each other to build their own homes in an effort to create an ideal community,” she says. “These people were endeavouring to be

Plan for Ground Text Image courtesy of Gallagher Estates

73

pro-active and take control of their own destiny.” This creativity was also present in the history of the area as a location for agricultural experiment, particularly in the hands of Unwins, which industrialised market gardening. “I talked to local history groups and members of Impington Parish Council about Unwins Seed Company,” says MacKinnon-Day, “and discovered that the world leader in sweet pea breeding began when William Unwin rented a field on Impington Lane in 1903. The sweet peas were picked early in the morning to remain as fresh as possible after a long journey to market.” Unwins soon found it more profitable to become a mail order seed company, and it was also a pioneer in plant breeding; now an industry that has a big presence around Cambridge’s margins. It remains a strong local industry, a way of creating a life pattern for its employees, as well as a physical pattern on the ground. Moreover, says MacKinnon-Day, “local employees had beautiful gardens as the result of all those seeds.”

With such thoughts in mind, MacKinnon-Day’s Unwin researches led to the proposal of another piece, ‘Trial Ground’, intended to be an artwork made of LED lights which would be a centrepiece of Orchard Park. MacKinnon-Day originally anticipated 900 square metres of it, laid out on the ground in the development’s main square, “something like a magic carpet”. The pattern, colour and layout would follow the original Unwins sweet pea trial grounds taken from an aerial photograph, which made the fields of sweet peas look like a large carpet or tapestry; a kind of rectilinear patchwork that would connect the area back to its market gardening history – the idea being, once again, to refer to the rich human activity in the area. As MacKinnon-Day said, it would also act as a metaphor for Orchard Park in terms of its physical as well as political structures.

In 2003 MacKinnon-Day undertook an art and science residency at Wysing Arts, Cambridgeshire, where she produced ‘Chew Till Saturated’, collaborating with animal behaviourist Liz Genever at the University of Cambridge, whose

Unwins sweet pea trial grounds Image courtesy of Patricia MacKinnon-Day

Patricia MacKinnon-Day Trial Ground (work in progress) Image courtesy of Patricia MacKinnon-Day

74

speciality is the study of pig behaviour before slaughter; the better to understand their stress levels and the subsequent effect on their flavour. MacKinnon-Day produced ‘Membrane’, 120 toy-sized pigs made from transparent resin – itself symbolic of the packaging of pork products – based on daily visits to the pigs, where Genever would make an image of the social groupings and behaviour of the pigs.

It was an exploration of a micro-society, and a comment on the transparency of an industrial process – that ‘making visible’ factor that recurs through her work. For example, in ‘Marking Time’, an installation in historic almshouses in Catherine Street, Exeter, MacKinnon-Day recreated the doors that would once have originally been part of the old houses. As with ‘Glass Library’ for Orchard Park, she recast the old shapes of the doors in glass, encased archaeological finds from the site, and illuminated them – the effect being a prismatic viewpoint on the lives of the 15th century occupants. Again, she says, her aim was to reveal a ‘sense of structure’ and a kind of linkage with deep history. As critic Richard Noyce put it in a review in a-n magazine: “MacKinnon-Day… is an artist whose art, working as it does from past to the present, will be an important part of the re-definition of the visual arts in the coming century.”

The use of biographical materials also indicates a direction in MacKinnon-Day’s work. For example, in ‘Shut Up’ (1998), at a Cheshire psychiatric hospital, she covered beds with woven wire wool – a reference to knitting, yet one that gave an uncomfortable friction to the perceived comfort-zone of the blanket. MacKinnon-Day also created a cell doorway bricked up with patients’ record books arranged according to colour. That sense of ordering the past – and of making human sense of archaeology, both modern and historical – also came up in MacKinnon-Day’s ‘Glass Library’, known also as ‘Stratigraphy’. Here, like fossils suspended in transparent time, MacKinnon-Day put a shoe, a rat, old Chivers

Patricia MacKinnon-Day The Glass Library Orchard Park Community Centre, Cambridge, 2008 Photographs Patricia MacKinnon-Day

75

76

Patricia MacKinnon-Day The Glass Library Orchard Park Community Centre, Cambridge, 2008 Photographs Richard Davies Image courtesy of Commissions East

77

recipes, a page of a letter from a member of the Arbury self-build housing group, a 30 year old Chivers jelly currently stored in the public records office, various Iron Age finds: what she calls the ‘hidden treasures of the development’ – the idea to make concrete the various layers of time in the Orchard Camp location.

The ‘boxes’ themselves are the size of a large book, indeed MacKinnon-Day based them on the size and shape of the standardised archaeological storage boxes. “The idea evolved from visiting many public collections and libraries around Cambridgeshire, which made me come to realise the vast quantities of materials and information hidden and stored away in boxes and cupboards,” she says. “These revealed themselves to be a fascinating range of social and cultural documentation in the form of letters, photographs and objects.” ‘The Glass Library’ is to remain a transparent bookshelf, housed on a wall within the community centre.

MacKinnon-Day found that there was a Travellers’ site close to Arbury, no doubt attracted by the possibility of fruit-picking in the district. Intrigued by this transitory workforce, MacKinnon-Day proposed some signs for the site: an LED projection using Romany words. “These illuminated Romany words like

Patricia MacKinnon-Day The Glass Library Orchard Park Community Centre, Cambridge, 2008 Photograph Richard Davies Image courtesy of Commissions East

78

cheros [heaven] would be an ideal opportunity to celebrate the uniqueness of this community,” she says.

Similar in spirit, although less controversial, was an idea called ‘Dreams’, wherein an electronic board would be installed during the development of Orchard Park, with illuminated text displaying dreams and thoughts on what gives daily pleasure on a day-to-day basis. Thus, ‘sex and chocolate’, ‘heaven’, ‘when the kids have gone off to bed’, ‘taking my shoes off when I get home’. “It would be like a traffic sign,” says MacKinnon-Day, “about three metres high, illuminated and changing in phases.” The idea being to explore people’s personal ideas of contentment and happiness, and filter into the notion, inherent in place-making, about what makes for a fulfilling life.

In the course of time, MacKinnon-Day’s works will be installed, enjoyed and possibly contested by the residents of Orchard Park. But the greater hope is that her work will, as the artist puts it, “inspire the residents to discover more about the history and culture of the local environment in which they find themselves”. Local pride, character, ownership, a sense of place – MacKinnon-Day’s work at Orchard Park aims to connect the residents to the aspects of the settlement that would otherwise remain submerged. “I would hope that the art becomes an integral part of the overall vision,” she says, “that the language of contemporary art is embraced and demystified, that developers feel that maybe it’s been a worthwhile encounter and process.” It offers imaginative cues to the identity of the place called Orchard Park, and goes some way to invoking the hidden aspects of a site and thus, “to give voice to the ordinary, and make it extraordinary.”

Patricia MacKinnon-Day The Glass Library (work in progress) Orchard Park Community Centre, Cambridge Photograph Patricia MacKinnon-Day

Patricia MacKinnon-Day The Glass Library Orchard Park Community Centre, Cambridge, 2008 Photograph Patricia MacKinnon-Day

79

Orchard Park by Richard Heeps

6

In 2005 Cambridge-based photographer Richard Heeps was invited to take photographs of Orchard Park. Since then, he has taken a series of images documenting the growth and progress of the development. The pictures show the development and construction of the new area, while remaining distinct from the brochure images that have been used to market the settlement. “I have tried to get away from traditional pictures of building sites,” says Heeps. “To achieve this, I have chosen my days on site very carefully, choosing to photograph where I can naturally exploit the light conditions to maximum effect.”

Heeps grew up in Impington, close to the Orchard Park site.

In development

82

83

84

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

100

101

102

103

104

Acknowledgments

South Cambridgeshire District Council and Commissions East would like

to thank the following for their contribution to the Orchard Art Public Art

Programme: the lead artist Patricia MacKinnon-Day, the commissioned artists

– Lubna Chowdhary, Richard Heeps and Kirsten Lavers and the other artists

who have supported the programme; the Project Steering Group – Andrew

Maclaren and Andrew Lawson (Gallagher Estates on behalf of the landowners),

Josephine Teague (Impington Parish Council), and representatives from

Arts & Business, Shape East, Project and the Park Arts Group.

The author would like to thank all those who gave their time generously in the

production of this publication.

South Cambridgeshire District Council acknowledges the funding made by

Liverpool John Moores University towards the production of this publication.

In 2005 a public art strategy was commissioned for the new development Orchard Park (formerly Arbury Park) located on the northern fringe of Cambridge. Written by Oliver Bennett, Home Grown: Art and the Cultivation of a Neighbourhood examines the realisation of the strategy and its role in place-making. Bennett charts the birth of the development, exploring how the art draws upon the history of the site and the role it can play in the formation of a new community.

How can future developments learn from the story of Orchard Park? This book provides a reference point for anyone wishing to explore the potential of public art, making a valuable contribution to the continuing debate about the role of public art in urban design.

ISBN 978-0-9541447-5-3