Street Art could give town a more positive image from Graham Day

One of the sad things about walking around the centre of Ipswich, as I often do, are the empty shop fronts and zombie sites which help to engender an air of desolation and decline.

However, one can applaud the initiative by Art Eat in encouraging young artists to produce murals at St Peters Dock and at the Stoke Bridge skate board park. On a sunny morning, on a walk across the Waterfront from the university to Stoke Bridge, I was delighted to see the colourful murals brightening up the street scene. I stopped for a while to look at each one in turn and enjoyed trying to understand and interpret them. The laudable intention of Art Eat is ultimately to encourage the production of artwork and murals across the town.

In May, the Upfest Festival is held in Bedminster, Bristol. The city is the original home of the graffiti artist Banksy and this street art festival has apparently attracted an estimated thirty thousand visitors.

Ipswich has a proud artistic history. The School of Art had an excellent reputation and the international sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi produced his sculptures in the town.

The time has, I believe, come to use the blank canvas provided by empty shop fronts and hoardings. It would be possible to develop the artistic credentials of the town, and in the process remove some of the impression of drabness and decay, which is a common negative theme from some residents in the town.

The success of the new arts installations would need to be capitalised upon. Perhaps eventually in the calendar of events could also be a smaller scale but regular street art festival of our own. Over the last few years the biennial sculptures placed around the town to raise funds for St Elizabeth Hospice, so far ranging from pigs, elephants and now owls, generate enormous interest. A regular street art festival in the intervening years could keep artistic interest alive.

It might be a challenge to organise and secure funding but it would be very worthwhile indeed. At some time such a challenge needs to be met.

 

Norwich housing development from Peter Threadkell

I found the  latest issue of the Newsletter (Issue 230) very interesting especially the Chairman’s  remarks and the report of the lecture by Jackie Sadek about modern day housing developments. Like Ipswich, Norwich is under pressure for more housing developments not always suitable as to type and location. 

For example, the City council is trying to prevent more conversion of empty office blocks to one-bedroom flats and has recently been involved in a battle  – which it won – to stop a developer building a 23-storey block of flats only half a mile from our Norman cathedral. No existing  building in Norwich is more than ten floors high. Some 4,500 housing units are due to be built on the site of the recently closed Coleman’s Mustard factory site, so both the city council and the Norwich Society have got to be on the alert to see that suitable housing – whether flats or houses – are built. All urban/rural planning authorities need to be aware of unsuitable building developments proposed  for their areas.

 

IpsSoc: the next generation from Pam Pelling

I sympathise with your item IpsSoc: the next generation (Issue 230). I follow ‘Ipswich Remembers’* on Facebook – as do so many young(er) people interested in the town. May this prove a source of The Ipswich Society’s survival?      

[*this group runs in association with Ipswich Star]

Next article