Homeground
2021
HOME and First Street, Manchester
Designer | site theme, with Cordi Ashwell
Curator | outdoor exhibition, David Bailey: The Busiest Bus Route in Europe
Winner: Best Event, Manchester Culture Awards 2022
The project was made possible thanks to support from the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund, Arts Council England, Manchester City Council, Ask Real Estate, Auto Trader, CBRE, the Garfield Weston Foundation, B&M Retail and Savannah Wisdom, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Granada Foundation.
Design and project build: Decordia Events
Production company: Engine No. 4
Commissioned by HOME, Manchester
Additional thanks to Blackpool Illuminations (Lightworks), Lightpool Festival, Manchester City Council, Lane Paul Stewart and David Bailey.
Image credit Chris Payne
Homeground was a huge new temporary outdoor venue for Summer 2021, including theatre, food, drink, shows, music, cabaret, and comedy. It was launched by arts hub HOME to provide an outdoor Summer destination for people looking for a safe and fun night out as lockdown eased.
Built on a 80,000 square foot future development site that was unused brownfield land, it featured a 400-seat socially distanced theatre space, food and drink terrace and a second, free-to-access public stage. At the heart of the programme was a raucous presentation of Filter Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Working with Decordia Events and independent Manchester production company, Engine No. 4, I felt that rather than try to disguise the brownfield nature of the site, we should lean into the detritus that accumulates in pockets of the urban fabric.
Influenced by scrapyards, the neon graveyard of Las Vegas and the kite-trails of stories that attach themselves to architectural salvage, we settled upon a method of display popularised by the Victorians and in regional municipal museums – the Wunderkammer, or Cabinet of Curiosities.
Skeletal scaffold forms accommodate scrap cars, vintage porcelain-ware, heaps of unwanted firehose reels and gurning Ghost Train gargoyles, replacing the bleached skulls, shells and geological samples of the museum.
In this way, seemingly random and otherwise ordinary objects become extra-ordinary. WIth special thanks to Blackpool Illuminations (Lightworks) and Lightpool for allowing access to their scrapyard of decommissioned items.
Alongside, I commissioned artist and illustrator David Bailey to conceive a series of outdoor posters and spoof signage to affectionately subvert the city’s tendency to cite as many firsts as it can lay claim to, the result being an outdoor exhibition and site trail , The Busiest Bus Route in Europe.
