Guest post: Vanessa Oakes reflects on her stint on The Cart in the #ThisisCoventry tent (which was curated to launch Coventry’s bid to be UK City of Culture 2021) at Godiva Festival last Sunday.
a space… a cart… a place to sit and think… to listen… focus on our past, present and imagined futures… rest, recharge our phones, shut out the festival NOISE and… meditate on a life made up of memorable moments.
heads down.
needles in… stitch by stitch… cultural moments cross the ring road… pale blue, blue, white threads, births, love affairs and friendships thread through cloth, as conversations flow an observation surfaces sideways:
how artists and arts organisations talk about interacting with the community rather than thinking about themselves as part of the community.*
testing our powers of concentration… conversation… commitment… action stitching our way along roads, across precincts, towards homes… we lament: it’s only two thirty…
heads down.
children play, climb and hide… nest and then… disappear/lost… and finally, thankfully, found… we return again to the cloth… thread a needle… pin a note, add a thought, learn a stitch… listen… and… hesitate… a place to rest a pint? is he serious? no… thought not… a hasty retreat.
a cart… a place to… sit… perhaps just sit… rest our feet… process our words… and think, then… once again…
heads down.
we listen… and imagining a future landscape of our stories told on these streets… we stitch.
#ThisIsCoventry
*quote: Justine Themen
Words from the Birds 