Tagging Folkestone's cultural spaces

Folkestone is changing. Ambitious plans by various local organisations and instigators aim to deliver a cultural regeneration different to other places where regeneration efforts often meant the extinction of the cultural bedrock of a place that had essentially contributed to its identity.

The Folkestone Triennial is a flagship project in the local regeneration ambition. It therefore follows to understand the Triennial as a cultural “regenerative” event which will contribute to various factors important to cultural and economical progress: issues of identity and image, cultural production and exchange, attracting locals and visitors, putting Folkestone on a national and international cultural map, creating employment and training, etc.

It’s less obvious to comprehend how the Triennial unfolds as a social and spatial reality. How and where does it exist beyond its Triennial season of commissions? What and where are the spaces and cultural aspects that are being produced, occupied and transformed by the Triennial? Can knowledge and networks generated through the Triennial influence future cultural thinking and planning on an urban scale? How can the Triennial inform local political ambition to avoid a top down (other word?) culture-led regeneration?

FOLKESTONOMY has set out to look at the wider cultural spaces and networks that are linked to the production and delivery of the Triennial, and to visualise its links and extensions into existing cultural spaces and territories in Folkestone.

FOLKESTONOMY consists of a mobile mapping station and an evolving and ever-changing online map. The mobile mapping station will travel alongside the route of the twenty-three Triennial commissions, inviting passers-by and visitors to trace and map their own links, encounters and interests with the wider field of the Triennial. This information will feed into a new and growing map of Folkestone indexing a variety of the town’s different informal and formal cultural spaces, interests and networks that have been identified by the individuals who take part in the mapping. The aim is to sketch and show an image of an existing and extending cultural space that is important, but currently less visible than others.

Kathrin Böhm and Andreas Lang, public works.

Why FOLKESTONOMY

FOLKESTONOMY is made up from two words: Folksonomy (this is a term in its own right and, see definition below ) and the second word it s made up from is obviously Folkestone, which has its origins in the name Folka’s stone ( see below) which we like as a reference, because it s about the places where people meet locally and do things. Folka's stone is somehow the equivalent of today's “outside of Debenhams”.

1) “Folksonomy”, also known as collaborative tagging, is the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorise content. Metadata is not only generated by experts but also by creators and consumers of the content. Make clearer, simplify

2) There is a suggestion that the word Folkestone comes from “Folca’s stone”, a rock marking the meeting place of local people, although it remains a mystery who Folca was and where his stone was placed.

About public works

public works is a London based artist/architects collective which has been working in different constellations of partners and collaborators since 1999. Current members are artist Kathrin Böhm and Polly Brannan, and architects Andreas Lang and Torange Khonsari.

public works projects address the users of the public spaces, they develop physical and non-physical forms that allow for a participatory and cross hierarchical understanding and transformation of the spaces they work within.

Current and recent projects include:

2008
“Village Kiosk”, a self initiated ongoing project in collaboration with myvillages.org and Grizedale Arts
“cross country” Wysing Arts Centre, Bourne

2007
“Building Stories” in collaboration with 30 Birds Production, Quazvin, Iran
“Folk Float” commissioned by Grizedale Arts, Egremont, Cumbria
“Can you show me the space”, Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston

2006
“Podium”, Braithwait House, London

2005
“Make:Shift”, Bagfactory, Johannesburg, SA

2004
“Park Products” for the Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens, London

weblinks: www.publicworksgroup.net

Thanks

public works would like to thank:

Dorian Moore
John Lenehan from C.B.L. Electric Vehicles Ltd.
Ian Lander and Marc Coey Archer from MDM,
Strange Cargo, Club Shepway and the Creative Foundation
Leonie Koenen
Andrea Schlieker and Kim Dillhon