New Ground

community narratives and regeneration in peripheral regions

New Ghosts

Our physical environments are heavily marked by the history of human activity. Our presence is written into the landscape in so many ways we scarcely notice - patterns of movement, place names, festivals and gathering points. The landscape has ghosts; it is in this way that it has narrative and it has meaning. When ex-industrial areas are physically transformed by “regeneration” processes these connections are often lost and the new environment, no matter how rich, has only fragments of a broken narrative.

Can cultural activities lead a process of reconnection, making new memories, new histories, new ghosts?