Tag: Posts by Daniel Ridealgh

The Purpose of this blog post is to give further detail into the process of rebuilding the two stands to scale.  The Lincolnshire archives contained two separate maps of the original Grandstand trio;  one was dated 1906, the other 1946, the trio being the Tattershall’s stand, the Grandstand and the Silver Ring stand.  By collaborating what was shown on these two maps I was able to sketch out the two stands at a scale of 20 ft = 1 inch.

The Silver Ring stand (which is the bottom sketch on the image below) was the largest of the three stands, with a width of 170 ft.  The size of the entire pavilion meant that foundations would have covered the ground beneath what is now flat grass land.  At points along our reconstruction we felt these foundations as the twine was supported at corner sections with foot-long tent pegs.

The actual “Grandstand” (the top sketch on the image) was far smaller than both the Silver Ring and Tattershall stands, this was because it did not include in it’s architecture any form of pavilion styles steps.  This building was used for those who wished to pay to sit in a private viewing box.  The other stands would have been open for any to stand on throughout the day.  When we reconstructed this particular stand, we could not support some corner sections with pegs as a concrete car park now sits upon the old foundations.  Therefore we were forced to use chalk to complete the parameter of the Grandstand.

 

It was at this particular visit to the archives that I also discovered  the track was “three hundred acres, first used as a racecourse in 1771” (( Williamson, James (1890) A Guide Through Lincoln, Lincoln Printers: Lincoln.  p.23)).  Which meant that racing events still occurred at this course prior to the construction of the three stands in 1856.  After further investigation we found that a single stand, also named “The Grandstand” was constructed on the site before the trio.  This stand was much smaller than any of the three built afterwards and stood significantly further away from the track. This perhaps was the reason behind it’s deconstruction.  It was both too far away to be beneficial to race-goers and to small in size to accommodate the crowds.

On Wednesday 1st May 2013, we presented to the audience our restoration project.  Having set up the two plans, and attached the two hundred suggestions collected earlier in the process, we allowed the audience time to explore what we had presented.  As we had expected the audiences spent time looking at the ideas of others before attaching their own.  New suggestions were added from what had previously been collected including: a school, nursery, health clinic, interactive exhibit, gardens and a play park.    What was not expected was that the audience felt they needed to comment on the suggestions of others.  An example of this would be that on some of the 37 ‘demolish’ attachments we found people had crossed some out, drawn disapproving faces or added the words ‘no’ or ‘don’t’.  This provides the project with an essence of debate, having audiences interact and disagree with each other, although not foreseen it is still welcomed.

The second part to Wednesday’s performance was the return to the high street.  This was not as successful as we’d have hoped because of the time of day.  As we had not set up our display until after 5pm, the town centre was not as busy as first anticipated, with most passers-by en-route to return home from their work/school, the majority did not stop to look at the work.  Those who did, listened to a brief description of  the project and gave us some more ideas.  The responses from this demographic of people, centred around evening entertainment facilities, such as bars, clubs and hotels.  This for us as a group highlighted the versatility of the site because of it’s size and location.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC_E1lUh_h0&feature=youtu.be

In reflection finding an end point to this project was difficult.  The section presented to the audience during Wednesday’s performance  was part of the process, not an end result.  Afterwards it was then walked back into the high street, where it continued.  We did not want it to just finish here, so instead we decided on a  fitting finish for the project.  The company which built the Grandstand in 1856, Porter & co, had a factory in Lincoln which has now been demolished, and the site is used as a car-park.  We will be taking the completed length of twine and suggestions, placing it at the location responsible for the Grandstand’s very existence.  After which, once complete correspondences have been made with the Lincolnshire archives, we would hope to present them with this twine, as the archive building is conveniently located across the street from the old Porter & co factory.  This is where we would hope to leave our contribution to the legacy of the Grandstand.  An artistic research group called Wrights & Sites created a similar scaled project in 2007 called Possible Forests.  This involved the group embarking on a series of reconnaissance drifts through the forest with specialists in diverse fields  discussing ways of experiencing, re-imagining and planning the forest landscape.  The exhibition documented these dialogues through maps, texts and video, and gave the public the opportunity to contribute their own ‘possible forests’ to the collection.   Wrights & Sites explored new ways of interacting with the space around them, and sought after ideas for the future of the forest, just as we did with our project.

As we shared similarities, there is also a correlation with criticisms.  Cathy Turner analysed Possible Forests in the Contemporary Theatre Review, in which she examined the relationship between architecture and dramaturgy.  “Despite my stress on the provisional and imaginary nature of the architectures proposed by this project it is a small step from here to the production of new architectures” ((Turner, Cathy(2012) ‘Mis-Guidance and Spatial Planning: Dramaturgies of Public Space’, Contemporary Theatre Review vol. 20(2) p.149-161)), which may also be true for our piece.   The legislation involved with any reconstruction efforts on a listed building will take local councils a great deal of time to complete.  Therefore even if our project convinced the council to begin restoring the Grandstand immediately, it could be years before any changes are put into effect.   We can not however, let this dismiss the importance of our work as a potential ignition for change.  As well as this we also finished with a great number of suggestions, as did Possible Forests, and this is a positive of both.  Turner in the same article writes, ‘despite its open-ended nature, concrete proposals were made’.  The idea’s our audiences contributed ranged from practical transformations, to ones that would involve a great investment to change.  It is likely that some of the suggestions (i.e. the museum) would have already been thought of by stakeholders of the grandstand, whom hold interested in it’s future.

Retrospectively having more time with the project would have been ideal.  Extensive work could have been carried to raise awareness to a larger majority of Lincoln about the Grandstand.  Being able to have contact with the council and perhaps the local media, such as the Lincolnshire Echo newspaper, would have enabled for this raise in awareness.  Fundamentally the infrastructure is in place  for the Grandstand site to operate in any new or past usage, meaning that financial investment would not be as substantial as constructing on empty land.  For Lincoln economically, there are incentives to restoring the Grandstand by implementing the suggestions that this project has uncovered.

As part of our restoration site-specific project we have recently finished collecting information and now have the oportunitity to anaylise what we’ve found. After spending a few weeks in Lincoln town centre asking people to answer a quick questionnaire we collated all the data we took. We showed 200 people two photgraphs, one of the Grandstand, Tattershall and Silver Ring stands in the early 20th century whilst a race event was happening, and one of the remaining stand today.  Inspiration for this was drawn from a project carried out by John Newling called Make a Piano in Spain.  In this project Newling asked 500 people “What do you do to make yourself feel better?”, he then sought out to transform these responses, gathering qualitative data.  This is similar to what we have done below, although we asked 200 people rather than 500.  The title of the project Make a Piano in Spain, was actually someone’s response to the question he asked, likewise we had a response to our question, “Is that even in Lincoln?” which has inspired the title of this blog post.

 

 

We then asked the question, Do you know where this is?

 

These five answers were the responses we found. As you can see over half of the people asked could not place this stand in Lincoln as we recieved the “I don’t know” answer from 78 people and “Is that even in Lincoln?” from 30. This in itself is quite alerting information, as you have read from previous blog posts on this site, the Grandstand’s history holds great significance in Lincoln’s past. This then may fuel the interest in our group project as we all immerse ourselves in the history of both the city and the Grandstand. Using this information we can identify that the majority of our audience may know nothing about the grandstand or it’s past. This allows our projects to contain an educational and informative element when we present them to the audience.   Another response that gives prominence to this argument would be that 35 people thought the grandstand is “On the golf course”.  Thinking the building to be part of the golf course would imply that it holds little significance other than to upgrade the aesthetic of the course to it’s users.  The Project as a whole can draw confidence from this information, the grandstand at present holds little demand from the city of Lincoln, so drawing on its past importance and getting the public to contribute to the idea pool for it’s future, may help the building see heights of activity that it was used to 60 years ago.

Next we informed those who had agreed to answer our questions on the high street what it was we had planned, explaining:

“The Grandstand held three day racing meets three times a year for almost 160 years.  During World War I the stands, and the surrounding common, were used as an airbase for the Royal Air Force.   As you can see in the two photos, the grandstand pavilions were demolished down to one stand in the 1960’s because the Lincolnshire handicap moved to Doncaster.  We are creating a project which regenerates these other two stands, hoping that by engaging an audience in the busy past of the buildings, we can change the dormant nature of the stand now into a place people often visit once again”. 

After a short explanation of what our site specific performance entailed, we asked our volunteers a second question: What do you think the Grandstand should be used for now?

The biggest response here involved, in some way or form, returning horse racing events to the Lincoln west common, rather than at the showground where some races are carried out currently.  This was suggested by 62 people, many of whom mentioned that it may bring a great deal of income into the city and boost the local economy.  On the 24th March 1903 a record number of 7700 tickets were sold each day during the race meeting, ticket buyers coming from all over the country, tourists that no doubt contributed greatly to Lincoln’s economy that particular weekend. Sadly the second most frequent response was a call to have the stand demolished, with 37 people suggesting that there was no point having a building lying around doing nothing for the city.  Although their want to cut out inefficiency is justified, again the question of lack of knowledge around the grandstand arises.  I think back to how extensive my research was to find out the basic happenings of the building.  Compare this difficulty to the ease of learning anything about the Lincoln Cathedral or Castle, two buildings that you would struggle to find anyone in favor of demolishing.  This leads nicely to another favored suggestion, turning the stand into a museum in itself.  Making the information of the grandstand’s impressive history easily accessible would aid the local population to agreeing with our project’s intentions.  Again the five most reoccurring suggestions have been represented, the “Other Suggestions” segment contained ideas such as: An outdoor cinema, swimming pool, mosque, football pitch, marketplace, shopping mall, park and ride station, zoo, war memorial and a nightclub.