Rachel Grant - Inside Out

On Monday 22 October we met Rachel Grant at her home in Hanley. From there, we took a short walk to the streets and homes awaiting demolition in the Wellington Road area, site of Rachel's artworks which will be fixed to the external walls of empty homes on Monday 29 October.

At the end of the walk, we looked through Rachel's sketchbooks, details of which are shown below and in-between landscape shots we took on our walk with her. Extracts from our interview with Rachel follow each triptych.

"I went to the archives and traced various people that lived in the houses that are now gone and did interviews with them. I like to place a time within my pictures so that when you look back, you'll be able to see exactly when I was talking about. In years' time, people are going to look back and bulk it all together as 'this was a time of regeneration'. But I like to pinpoint more clearly through my work what happened at what stages."

"My position being here is that minor things are more major to me. I can now section off certain stages of regeneration such as the first stage before Renew came in, then the second stage when clearance areas started to be declared, and now we're in the section when people are moving out before the redevelopments start."

"Not as many stories were as painful as I thought they would be. A lot of the people I've talked to have already been through it and I see it as a kind of grieving process and a loss that they have to go through. And they do come through it to the other side. But for older people it's much more difficult. It's hard for them to think about the benefits of this to future generations. Their future's coming to an end and they can't see 20 or 30 years down the track."

You can find out more about Rachel's work and opening event at the Dresden Street Community Centre on Monday 29 October here.