Writing this blog is Beccy Williams, I'm a British National brought up in Dolgellau, Mid Wales. I come from an English-speaking family but was educated through the medium of Welsh in an area that has a great deal of pride in it's Linguistic and Cultural history.
I studied Textile Furnishing Design at London Guildhall, graduating in 2003. I stuck around in London after my degree, living and working with Project142 (www.project142.org), and international community of 35 artists and musicians occupying a complex of disused industrial buildings in Hackney, East London.
I moved to Liverpool in October 2005 to work on a similar 'regeneration-through-art' project with TAO (www.theartorganisation.co.uk) . For the past year or so have been facilitaing a community arts space (52 Roscoe Street), where we have held regular participatory arts events (The Living Market) as well as using the building as workspace for the production of products made from recycled materials including coffee-sack bags and book-covers and lights made from heat-fused shredded crisp-packets.
During the Liverpool Biennial 2006 (www.biennial.com) I curated work from other designer/makers and artists using recycled materials, which have not only been shown at 52 Roscoe Street, but also at the Afoundation (www.afoundation.org.uk). The majority of the peices have also been on display at Project142's new site in Limehouse, London.
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Street-sign project Mexico 2007
Milpa Alta Community background
Milpa Alta is a 30,000 strong Nahuatl indigenous community located to the South East of Mexico City. Known for its agriculture of Nopal (prickley pear) and Maize, it is a rural area that is farmed in the much the same way now as it was 500 years ago. The Nahua are part of the Mesoamerican group of peoples, and orginally descend from the Aztecs.
The Milpa Alta Community is led by a circle of Elders, who have struggled to maintain traditional values and practices.
Rather than being a closed community it is known for international collaboration and has hosted academics from around the world, anthropologists, archivists, environmentalists and artists and has been the subject of numerous research studies. Although it tries to maintain the wisdom of it's ancestors, the community is not disconnected; electricity, telephones, internet and Tv are commonplace. As with many ancient minority languages, Nahuatl is struggling to survive as a living language as the younger generations are using the language of the mainstream media.
Street-sign project
- Milpa Alta Project
- The aim is to produce aproximately 200 ceramic disks to give traditional Nahuatl names to streets and districts in the community. The disks will display the names in Latin script as well as traditional pictograms. They will be fired at a local brick factory and decorated using locally sourced mineral glazes. Several others will be joining the project from the UK and Germany, joining members of the local community in the production of the disks.
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