Extreme Views - Armchair Walks

About

Extreme Views : Barrow Park to Lesh Lane

Civic space, health & wellbeing, green pockets, biodiversity, usership, geological history, carbon capture, climate crisis, species, desire lines, utopias. 

You are invited to join architects, artists, naturalists, and landscape designers on a tour through Barrow-in-Furness, from the comfort of your own home.

Extreme Views Artist in Residence, Owen Griffiths, will host three Extreme Views Armchair Walks. In development since before lockdown, this postponed event is now taking place online in three distinct chapters.

The route will take a tour from the manicured landscape of Barrow Park, through a Green Corridor on the site of the Old Grammar School, leading to an unused suburban green space at Lesh Lane. Each event will be a Zoom online video dialogue, featuring film and images of the route with narration by expert speakers, followed by time for questions or discussion towards the end.

Chapter 1 – Barrow Park, Wednesday 29 July 5:30 – 6:30pm

The first site will focus on civic space, looking at the history and significance of parks, urban landscapes and utopias- as well as the role of civic spaces in the time of COVID-19 and climate crisis. Are these civic spaces a kind of neo-commons, a crucial space to deal with issues of wellbeing and health as well as green pockets which help capture carbon?

With speakers: 

• Charlie MacKeith – Architect
• Pete Burton – Naturalist
• Daisy Froud – Architect & Strategist

Chapter 2 – Green Corridor on the site of the Old Grammar School, leading to Lesh Lane, Wednesday 5 August 5:30 – 6:30pm

We’ll be looking at the possibilities of the site from a biodiversity and usership perspective, looking at what grows there now – its geological history as once part of the outwash channel.  This site is mixed use but is largely a blank canvas, in need of protection as a significant green corridor and public space.

With speakers:

• Melissa Appleton – Artist & Producer
• Pete Burton – Naturalist
• Vincent Walsh – Ecological Designer & Sustainable Food Specialist

Chapter 3 – Lesh Lane, Wednesday 12 August 5:30 – 6:30pm

The final site is a suburban green space in the midst of a post war housing landscape. The site could be identified as ‘SLOP’ (Space Left Over After Planning), and was earmarked for future development. The site is largely unused by the homes surrounding it, without desire lines or activities taking place. However this site contains a natural wetland which could support a range species and flora and fauna due to the clay content in the soil.

With speakers:

• John Little – Landscape Designer
• Pete Burton – Naturalist
• Stuart Bastik – Artist/Director Art Gene
• Maddi Nicholson – Artist/Director Art Gene

FREE, SIGN UP ESSENTIAL, please visit our website to register.