Common Ground Project
​Common Ground combined research and the arts to explore belonging and diversity in semi-urban Hampshire. The project resulted from a collaboration between Heidi Armbruster, a social anthropologist based at the University of Southampton, and the digital artists Bo Chapman and Zoe Flynn, also known as Salmagundi Films. Participatory arts workshops with Andover residents of different ages and backgrounds proved a powerful space for making connections and exploring relationships with place and community. Impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic the project took unanticipated directions, resulting in the two different pieces of work shown here.
Common Ground​
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Andover College art students worked collaboratively with artists Salmagundi Films and the researcher to produce playful and provocative work which invites us to look at familiar landscapes with fresh eyes. As a starting point we explored the concept of ‘personal landscapes’, how we interact with our environment, in and around Andover. We make landscape personal through what we see, hear, smell, touch and absorb around us. How we embody spaces in the presence of other human and non-human bodies and structures. We make landscape personal through how we experience and explore ‘Common Ground’. In the routine movements of the everyday and shared photography walks in Rooksbury Mill and Andover town, students explored familiar territory in new ways. Personal Landscapes presents their unique viewpoints and the diversity of the semi-urban experience.
Faces of Andover Digital Portraits
Making community visible in new ways
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This work resulted from a collaboration with the Test Valley Borough Council community engagement office in Andover. Recognising the barriers to inclusion for refugees and ethnic minorities in Hampshire’s small towns, Andover residents were invited to take part in digital self-portrait workshops, to explore identity and belonging. Children and adults responded to playful metaphorical questions through colour and design. The workshops and vibrant conversations they created gave rise to the foundation of a new Cultural Sharing Forum in Andover. The Forum is a space for different and diverse cultures to meet and network. More than a mirror image, Faces of Andover offers an insight into the human experience.