Boulevard Mad Yard Art

LOCATION: HULL

When we first met, Aviv often hosted Anna in his house for a plate of rice and nettles gathered in Montjuic (Barcelona).

Years later, Boulevard Mad Yard Art expressed our long-term interest in wildness. This has always included an interest in human wildness, in uncontrolled behaviour and spontaneously erupting, co-created ideas.

Our old interest in wildness: Aviv climbing trees as part of Centro de Cultivos Contemporaneos del Barrio. Photo: Katherine Ainger

Our old interest in wildness: Pickled roses and other foraged plants, part of Microcultures, a project Aviv was involved in in the past, Photo: Microcultures

The Giroscope Community Garden (Hull)

The fox from the Giroscope Community Garden embroidered as part of the 3 Stages of Succession process

Boulevard Mad Yard Art started by inviting our fellow HU3 residents to a conversation. We held a meeting at a local village hall, asking for people’s ideas for a new collective project. The idea came up to use wildlife-themed decorations to transform the area. Added to it was the idea to make an outdoor living room. All of this was to be made with recycled materials.

This resonated with our past living in Barcelona. We imagined an event similar to the Festes de Gracia, where neighbors spend months making decorations, often out of old plastic bottles etc.

What we were mostly interested in was the fact of people doing repetitive crafts (e.g. making hundreds of birds or fish) around a table with each other, of this becoming a creative social space for conversation among residents.

The project ended with a walk around the neighbourhood, visiting different local initiatives around the area, where the decorations were displayed.

We hired a Rag’n’Bones man with horse and cart and he carried our outdoor living room around. We set it up in the different spots where we visited. We all wore fabric fox masks that we sewed. We also used a knit zebra crossing that one of the collaborating projects had previously done.

We kept crossing the streets on this knit zebra crossing wearing our fox masks.

Boulevard Mad Yard Art connected us to new collaborators in our neighbourhood, also connecting them to each other. Spending time together, playing with materials, we got to know each other better.

(This project formed part of the official Hull 2017 City of Culture Creative Communities Programme)

COMPOST

During weeks upon weeks we held craft sessions, sometimes in community centers, other times on the street. We collected materials found around the neighbourhoods and ideas that came up in conversation. All these hours, painting plastic bottles, creating cardboards structures, thinking up routes through the area, nourished our relationships. We made friends and got to know local organizations. This network later formed the basis of everything we’ve done afterwards. Interestingly, other relationships, ones between participants result in other collaborations, of which we didn’t form a direct part.

GERMINATE

As the project progressed the resources and challenges found in our area became visible to us. This local asset map came alive and became playful as we walked our streets differently, accompanied by those who wanted to materialize ideas in a collective way. One of the ideas that came up, the creation of a market, became the seed for our next project: Bite the Biscuit Neighbourhood Market

CARE

In our area (HU3, Hull) a lot of people spend a lot of time at home. There is a lot of fragility in terms of mental health, but also a lot of free time, a lot of availability. The space created for crafting and talking became a space for care, an excuse to come out and get to know the surrounding landscape. We accompanied each other through this space and accompanied the project itself as it evolved.