by Rebecca Wood
Cardiff city centre is undergoing a major transformation. The Cardiff shopping experience will never be the same again. St Davids 2 is coming…
The arrival of St David’s 2 is eagerly awaited by some, and not so much by others. Many people fear the effect it will have on local businesses and on the landscape of Cardiff. Change is everywhere. The world we live in today is constantly transforming. In such a fast paced society, how can we document today before it becomes the past? How can we document the past, before it is gone forever?
Amongst the cranes, building blocks and scaffolding of Cardiff, one local artist is documenting the city at this monumental time of change. Focusing on Cardiff’s historic arcades, Jennie Savage is creating an archive of a time and place, before the memories are gone.
The Project
I met with Jennie Savage one Wednesday afternoon in her studio in Canton. A bright attic space furnished with the usual artists trappings: white Apple Mac and shelves piled high with work. After a cup of tea she started to tell me about the Arcades Project.
Jennie is an artist with a unique style. She explores public spaces and constructed landscapes, but looks at them through human stories; the lives and narratives connected to the sites. She doesn’t map the physical geography of a town, but maps the other life of a space, the voices and stories of that place.The inspiration for her current project is Walter Benjamin’s arcades project. Working in Paris in 1927, Benjamin believed the building of the Parisian arcades was linked to the birth of consumer culture and he wanted to record this dramatic change in society. He focused on the history of the everyday, looking at the small details of the arcades; the shape of a window or the pattern on a light. He collected writings and poetry of that time and used all these elements to document a time and place.
This is the idea behind Jennie’s project. Using history, old newspapers, archived dialogue, photos and people’s memories, Jennie will create a sense of the arcade space.
Jennie Savage explains her inspiration for the project
The project, she tells me, will take shape in many different forms: a film festival, a wireless headphones tour of the arcades and a series of 4 publications by Jennie to make visible her research, culminating in the 3D documentary; an interactive DVD archive mapping Cardiff’s Victorian arcades.
Gary Bartlett (project technical manager) talks about the 3D documentary
The Community
Jennie is not alone in her quest to document the arcades. She is joined by a historical researcher, Dr Andrew Cochrane; a technical manager, Garry Bartlett and a research team of 25 willing volunteers who are documenting through sketches, interviews and photographs. Working across all 6 arcades and the central market, the project will invite all the arcade communities to take part: market stall holders, shop owners and those of us who are shopping, having a coffee or just browsing shop windows.Jennie wants to give visitors to the arcade an insight into the arcades as living, breathing spaces, while at the same time creating an archive, documenting them during this time of transition.
The Cardiff Arcades
The Victorian and Edwardian shopping arcades are one of the first stop off points for many visiting the city and have led to Cardiff's reputation as the ‘City of Arcades’. Built in the late 1800’s they were the vision of architect, Edwin Seward. After a trip to see the shopping arcades and covered walkways of Paris, Edwin decided they were the perfect solution for the development of Cardiff.
Today the arcades are preserved as historic monuments of the Victorian era, but they still are working spaces and are an important part of Cardiff’s commercial economy.
View Larger Map
Click on each arcade for memories, images and information.
In a constantly changing world of consumerism and construction, Jennie and her team are preserving a moment in time, capturing a piece of Cardiff, before the memories are gone.
