Dear Residents of The Golden Lane Estate

My name is Anne Harild and I am a Danish artist now based in East London, following on from my studies at the Royal College of Art.

For some time I have been interested in making a piece of work based around a housing environment and I have just been awarded some funding to realise a project working in collaboration with residents from a housing estate.
I would love to run this project at Golden Lane Estate and work with a group of current residents. I'm very aware of Golden Lane, both from it's iconic status as an example of modernist housing and having been involved in a number of projects at The Barbican Centre.

I hope to recruit around 10 residents, mixed ages, who may be interested in working with me. The project deadline is early June, upon which the work will be exhibited at the funders offices for three months and then returned to the participants. There could be the opportunity to then exhibit it at Golden Lane if this would be something people would be interested in. I also need to find a space for the group to work in and this would be around 10 sessions over this period. Though I do have some possible links with people at The Barbican, I would much prefer to run the workshops within the Golden Lane Estate, so any advice as to any potential space would be hugely appreciated.

I would like to work with a group of residents at Golden Lane and explore ideas related to place and ideas of living and dwelling in contemporary Britain.Taking The Estate as a starting point I would be interested in exploring it’s visual language and the individuals identity within this place. We will use material and form we find here as building blocks and translate this information into new works of art or versions of this environment.
I imagine the work could become both a series of translations of the place and a vehicle for rediscovering it.
I imagine we would work through photography, collage, drawing and potentially large-scale animation, exploring and playing with the actual building.

I would be so grateful if you could take the time to let me know any thoughts you have and equally, if you'd like to be involved. As I say, I would particularly like to base this project at Golden Lane and any support from you regarding realising this would be so valuable to me. I also really hope that this would be an enjoyable and challenging opportunity for all the participants and I would certainly be approaching this as a collaboration between all of us involved. If you would like to see more examples of my work please visit www.anneharild.com

Many Thanks,

Anne Harild