DavidsMAPhotographyJournal: "in certain places" The Monument and the Changing City Symposium

Today I attended an all day Symposium at UCLan's Media factory (Sandbox) - The subject of which was 'The Monument' in the city. The images below are of Preston, however the lectures were based upon cities around the world.

The speakers were as follows; Dr. Paul Gough, Lubaina Himid, Dr. Alan Rice, Dr. Jonathan Vickery, Charles Quick and Dr. Chris Meigh-Andrews.

One of the most poignant moments was the walk, and outside explanation of the Preston Cenotaph by architect Charlie MacKeith. Points of interest were the proposed move to reinstate the original design features of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. This would require removal of the fences, flower beds and benches - all of which were added retrospectively, to discourage people sitting on the Cenotaph. It is worth noting that now people are seated on the benches, but looking away - thus reinforcing the ideology discussed in the morning lectures. The tendency of cities in development to take the meaning and even the existence of the monument from our conciousness. It was commented that not enough thought is made at the design stage of whether the monument is fit for purpose (Preston's Cenotaph for example did not have enough room for all the names of the dead which are inscribed instead in the Harris museum).

Dr. Chris Meigh-Andrews talked about his project 'The Monument view" - which was a video installation on top of The Monument in London, (The Monument was erected to commemorate the great fire of London). His installation is seated upon the very top of this, and a 360 degree camera streams live images of London. These are all available to view here (link) with a back catalogue of images in time-lapse, it's well worth visiting the website, the photography it produces are stunning.

The images that follow are captioned and also emailed to the day events staff for possible inclusion in the pod cast/video marketing material.