I went to Manchester University yesterday for the community festival. I wanted to ask some questions about making maps. In the mapping exhibit I was pointed in the direction of some online resources and advice where I could electronically create my own maps. The man asked me why I was interested in map making. I told him I was doing an MA in Ceramics. He was baffled, so I had to explain that my grandmother came to Manchester, and my mum and I was born here, and that we all had connections to the city, and that I wanted to walk in their footsteps. I could map buildings that they would have visited, or walked past, and could layer my 'map' of the city over my mums and grans 'maps'.
He told me that he was born in a Tudor house, so the building had been there for a very long time. He said there were architectural details in the building that were traces of different times and generations, and that he was interested in that as a child. We talked for a while about architecture and history and then went our separate ways.
I was left thinking about the conversation. Part of my research into this area, in particular writing by Leatherbarrow, is concerned with architecture connecting with our past, our personal and collective history. It struck me that this would be very clear to someone who lived in a house originally built in Tudor times.
I am left wondering what it would be like if my family had lived in the same place for many generations. Would I interested in my family history, or trying to work out who my gran was and where she came from, or walking in her footsteps. Probably not. I would understand who I was and where I came from, my place in the world might be clear and strong.
However the fact that I cannot trace my history further back than my grandmother, means that I am relatively 'rootless'. In somw ways this has given me a lot of freedom, I am not carrying generations of tradition or expectation or duty. I can make my own choices, and consider all the different options without regard to the past. The fact that my father is also an immigrant himself adds to this sense of freedom. He left home and travelled widely as a young man, and flipped a coin to come to Manchester. There are role models throughout my recent family history of starting somewhere new, of walking away, of taking chances, of trying something different. Although I am settled in Manchester, I know that I too could leave and start again somewhere else in the world.
Andrea commented on this about me and my family one evening in London when we went to visit CAL. She picked this out from a discussion about our emerging projects, although I was struggling to articulate it myself. She is a wise woman. In practice 3 I have been thinking about whether I can learn something about my family history by walking in the footsteps of previous generations of my family. My detailed research into local maps and local history shows that the areas and buildings in which they lived have undergone such drastic changes that my walking experience is radically different from theirs.
There are places that trigger family stories, such as the broken masonry in All Saints church on Grosvenor Square. My mothers experience of growing up during the war was fundamental to understanding many things about her. My grandparents are even more difficult to grasp on to. There are familiar street names where they lived, but these buildings no longer exist, and I cant peep into the window to see where the events unfolded that were to became familiar family stories. For example, the parlour where the carpet was rolled up when my uncle and his friends returned unexpectedly on leave from the war, and danced with elderly friends of my grandmother into the early hours of the morning, leaving the young men exhausted and fast asleep, and the sprightly neighbours full of life and energy, laughing and chatting until dawn. I would dearly like to walk along that road, and see that building.
Perhaps had my family lived in the same house for generations, this might have been the case, but the nature of the urban setting its constant changes and regeneration, mean that walking in Manchester today is a different experience for me.
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