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• Visualisation by Adam Crossnan at Landlab (2008),

Futurescope for Marchday PLC/Lingfield Developments

Devised by Christian Barnes and John Kennedy with Tees Valley Arts

Culture and Ecology at Lingfield Point

Our proposal for ‘Futurescope - A sequential outdoor exhibition of massive circular photographs’ on the Lingfield Point power plant building facing the A66 to be directed by John Kennedy and Christian Barnes is intended to catalyse a ‘Cultural, Arts and Ecological Strategy’ for Marchday at Lingfield Point, Darlington and to inform long term thinking for the site. ‘Futurescope’ is predicated on the idea that we want to develop a relationship with Lingfield Point that lasts over time and to develop and share our creative vision for urban brown field landscape.

The images will be changed with the seasons.

The images will explore the possibilities of the site and its working environment in cultural and ecological terms. They will be selected/made during the life of the project (not predetermined) and could respond to developments on site. The images will be cultural and ecological ‘propaganda’ about Lingfield Point intended to be visible to a wide cross section of Darlington’s residents and visitors.

We want to propose and envision behavioural change that will lead to the productive and economic use of the soft estate at Lingfield Point from ‘Lingfield Organics’, to grazing by ‘Lingfield Lamb’, to wild flower and renewable energy cropping. We want to explore how such images can change our mindset and habitat and move to the negotiation of a new and stronger psychological contract with Lingfield Point with the people of Darlington and the Tees Valley. ‘Futurescope’ will stand at a new gateway to the town and will fulfil a civic purpose in more than a purely literal sense.

We think these concerns are close to the development propositions that will make the site a success in the future. ‘Futurescope’ will also touch a building that is being considered for development as a cultural venue with a unique and highly memorable art project

Behind ‘Futurescope’ lies our wish to establish a long term cultural engagement with this site – an opportunity for the future which in our case would be directed towards the productive use and design of the soft estate - specifically, urban and ‘ornamental’ farming on brown field land.

This will not just be ‘our vision’ and ‘our project’. ‘Futurescope’ is a rhetorical device. What we can provide are distinctive cultural and design vocabularies that can explore, establish, develop and express Marchdays cultural and ecological convictions in new and innovative ways. However without this conviction and the involvement of others that can extend our expertise, the visual statements we deliver on the wall of the power station will be diminished.

A unique combined approach to the Arts and Ecology of the type that we have imagined will set Lingfield Point apart from other places and would gel with our values.

Our inspiration

We admire the way in which Marchday has set about designating and segmenting the site into branded buildings targeted at tenants. It is an approach that shows how a behemoth of a site apparently exhausted of its potential and purchased in bankruptcy can be repopulated and regenerated one step at a time.

It is ‘doing business’ that has brought about this transformation.

We see the opportunity for ‘doing business’ to continue into the extensive and under utilised soft estate in such a way that a perception of Lingfield Point and its accessibility to the community slowly negotiates new development propositions including social enterprise in a beneficial way that can be realised in the real economy. We think that the green parts have a greater value than is currently being envisaged and we feel that the soft estate (developed against an ecological and cultural agenda) can be central to the eventual creation of a live/work environment that realises the full potential of the site in an original and unique way. Our proposal ‘Futurescope’ is wholly focussed on this idea.

We are excited and inspired by Marchday’s future vision for the site which projects an economic life for Lingfield Point beyond the oil age as an employment site where people live and play as well as work. It is this that gives us our subject.

What will this habitat really look and feel like?

We want to engage with Marchday in imagining and projecting this future. It is not a simple future.

Culture, Arts and Ecology

The real challenge of the sustainability agenda is that as a society we need to manage a process of decline and come to an understanding of the green agenda as a development proposition. The environment in which we need to find the vocabulary to make these changes is a cultural environment.

As this challenge grows more pressing, and change happens, there will be winners and losers: Those who are prepared and those who are unprepared.

At a very local level we will need to equip ourselves with a habitable environment in which we can survive and flourish. Lingfield Point could become such a place.

In the future we will need to live differently, unlearning the consumptive behaviour to which we have become addicted but first we need to recognise how this can be done. For this we need a rhetorical platform where challenges can be faced – discoveries, suggestions, celebrations made. As artists and creatives we don’t set our selves above this process - we are as challenged as anyone else. Lingfield Point’s heritage as an employment site resonates with this debate in a way that few other places do.