Nina Edge performs @ The Bluecoat Bed In, Liverpool
A guest post by Nina Edge……
Nina Edge, Bed in at The Bluecoat.
…….In Bed With The Developers
In homage to fifteen thousand wasted opportunities, fifteen thousand tinned up houses, and fifteen thousand people seeking a place called home, Edge presents a new live work featuring thousands of flying keys and the most expansive door chime in town.
There will be an opportunity to watch telly and talk. Classic regeneration programmes will be shown throughout the day ; ITVs Tonight With Trevor Macdonald Show (the one where they renovate a Welsh Streets House) and the BBC’s Cheap Homes For Sale (the one where they show how people want to buy the houses scheduled for demolition.)
Some of the radio archive will be available to listen to, and if you have an opinion about the demolition of Liverpool’s terraced houses you can record it.
THIS Friday 19th November 11 am until 4pm The Bluecoat in School Lane
contact nina at welshstreetshomegroup@googlemail.com for more info
Background
Nina Edge is an artist who lives in Liverpool’s Welsh Streets where around 400 houses - including Ringo Starr’s birthplace, are sealed up and left to deteriorate. They are a fraction of the 12,586 houses in the city purchased by the City Council’s HMRI team over a 7 year period. The council wanted to demolish them (along with Nina’s house) and pass the land to volume house builders who planned to build new houses on the land.
On 25th October the HMRI scheme was abandoned by central government as part of the spending cuts. Meanwhile waiting lists for affordable housing have reached a blistering 23,000 and the failures of housing policy over several decades are laid bare. Despite acute housing shortages, immeasurable social and environmental damage, thousands of demolitions in Liverpool continue apace. The developers in many cases seem to have flown. Instead of new houses the cleared sites will be grassed over.
The powers that be have said the artist will still be forced out of her home.
It’s enough to make you lose the will to get out of bed. For one day only Nina Edge presents a meditation on what it means to in bed with the developers.
Nina Edge is currently engaged as Cultural Leadership Programme Associate Artist at FACT