Tell Me Where You Live

This project involved artist Francoise Dupre working with 22 Year 6 pupils, from Woodview Primary (formerly Lee Bank Junior and Infant School). The children researched, developed and produced a series of artwork that explored the city of St Petersburg.

The project looked at ideas of place, journeys, displacement and cross-cultural experience using a number of resources including books, guides, maps, personal perceptions and a collage made by children from the Red Flag knitwear factory in St Petersburg who had worked with Francoise as part of a previous project.

The second part of this project involved sending the artwork produced by the Woodview Primary children to Russia to take part in an international children’s exhibition. The Russian children then responded to the works by sending writings and drawings to the school.

Linked into the project was a visit to Ikon to see the exhibition by Russian artist Vladimir Arkhipov who had been compiling a ‘post folk archive’ throughout several years of fieldwork investigation in Russia. Consisting of hundreds of assembled handmade objects, with idiosyncratic functional qualities, it was a celebration of DIY ingenuity – necessary, particularly in the light of the manufacturing shortages which blighted everyday life in the former Soviet Union. Arkhipov collected many things over a six month period from people based in the West Midlands and many of these items were on display at Ikon from 7 August-15 September 2002.