Coal, Salt and Tin
Region: Cornwall | Cities: Penwith, Leeds and Newcastle
Coal, Salt, Tin was a collaboration in 2004 between three artists groups from Cornwall (PALP - Penwith Artist-Led projects), Leeds (East Street Arts - ESA) and Newcastle (Multiplus), who united to commission new art works exploring how ideas and location are affected by economic change. A focus of the project was the economic transition from industrial to post-industrial 21st century Britain where knowledge has replaced materials as the basis for economic and social development.
The first leg of Coal, Salt, Tin, staged at Newlyn Art Gallery in May 2004, was a public participatory work entitled “1100 Rosebuds” led by Shetland-based American artist Roxane Permar and in association with PALP (Penwith Artist-Led Projects). The CST project represented a celebration of Newlyn’s industrial heritage achievements and harnessed the attributes of historical figures that sacrificed so much to save people’s civil liberty.
Permar’s artwork drew upon the historic Newlyn clearances and the ‘heroic endeavour’ of The Rosebud, a fishing vessel that travelled from Newlyn to Westminster in 1937 crewed by local fishermen carrying a petition to Parliament signed by nearly 1100 householders. The petition voiced the residents’ plight in trying to halt the demolition of local houses that had been condemned as ‘slums’. 67 years after the residents’ stance, the issue of affordable housing remained paramount for a community investigating the process of reinvention.