Wastelands
The spaces that we abandon reveal much about ourselves and the psyche of contemporary societies. The way in which we respond to these wastelands shape not only the emerging city but the society it constructs.
The nature of any society and its future can be read in its entrails - in what is left behind, what is discarded. Each creates, uses and casts aside its wastelands in very different ways and it seems that a proportion of every city is always wasteland. These neglected or abandoned places are fragile and ephemeral, a transient aspect of a changing, living city yet development appears unable to clear them away for good, only to move them on to a different site. These Civic Works projects ranging from photography and permanent artworks to cultural masterplans, collectively explore wastelands and this sustained and seemingly permanent feature of the modern city.
Civic Works Ltd website
This website presents a series of artworks by, or in collaboration with, Dan Dubowitz that often begin with photography and lead off in different directions, including photography projects 2000-2010; The Peeps and The Cutting Room permanent artworks for Manchester; itinerant public realm projects which are cross disciplinary collaborations including Tattered Outlaws of History for Dublin with choreographer Fearghus O Conchuir and both Cabintopia and The Nomads with architect Robert Slinger of Kapok.
The site presents four cultural masterplan projects lead by Dan Dubowitz that Civic Works Ltd has undertaken for local government in the UK between 2003 and 2010; for Sunderland, Newcastle, Manchester and Stoke-on-Trent. These long term projects, ranging from 2 to 7 years, also have also have their own websites.
Civic Works Press is an imprint of Civic Works and has most recently published books in association with Dewi Lewis or Manchester University Press all of which are, or soon will be, available on Amazon. These publications and those in development can be browsed in the book section.
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