Parfyme Backpack Factory

Met up with Parfyme again (We'd been in their Tent Show, and Pelle was part of Red Line Surveillance - building the mini bus shelter that's still there). They've been doing a Residency in Loughborough for Radar.

They travelled around the campus and further afield, getting "Ideas" in a custom made rucksack/mailbox - they were deliberately vague about what this meant, but when pressed said that perhaps something to do with public spaces would be good. They then took some of these ideas for activities on their current residency, and they may also feed into future work However, there was also an interesting suggestion that what they were really doing was to encourage people from a particular place to discuss what they thought would benefit them and if some people agreed, give them a push toward working on it together. Rather than being there to "fix" things, they were a kind of catalyst that could activate an area and encourage further public engagement.



This is from a set of photos up on Flickr of them exchanging Danish Sausage for ideas.

They came over to Birmingham for a couple of days, braving the snow to gather ideas around the Ikon, Brindleyplace and Digbeth, I didn't manage to see any of the things people suggested, but think it's a really good thing to just ask people to consider their environment in a different way, to change the course of someone's working routine, their train of thought. Whether any of the specific ideas get implemented is not the point for me, but instead that we start to realise we can work together to improve public spaces, and always be coming up with new ideas.



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Parfyme website