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Cities As Incubators for Citizen's Agency Songs from Sheffield

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Cities As Incubators for Citizen's Agency Songs from Sheffield Cities as incubators for citizen’s agency Biographies of (Dis)Connection: the case of Sheffield Songs From Sheffield Kate Unsworth Colophon Cities as incubators for citizen’s agency Biographies of (Dis)Connection: the case of Sheffield Appendix to P5 Report: Songs From Sheffield Kate Unsworth 4423135 Department of Urbanism Faculty of Architecture TU Delft 27.06.16 Mentors: Luisa Calabrese, Chair of Urban Design Saskia de Wit, Chair of Landscape Architecture Klaske Havik, Chair of Methods and Analysis Cities as incubators for citizen’s agency Biographies of (Dis)Connection: the case of Sheffield Songs From Sheffield Kate Unsworth Notes from a friendly city (or: Do you think they’ll mind that I’m southern?) I’m dropping my t’s in an effort to fit in. I don’t think it’s working. Or that it suits me. I’m not sure anyone but me cares. Each new conversation I have, report that I read Forms another little thread Woven between me, them, their city Making me more accountable. I see the city through my own eyes But through theirs too. I am dazzled and overwhelmed But each day I am more in love. 6 Sheffield has produced an array of music stars, often known for their understated but witty character. The artists focussed on here are Pulp. Arctic Monkeys, The Everly Pregnant Brothers, Richard Hawley and then a select assortment from other writers and artists, including poets. To finish, two famous recent films, set in Sheffield, are introduced. What emerges from all is the sense of raw human existence and the peculiarities (and struggles) of everyday life. The humour is wry, self- deprecating, the attitude understated. These are not artists singing yet another love song, but who are not afraid to sing about the more mundane or difficult bits of urban life. But I hope you have a song about Sheffield too - in the back is space for you to add your own... 7 8 Pulp Pulp were an English punk band formed in Sheffield in 1978. They are most well known through their front man and lead singer, Jarvis Cocker. They won the Mercury Prize in 1996 and were nominated several other times, becoming reluctant figures in the Britpop movement. Many of their songs focus on everyday life and dramas, blended with social and political commentary, often inspired by and reflecting on the city where they grew up. The songs collected here are: • Babies • Deep Fried in Kelvin • Wickerman • Sheffield: Sex City • Disco 2000 9 Fig XX: Stanhope Road, Sheffield Source: SheffieldHistory.co.uk 10 Babies (Pulp) Well it happened years ago when you lived on Stanhope Road. We listened to your sister when she came home from school ‘cos she was two years older and she had boys in her room. We listened outside and heard her. Alright. Well that was alright for a while but soon I wanted more. I want to see as well as hear and so I hid inside her wardrobe. And she came round four and she was with some kid called David from the garage up the road I listened outside I heard her. Alright. Oh I want to take you home. I want to give you children. You might be my girlfriend, yeah. When I saw you next day I really couldn’t tell ‘cos you might go and tell your mother. And so you went with Neve and Neve was coming on And I thought I heard you laughing when his Mum and Dad were gone. I listened outside, I heard you. Alright. Oh I want to take you home... etc. Well I guess it couldn’t last too long. I came home one day and all her things were gone, I fell asleep inside. I never heard her come. And then she opened up her wardrobe and I had to get it on. Oh, listen we were on the bed when you came home, I heard you stop outside the door. I know you won’t believe it’s true, I only went with her ‘cos she looks like you. Oh I want to take you home...[etc.] Stanhope Road is the street where Jarvis Cocker, lead singer of Pulp, grew up, in the south east suburbs of Sheffield. 11 Fig XX: Kelvin Flats, Sheffield c. 1980s. Source: SheffieldHistory.co.uk 12 Deep Fried in Kelvin (Pulp) Oh children of the future ... conceived in the toilets at Meadowhall ... to be raised on the cheap cold slabs of garage floors ... rolling empty cans down the stairway ... (don't you love that sound?) ... whilst the thoughts of a bad social worker ran through his head ... trying to remember what he learnt at training college ... Lester said he wasn't allowed in here ... so why don't you get lost? ... and if you grow up ... then when you grow up, maybe ... maybe you can live ... live on Kelvin ... yeah you can live in Kelvin ... on the promenade with the concrete walkways ... where pidgeons go to die ... (a woman on the fourteenth floor noticed that the ceiling was bulging as if under a great weight. When the council investigated they discovered that the man in the flat above had transported a large quantity of soil into his living-room, in which several plants he had stolen from a local park were growing. When questioned, the man said all he wanted was a garden. When questioned, the man said all he wanted was a garden.) ... Oh God, I think the future's been fried ... deep fried in Kelvin ... and now it's rotting behind the remains of a stolen motorbike ... I haven't touched it, honest ... but there isn't anything else to do ... we don't need your sad attempts at social conscience based on taxi-rides home at night when exhibition opens ... we just want your car radio ... and those Reflux speakers ... now ... suffer the little children to come to me ... and I will tend their adventure playground splinters with cigarette burns and feed them fizzy orange and chips ... and then they grow up straight and tall ... and then they grow up to live ... on Kelvin ... yeah ... we can have ghettos too ... only we use air-rifles instead of machine-guns ... stitch that ... and we drunk driving lights ... in the end ... the question you have to ask yourself is ... are you talking to me ... or are you chewing a brick? The Kelvin Flats were demolished in 1995 due to social and building maintenance problems associated with the tower blocks. Meadowhall, the large out of town shopping centre, was opened in 1990. 13 Fig XX: The culverted sheaf Source: derelictplaces.co.uk 14 Wickerman (Pulp) Just behind the station, before you reach the traffic island, a river runs thru' a concrete channel. I took you there once; I think it was after the Leadmill. The water was dirty & smelt of industrialisation Little mesters coughing their lungs up & globules the colour of tomato ketchup. But it flows. Yeah, it flows. Underneath the city thru' dirty brickwork conduits Connecting white witches on the Moor with pre-raphaelites down in Broomhall. Beneath the old Trebor factory that burnt down in the early seventies. Leaving an antiquated sweet-shop smell & caverns of nougat & caramel. Nougat. Yeah, nougat & caramel. And the river flows on. Yeah, the river flows on beneath pudgy fifteen-year olds addicted to coffee whitener And it finally comes above ground again at Forge Dam: the place where we first met. I went there again for old time's sake Hoping to find the child's toy horse ride that played such a ridiculously tragic tune. It was still there - but none of the kids seemed interested in riding on it. And the cafe was still there too The same press-in plastic letters on the price list & scuffed formica-top tables. I sat as close as possible to the seat where I'd met you that autumn afternoon. And then, after what seemed like hours of thinking about it I finally took your face in my hands & I kissed you for the first time And a feeling like electricity flowed thru' my whole body. And I immediately knew that I'd entered a completely different world. And all the time, in the background, the sound of that ridiculously heartbreaking child's ride outside. Continues on next page 15 At the other end of town the river flows underneath an old railway viaduct I went there with you once - except you were somebody else - And we gazed down at the sludgy brown surface of the water together. Then a passer-by told us that it used to be a local custom to jump off the viaduct into the river When coming home from the pub on a Saturday night. But that this custom had died out when someone jumped Landed too near to the riverbank Had sunk in the mud there & drowned before anyone could reach them. I don't know if he'd just made the whole story up, but there's no way you'd get me to jump off that bridge. No chance. Never in a million years. Yeah, a river flows underneath this city I'd like to go there with you now my pretty & follow it on for miles & miles, below other people's ordinary lives. Occasionally catching a glimpse of the moon, thru' man-hole covers along the route. Yeah, it's dark sometimes but if you hold my hand, I think I know the way. Oh, this is as far as we got last time But if we go just another mile we will surface surrounded by grass & trees & the fly-over that takes the cars to cities.
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