Peterborough’s Shopfronts to Become Public Stages in a City-Wide Celebration of Words
A new public art project will transform the awnings of locally owned Peterborough businesses into temporary stages for poetry, performance and gathering, beginning with a city-centre launch on Thursday 8 October.
Peterborough’s shopfronts are about to tell stories of their own.
From October, awnings above a series of locally owned businesses will carry words gathered and written by people across the city, transforming familiar streets into unexpected places to stop, read, listen and meet.
The project, A/Owning, is a new public art commission from Metal, led by Venezuelan artist José García Oliva as part of Peterborough Cultural Alliance’s Place Partnership Programme.
It focuses particularly on businesses run by migrant and second-generation families, recognising the part they play not only in Peterborough’s economy, but in the everyday cultural life of the city.
“For two months, poetry will appear above our heads, and ordinary shop fronts will become unexpected cultural spaces to gather, pause, dwell and read.”Viviana Checchia, Director, Metal Peterborough & Cambridgeshire
Looking differently at the everyday city
At the centre of A/Owning is something very ordinary: the shop awning.
Peterborough has a long history as a market city, and archive photographs show streets once shaded by fabric canopies, market stalls and awnings. The project uses that familiar piece of street architecture as a way of thinking about the space between a private business and the public street.
García Oliva describes an awning as a “roof without walls”. For A/Owning, the space beneath it becomes a temporary civic space, with poetry displayed overhead and performances, gatherings and conversation taking place below.
The words appearing on the awnings will come from a poem created collectively by people in Peterborough, together with fragments gathered from around the city.
Rather than becoming one finished poem, the words will remain open. Individual lines will become titles for events taking place beneath the awnings, allowing the work to continue developing as people gather around it.
A launch that moves through Peterborough
The opening evening will travel between a series of city-centre businesses, with spoken word, dance and music leading audiences from one location to the next.
29 Bridge Street. Introduction from Metal followed by spoken word from Zain Haider Awan. Dance artist Kate Marsh will then lead the audience towards the next location.
“a man selling a birdcage in the cathedral square”
41 Lincoln Road. Spoken word from Charley Genever followed by a barter taking place on site.
“a couple holding each other’s waists jump together into the garden of a property with a subtitle that says ‘for sale’”
22 Hereward Cross. Poet Kaitlene Koranteng performs beneath the awning before the journey continues.
“the economy enters through the back door carrying two crates of tomatoes the door held open with a brick”
35 New Road. The evening concludes with refreshments and a live performance by a Nepalese band led and performed by the shop owner.
“the tea turned into coffee down the road a new building with an old queue”
The businesses are part of the artwork
A/Owning deliberately places creativity in spaces people already use every day.
A takeaway awning, a supermarket entrance or the pavement outside a family business might not normally be described as a cultural venue. The project asks us to look again at those familiar places and at the people and businesses that help give Peterborough its character.
For two months this autumn, some of the city’s most everyday shopfronts will become places to read, listen, meet and perhaps notice Peterborough a little differently.
Launch activity runs from 5pm to 8.30pm across Peterborough city centre. Further events will take place on Thursday 22 October, Saturday 7 November and Saturday 21 November.