The Story of The Making of Sutton Manor's Dream

a) Introduction

b) The Big Art Project and 'Dream'

Big Art selection team Isabel Vasseur, Peter Jenkinson, Kevin Murray and Gus Casely Hayford

The site of the former Sutton Manor Colliery spoilheap where Dream now stands - pictured in 2006

So there was considerable disappointment when in April 2006, the six winning sites were announced and the former Sutton Manor Colliery site had missed out from the UK’s biggest ever public art commissioning scheme. The Big Art Project would instead comprise communities in Burnley, Cardigan, Isle of Mull, Newham in East London, North Belfast and Sheffield. All the planning and discussions with proposed stakeholders and funders had come to nothing. Or had it? It soon occurred to all concerned that the publicity from a television series would have been an added bonus and there was no reason why the St.Helens proposal couldn't go ahead independently. There were many hurdles to overcome but much groundwork had already been done.

Consequently Channel 4's Commissioning Editor for Arts, Jan Younghusband, became impressed by the enthusiasm of the St.Helens team and in November 2006, the Project’s governing body, the Big Art Trust, decided to review its decision and include the Sutton Manor site as a seventh location. Peter Jenkinson, founding director of the Walsall Art Gallery and Big Art advisory team member said:

  Big Art is a massively exciting initiative, that combines the creation of major new public art by renowned international artists at select locations throughout the UK, with direct community involvement. Public art can transform a space into a place, and as the process unfolds, the aim is for the Big Art Project to catalyse a national debate about the impact of art on the lives of people in their communities. The enthusiasm and humour of the former miners we have already interviewed at Sutton Manor will certainly make for engaging television. The St.Helens project is a worthy addition to the series, and we have no doubt that it can be delivered due to the dedication and commitment of all those involved.  

John Whaling, St.Helens Council's Dream Project Manager with Gary and Diann Conley at Channel 4 (contributed pic)

The inclusion in C4's Big Art Project was a welcome boost to the efforts of all concerned. All that was needed now was an artist and a piece of art! A detailed design brief had been created and members of the Big Art Project Focus Group in St.Helens made research trips to see the Angel of the North in Gateshead and public art in the Ruhr Valley in Germany. The trip to see Antony Gormley's creation especially impressed the former miners including Gary Conley:

   It completely knocked me out. If I could have transported the Angel of the North at that moment to St Helens, I’d have said, ‘Forget what we’re doing, let’s just have this.’ I come from an engineering background, and it’s a magnificent piece of engineering. It’s a structure that’s 20 metres tall, but with a wing span of 54 metres, and that intrigued me. I wondered how it was going to stay up there, in an exposed position on a hillside, where there are probably 100-mile-an-hour gusts of wind. The wings are slightly angled, like the wings of an aeroplane. They slant forward by 3.5 degrees, which Antony Gormley says gives a sense of embrace.

The Angel is a thing of immense beauty and power, and I just love the colour. We used to have that colour at the colliery where I worked, in a red oxide paint that was applied to exterior steelwork to prevent it going rusty. Back in my engineering days I didn’t find rusty things aesthetically pleasing, but this works. It looks beautiful. The steel is weather-resistant and has copper in it, which gives it a distinctive colour as it shines through the paint. Gormley’s idea was to let it rust, as long as it didn’t do the sculpture any harm. I wondered how they would inspect it, and found out that the body is hollow inside, so you can see the interior. So it’s like art and engineering working hand-in-hand.

The Angel stands over a former mine, so there’s a parallel here with the St Helens site, which is above a disused colliery. It’s as though the angel is coming up out of the dark ground into the light, embracing the future, moving forwards from the industrial age towards an information age, as Antony Gormley put it. The face doesn’t have any features; it’s just blank, so you can picture anybody’s face there. I love that about it. In choosing Dream we were working with the same story, the same background, but we didn’t want people to drive by and think, "There’s a miner’s lamp, there used to be a mine underneath." We wanted them to drive past and think, "That’s interesting, I’ll do a bit of research on it."   

Members of the St.Helens Big Art Project Focus Group visit 'Angel of the North' (contributed by Mel Moran)

Behind the scenes a lot of work was taking place to get the funding in place and to maximise involvement in the project. On March 28th, 2007 the St.Helens Big Art Project was officially launched at the World of Glass by Channel 4's Director of Arts and Performance, Jan Younghusband, in front of invited guests from the business, arts and regeneration communities.

          
Above - Jaume Plensa's extraordinary work at Gateshead and Chicago - click for more

Also on July 23rd, the announcement was made that the commission to design the artwork at the Manor had been accepted by Jaume Plensa. Jaume was born in Barcelona and has exhibited all over the world. His most famous commission is the iconic Crown Fountain located in the centre of Chicago and his public artworks in the UK include a laser beam light sculpture at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead and a sculpted and illuminated glass dome for the BBC Broadcasting House in London. 

On July 26th the St.Helens Star printed the story on the front page of its weekly paper in an article entitled 'Our Angel'. Although there'd been some local publicity previously, this was the biggest so far and a backlash quickly began! Unfortunately, the newspaper had not indicated the funding sources in its piece and so some readers assumed that the then estimated cost of £700,000 would be coming out of their council tax. One wrote to the paper:

  I am amazed and stunned at the stupidity of our council for considering wasting £700,000 on a useless, unnecessary, so called work of art. Our hospitals and hospices are in need of urgent medical equipment, scanners, MRI and CT scanners and other lifesaving machines, plus staff to operate them. 

  In response to letters relating to the Channel 4 Big Art Project in St Helens, I can assure the local community that none of the funding for this exciting initiative is coming from Council taxpayers' money. The £700,000 we have successfully secured so far is all from external funding sources, namely the Arts Council, North West Coalfield Communities Regeneration Programme, a Forestry Commission endowment specifically ringfenced for public art, and the Local Enterprise Growth Initiative. In other words, none of the funding could otherwise be used to pay for statutory Council or other mainstream public services such as education, or social or health care.  

   When Jaume Plensa first came to our site he initially looked at it through our eyes, but we didn’t want that. We wanted an artist to come and look at it through his own eyes, while fulfilling our remit to reference the past but look towards something in the future. So we had to say what he showed us first of all, wasn’t what we were after. He then asked us if we’d like to see his original idea, which he had scrapped because he didn’t think we’d like it. We said ‘Yes’, and that led to Dream. Jaume was shocked to find that although we were ex-miners we didn’t want something like a mining monument, but were after something contemporary that people would ask questions about, something that would make people stop and come into St Helens.  

Paul Jones, Chairman of Sutton Oak Welsh Chapel Preservation Society, with Leo Fitzmaurice's road sign 'Heaven'

In the meantime the community engagement programme - of which one strand was called 'Big Art's Little Art' (after C4's 'Big Brother's Little Brother' show) - continued with more than 3,000 local people attending 24 public exhibitions and 60 ambassadors signed up to help promote the Big Art Project in St.Helens. Also schoolchildren from Sutton Manor Primary School visited Crosby beach to study public art in the form of Gormley's Another Place exhibit and the residents of St.Helens were invited to rearrange the letters 'National Coal Board Sutton Manor Colliery’ into a motto to herald the future of the town.

Work at the Sutton Manor site constructing Dream (images from BBC TV news coverage)

From w/c March 16th, 2009 the first of the 90 panels started arriving at Sutton Manor. The manufacturer Evans, used a Spanish Dolomite mix to give Dream a glowing white finish and special moulds were employed to provide a smooth texture for the artwork. A large crane was used to winch all the concrete panels into place. Assembling the artwork took a lot less time than it did to manufacture it, however the operation was rather nerve-wracking. It wasn't until the final piece slotted in that the team could be certain that no mistakes had been made in their design and production.

 If ever there was a strong argument for not allowing the public to choose art, this is it. Put baldly, it is completely without merit, the only plus being the local council did not pay for it.  

The Dream team of former Sutton Manor miners Frank Leach, Mel Moran, Gary Conley, Brian Salkeld and
Terry Murray of the Focus Group at the official opening on May 31st (contributed by Gary Conley)

Since then, as mentioned in this page's introduction, Dream has proved the cynics and critics wrong. It's created enormous interest and given much pleasure to many people. At the time of its opening, there were three police dispersal zones in the St.Helens borough that gave the police increased powers to combat anti-social behaviour. Of these two were in the Sutton Manor district. As Dream's funding would have gone to other arts projects in other towns, surely this ambitious attempt to improve this part of the world by the former pit men and friends should be applauded? However, the Dream team are not resting on their laurels with plans for a skyward beam of light from the top of the sculpture plus improved motorway visibility.

Gary Conley and attendees at The Bizz lunch in January 2010 in which Gary talked about his role in creating
Dream and donated his sponsored fee of nearly £800 to Willowbrook Hospice - contributed by Gary Conley

The Forestry Commission, who manage the woodland site, is planning a programme of tree thinning which will open out three views, one from the M62 and two from the top of the site looking north and south. Accessibility improvements took place during the summer of 2010 and more benches were installed on the path towards Dream over the winter months. Picnic tables have also been provided.

In November 2010 an ambitious digital interpretation commission was made by St.Helens Council. From the summer of 2011, the stories of Sutton Manor Colliery, the site, its ecology and Dream are being told using a variety of media. A wide range of free resources - podcasts, audio trails, apps, digital toposcope, 3D visualisations - are available to download from the official Dream website. Free Wi-Fi has been installed in the nearby Smithy Manor pub or you can use your smart phone or call 01744 302123. Waymarking signs direct visitors to the audio trails. A lot of thought has gone into this by St.Helens Council in order to enhance the visitor experience and keep the memory of Sutton Manor Colliery alive.

On June 21st, 2011, Dream was bathed in ambient light at night (see image at top of page) for the first time and this will look more impressive as the days shorten. This is the first part of the illumination plans. The proposal for a beam of light is still on the table, but it is now more of a long-term ambition.

In Janet Street-Porter's highly critical piece in the Independent, the columnist claimed that Dream would be one of the "follies of our age". However, St.Helens Council estimate that 24,000 people visited the site between February and May, 2011. It's hard to see how giving pleasure to so many people can in any way be considered foolish. Only time will tell whether it will be able to retain its popularity, of course, but this website is proud of this addition to our community's landscape which both celebrates the past heritage of the site and looks forward positively to the future.

Presentation in May 2011 of a Dream moquette and a piece of Sutton Manor Colliery coal for installation in the Mayor's Parlour. L-R: Brian Salkeld, Terry Murray, Mayor Neil Taylor & Lady Mayoress, Frank Leech, Mel Moran and Gary Conley.


In August 2011 Lord Melvyn Bragg visited Dream to interview Gary Conley and Brian Salkeld (composer of the poem 'Memories') for a BBC2 series looking at class and culture over the last 100 years to be broadcast in October 2011.

c) Forthcoming Dream Events

The Dream Health Walk

d) Dream Media

 

Click image above LEFT to view BBC North West Tonight video on the construction of Dream
Click the image above RIGHT to view a BBC NW Tonight video on Dream's media 'unveiling'