coxsidecartographies

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Coxside Future Tea

The Saturday of Plymouth Art Weekender was crisp, bright and perfect for our first Tasseography workshops which took place in Coxside’s amphitheater looking across to the Mayflower steps.Tasseography, or tea reading, is something we had hoped to work with but lockdown restrictions made it hard to get together with residents over a cuppa! 

Our first socially-distanced session that day was with Coxside residents, some of whom had met Bridgette before via her walking workshop. Jo introduced them to her Future Tea project - a guided tea reading session that invites participants to select from dried herbs and flowers that are relevant to their local area and brew their own cup of tea.

For Coxside Cartographies she had selected a range of ingredients based on plants found in the local area, including mint, rose, chamomile and rosebay willow herb. Some that would have been common to the Mayflower pilgrims and to the Native Americans, and others with calming properties to relieve stress and sooth - qualities that seem fit for pandemic times. A full list and instructions for tea reading will be available soon for you to try at home.

After selecting and brewing the tea, we let it steep - a chance for the flavours to develop along with quiet conversation and a chance to still the mind. Then we swirled and dumped out any excess water in order to study the leaves left behind. Some people used sticks and ink to draw a record of the patterns and symbols they found.

We ended with a conversation sharing our experiences and interpreting what we saw. Some people found signs of celebration, some symbols of seafaring (appropriate for both the area and their family history) and for others endless dashes indicated travel. When we repeated the workshop with family groups from Crazy Glue, in the second session, the children and young people saw shapes that reflected their hopes and worries, ambitions and fears. Through our personal readings of the leaves a collective read for Coxside took shape.

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Contemplation Cups

We staged an outdoor clay cup making workshop on Friday 25th September beside Drakes reservoir on North Hill. 

Members of the Plymouth & Devon Racial Equality Council art group made teacups based on shapes and styles of cups that they found most familiar. Each cup was totally unique, some with handles and/or  bases and some shaped as a plain vessel. 

The results will be glazed and fired before being returned to their makers for a tea celebration at the Box in a few weeks’ time

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Workshop: Plants, People, Place

Last Saturday we ran our first series of socially distanced workshops! It was a rainy day but Bridgette Ashton and members of Crazy Glue and Coxside residents braved the weather. They took a walk around Coxside, using disposable cameras to photograph areas of change and growth and shared memories, routes and experiences of the area.

This was followed by a non-judgmental drawing session led by Bridgette, looking at the plants that grow in Coxside. As part of this project we plan to collectively design a new mark for the base of an edition of Coxside mugs. These drawings will be used to inform the design.

Here are some of the images from their walk including the China House (where Cookworthy’s factory stood) with the ghost of an arch on the side, and an image of a rare flower pointed out by Bridget a Coxside resident. The flower known as a Deptford Pink, was named by a 17th century naturalist, Thomas Johnson. It’s a bit of a misnomer as he was more likely to have discovered its relative the Maiden Pink – the Deptford Pink had not grown in the area since the city of London was built!

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Getting people talking... local news

As part of the project we’ve been speaking to local news outlets to find out more about Coxside’s history and to reach out to local residents. We are delighted that Coxside Cartographies is featured in the Plymouth Herald and hope that it will bring some new voices to the mapping process:

https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/fascinating-memories-coxside-through-years-4281003

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Tea and history

There’s a wider context to the origins of your cuppa than many people are aware of. This article from the New York Times explores this history via the newly renovated British Galleries “Tea, Trade and Empire” room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/08/arts/tea-history-politics.html

Tea plantations in India were promoted under British rule in an attempt to break the Chinese monopoly on tea production and it was exported to America by the East India Company. Similarly, sugar was imported from the West Indies fuelled by the transatlantic slave trade between West Africa, Caribbean and American colonies and the European colonial powers. Sugar cane, grown and harvested under slavery in the Caribbean islands was processed at the Sugar House at Coxside in the 1830s. This trade in goods and people links Coxside to a global supply chain that is evident in the products, people and places we can encounter in Plymouth today. We have a responsibility to address the histories of slavery and colonialism within these narratives, to open up conversations that further our collective understanding, and to create work that reflects on the complex relationships between these places, historical objects, and histories’ reveberations in the present. 

We are working with local and regional communities of geography and interest to do this, including Black and migrant-led organisations. We are testing and developing our approach collaboratively with the communities we work with (including Coxside Neighbourhood Group, Prince Rock Primary School, Plymouth and Devon Racial Equality Council, Nomony Multicultural Toddlers and Families group, Plymouth City Council’s Natural Infrastructure team, and Plymouth Community Homes), and always welcome feedback and conversation around this work.

Sadly slavery still exists in the UK and internationally. To donate to the Anti-Slavery charity, visit: https://www.antislavery.org/donate/ 

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Activity 2/Object Histories

Find out more about the objects and artefacts from The Box Plymouth’s collection which are directly related to sites in Coxside below. Then use the illustration of William Cookworthy’s porcelain mug to focus on your own memories of Coxside. 

We would love to know hear your thoughts, comments and see your completed mug sheets. Take a photograph of your finished mug and send it to hello@effordtakeapart.org.uk or post them on Instagram with the hashtag #mappinghistories

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Social engagement in a lockdown?

Coxside Cartographies is featured in the Arts Council’s Five Questions feature. Kim Wilde Director of Take A Part talks about adapting socially engaged projects during lockdown:

https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/blog/five-questions-withtake-part

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Memories of Coxside from a Plymouth resident, May 2020

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Here’s the first of our maps to be completed and an explanation of the different colours and lines:

“Green is my daily route - I think I've done this every single day since lockdown, at slightly varying times in the morning. The purple route is one I take occasionally (branching off the green route) if there's too many people along the stretch there, next to the water – sometimes a pram might be getting slowly pushed, or some people have stopped to look at the swans, so I kind of loop around and rejoin my route where it's easier to spread out. The pink was a route I did once when I wanted a longer walk, but didn't enjoy because it was just along a road for the majority of it so I never bothered going that way again. The black broken line bit is where I walk to look at the cormorants a little bit closer, they're there every day but I don't always go to look at them - especially if I have a briefing or something I need to get back for.

I live on the Barbican, along Notte Street, which I walk along for about two or three minutes before I meet this part of my route, and loop around the harbour, walk passed the Aquarium, and sometimes have to wait for the bridge to open and then walk back through the Barbican to get back. So I actually do a kind of circular route. But the birds are the best bit!"

Barbican Resident, May 2020

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Activity 1/Gathering: Roots

We are interested in finding out the places and routes in and around Coxside that are important to you. Follow the instructions below to map your Coxside.

Bridgette has drawn several maps of the local area – there are Coxside, Efford and East End maps. Click on the links below to download (and print if possible) the area where you live or work and use it to map the journeys and places that you usually visit. Starting from your home, either draw directly on the map or use it as a guide to create your own. 

Trace a line in a different colour or pen for each journey you usually make and special visits or detours. You could use a range of marks: a dotted line for a specific journey or a zig zag for a stroll.

If you are leaving the house for food or exercise, you can use the map to record your daily journeys. 

Take a photograph of your finished map and send it to hello@effordtakeapart.org.uk or post them on Instagram with the hashtag #mappinghistories We would love it if you could send in photographs from your walks too.

Click on the links below to download your map:

East End Map

https://drive.google.com/open?id=16CgIbS7hHiz3hTLoxMUYgKqmgI4pHapF

Coxside Map

https://drive.google.com/open?id=129GwQzcTCwZwm3Bgpk-STlvLwIlrS06T

Efford Map

https://drive.google.com/open?id=194h6thnWdixzvY9Ilac0ezSN6hDTGDym

Do let us know if you have any problems and we can send you the map you need.

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How can we begin to map* Coxside?

Tea! Bless ordinary everyday afternoon tea!  Agatha Christie

As artists with a relationship to Plymouth, but who both live outside the city, we wanted to find a way in to learning more about Coxside’s past and present and its connections to the wider world through migration, work and trade. Conversation with the local residents over a cup of tea seemed like the perfect place to start. The apparent ordinariness of the components of a mug of tea – the ceramic cup, the offer of sugar and the tea itself – reveal historic and present day global trade routes and connections between Plymouth, London, the New World and beyond.

Discovering Coxside had historically both a porcelain factory and sugar refinery, these sites became our starting points for considering the area’s history. William Cookworthy ran the Plymouth Porcelain factory in Coxside between 1768-70 producing the first hard-paste porcelain made in England. Plymouth Porcelain was used for tableware and had the advantage over soft-paste that it was less likely to crack when exposed to hot liquids – perfect for a cup of tea!

Both tea and sugar products have become staples of British life, but their origins are complicated and tied to ideas of power, control and empire. Tea was originally imported from China, becoming an everyday feature at the English table (served with sugar and milk) by the 1720s. Tea plantations in India were promoted under British rule in an attempt to break the Chinese monopoly on tea production and it was exported to America by the East India Company. Similarly, sugar was imported from the West Indies fuelled by the transatlantic slave trade between West Africa, Caribbean and American colonies and the European colonial powers. Sugar cane, grown and harvested under slavery in the Caribbean islands was processed at the Sugar House at Coxside in the 1830s. This trade in goods and people link Coxside to a global supply chain that is evident in the products, people and places we can encounter in Plymouth today. 

Objects and artefacts from The Box Plymouth’s collection directly relating to these sites including Plymouth Porcelain teacups, mugs and teapots; as well as sugar moulds and collecting jars will be central to the project with creative workshops using clay and sugar planned for later in the year. Our original plans to meet with residents and begin a series of walks, conversations and exchanges have had to change in response to the current restrictions on movement, but we hope that the remote activities we are developing (which you will find popping up on this and other sites) will identify other sites and stories of importance to Coxside.

*A note on mapping: This project takes ‘mapping’ to be the interrelationship of people, objects, experiences and time and will develop in three distinct phases: Gathering, Making and Sharing. 

The information, relationships, anecdotes, observations and objects made as part of the prompts and activities will be translated into a visual document that can be accessed and used in Coxside (and also remotely) to offer a multi layered view of both place and people.

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An invitation, a place, a mapping

Bridgette Ashton and Joanna Brinton have been invited by Take A Part and The Box Plymouth to create a work which creatively maps Coxside and its residents’ histories. The work will engage with The Box’s Mayflower 400 exhibition and its themes of identity, diversity, and migration.

The first stage of the project is Gathering. Originally envisaged as series of workshops, meetings and walks with local residents and organisations, Gathering is now a series of prompts and self-led activities that can adapt to these changing times.

Over the next few months we will be posting activities you can take part in, plus actions and information about the project on this blog. It is a place for sharing, engaging and making new connections. Keep an eye out for our first Gathering activity and upload your creation and photos of Coxside here.