Collaborating with Craigmillar Now Connecting Craigmillar the aim was to explore interests and issues that are important to the local community, focussing on creating artworks representative of these in an engaging way. A main focus was collectively decided as being the lack of care for the Guillivers foot statue and surrounding area since the dramatic landscape change to make way for more housing.
The project took the form of thinking how best to facilitate engagement with the Gulliver's foot statue and surrounding area on participants own terms. Gathering and compiling personal stories and connections throughout to simultaneously strengthening the application listed status.
Engaging initially with the local community in a clean-up day around Gullivers Foot, later using found ‘modern archaeological’ pieces to demonstrate and teach archival methods to the Young Archivist group that meet on a weekly basis at Craigmillar Now.
A small zine was made to showcase the clean-up day participants hard work and was available and Craigmillar Now and connected local businesses. Objects archived from the clean-up are stored alongside historical photographs and audio material at Craigmillar Now.
Background:
In 1976-78 Craigmillar Festival Society commissioned Jimmy Boyle to create Gulliver, a 100ft concrete man spanning the slope between two watercourses the Braid Burn and the Niddrie Burn, to the South East of Edinburgh. When the sculpture was first unveiled by Billy Connolly it encouraged young people to play and was the focus of community regeneration celebrations and meet ups. Boyle who had previously served time for being a notorious gangster carved out a successful artistic career upon leaving prison in 1981 and set up Gateway Exchange- a project which helped in the drug rehabilitation of young people. He often referred to his acquired interest in art when incarcerated as a large part of his own rehabilitation journey.
In 2023 Gullivers foot- all that is left of Gulliver today, and the area immediately surrounding had been mostly forgotten and neglected due to large scale changes in residential areas and the re-routing of the river. Craigmillar Now fronted the drive to award the foot with listed status and were keen to support further engagement with the area through protecting the statue.
Year: 2023
This project was supported by Craigmillar Now, Anna Mayhew and QMU WISeR funding.
