 The post-industrial limbo: it's a scenario in which city councils, landowners and town planners jostle and dance with land profit-margins, while members of the public romanticise, fear or simply dismiss brownfields as 'undesirables.' I, myself growing up in Stoke-on-Trent, garnered a generic apathy towards the ex-industrial sites – many of which continued to surface long into the 1990s and 2000s. As an adult, now in my late 20s, I have been privy to artistic responses which reframe these marginalised spaces as places of social and ecological value. This summer's Brownfield Block Party – a melange of Improv, Northern Soul, Turncoats chatter, Bingo, Co-Building and a whole lot of Wigan Salad – is a prime example that changes afoot. Hosted by The Oasis Social Club (TOSC) – an ongoing pop-up platform for debate and some light-hearted humour – the two-day Brownfield Block Party took place on the now derelict site of the former Spode Works Glazing Laboratory in order to facilitate conversations on the uses of post-industrial space. Devised by artist Rebecca Davies as the final stage of her Monthly Matics, the event sought to alter our perspective of a brownfield site – simply by alerting audiences to the fact that the land was, temporarily, for public use; fencing was drawn back and LED guide lights illuminated the way to TOSC's “part entertainment venue, part discussion space.”
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