Peer Plaques is the outcome of a two year residency in which we researched the present and future effects of regeneration within the Housing Market Renewal (HMR) intervention areas of Burnley, East Lancashire.

The project reflects local residents’ experiences of HMR including perspectives on how the neighbourhoods have changed and might possibly change in the future as a direct consequence of the regeneration programme starting. A series of 50 heritage style plaques were installed onto abandoned terraced houses in three of Burnley’s HMR areas during February 2008. The work is based on the question asked of many residents: “What is your fi rst thought when you
think about your neighbourhood?”

Peer Plaques was a direct response to a growing sense that residents’ voices were not being heard as part of ongoing formal consultation processes – and as such expressed their ambitions and fears directly through the public artworks.

The design of the Stair Tower cladding panels has been developed in collaboration with a joint group of students and staff from
three schools who merged into the new building in September 2012. The design is an abstracted map of the World that wraps around the stair tower, showing the main outlines of the World’s land masses with major cities picked out as circles.

A finer layer of detail will show the main mountain ranges of the World and adds a further texture to the artwork. The material is an embossed (pressed) metal panel that will pick up and reflect the changing daylight and night time lighting conditions.

The map has been drawn using the Peters’ projection of the World, as this depicts each country accurately in relative size to one another unlike many other World projections such as the Mercator Projection.