The Lodestar Project

A series of photographic and text based works using billboards and digital imaging. The project was a collaboration with the poet Mark Ward, on the life of Margo Grimshaw, a local legend in the North England town of Blackburn. Grimshaw was the owner of the former night club, 'Lodestar', a cultural icon in its day, a focal point for youth culture, and embodiment of the seismic shift in attitudes around the social and cultural revolutions of the sixties and seventies. In addition to illustrated images for the book by Ward, Moore and Davis's work was presented across a number of significant landmarks in Blackburn, including a screening at the digital Big Screen at Blackburn Rovers football ground from April through to September XXXX, which reached new audiences in excess of 56,000 people. These methods reflected the methods of popular advertising that the Lodestar club would have used in its own day, and allowed us to create a sense of mass anticipation for a large scale event. An exhibition and installation at The Bureau, Centre date? for the Arts, Blackburn included aural histories and memories collected from the public through a specially designed interactive website.

Moore and Davis' research explores local cultural traditions and myths in towns and cities across Europe, and reimagines them through techniques that embed the art within the community that is its subject. By focusing on a moment in Blackburn’s recent history (1964-80) the project examined significant themes including: the empowerment of women in post-war British society, and the cultural significance of social spaces in small, local communities, and the relation between popular culture and community institutions.

Rarely has a local musical scene been revisited through the medium of visual art and poetry. ‘From The Outside Looking In’ records people’s stories and memories, which is accessible through the website. By bringing together these different approaches and by juxtaposing personal oral histories with bare facts we hoped to shine new light back on to recent contemporary music history and reawaken memories of those personal significant moments that represent universal rites of passage for every youth of our post war generation, particularly in the cultures of Britain and America.