Roads & Flowers is a new site-specific project in an area of Sheffield called Flower Estates.

Originally a garden-city development, the area has been demolished and is in the early stages of redevelopment. The aim of the project is to fuse the history and memories of older residents with the imaginings of children to create a magic-realist novel for the area, using participative actions to explore processes of memory and change.

The project is split into six chapters and each will be created and "published" onsite during the twelve months of the project via a series of public events. At the end of the fieldwork, the final work will be published and released as a commercially available book.

Chapter One (pictured here) was completed in autumn 2008 - with local schoolchildren creating poems from the broken bricks of the old houses. The bricks were then buried underneath the new housing development.

Chapter Two was undertaken early 2009, a part of a lantern parade for children and families through the estate and surrounding area. The text is based upon transcriptions of elderly residents memories and a series of wishes and dreams created by schoolchildren during sessions facilitated by Incidental, Field Art and local poet Matt Black

Project team: David Gunn and Jeremy Hutchison. Additional photography by Daisy Hutchison. See the gallery for more images.

Roads & Flowers has been commissioned as part of Creative Places Sheffield, and made possible thanks to the kind support of Keepmoat Homes.