The People’s Guidebook to Folkestone

"There are definite advantages to staying in the same spot for long periods of time. Partly you accrue information in a very slow, natural way, and partly you can see how the place breathes and changes. There's no way of being disturbed just by novelty."

Iain Sinclair - Psychogeography

As one of the 19 international artists chosen for Folkestone Triennial 2011, Strange Cargo produced Everywhere Means Something to Someone by becoming cartographers, mapping the town horizontally and vertically through the knowledge and memories of local people.

Change is inevitable and should be embraced, but acknowledging the depth of people's attachment to places is equally important; distinctiveness authenticates a place, and this characteristic should remain integral to regeneration.

Even if only small traces remain that indicate earlier use or occupation, such as an evocative road name, a strangely out of context object, or an emotional trace relating to an incident that is invisible to all but the person it happened to, a significance will often be able to be recalled or interpreted by someone. The interpretation will change depending on someone’s relationship to the location in question, but the ability to read these ambiguous fingerprints is mostly the preserve of local people, who have the capacity to serve as arbitrators for place based knowledge. Change is inevitable and should be embraced, but acknowledging the depth of people’s attachment to places is equally important; distinctiveness authenticates a place, and this characteristic should remain integral to the processes of renewal.

We are interested in exploring the reality of Folkestone, not just as a location, but as a place that returns your gaze. If the town is a gateway, this piece of work engages visitors in an emotional dialogue.

Everywhere Means Something to Someone challenges what it is that strangers experience when they come to Folkestone for the first time. We wanted to provide people with a more comprehensive reality, in the form of a transcription through words, images, and representations of different realities, contributed by people who have lived in the town, or made regular visits, over an extended period of time and have developed a deep rooted connection to it. People who are able to see below the surface and recall, expand, invent and interpret what has, or once had, a tangible presence or significance, either to the many, or to the few.

The invitation was open to all to contribute and through an inclusive approach to collecting information, we built this picture. Digging down, revealed the layering that forms this extraordinary map of Folkestone, one where the things that are of importance to the people who live here are the main landmarks, both in space and time. Not just a visitors aid to sight seeing, more an intimate, enigmatic visit to the home town of a close friend, who not only shows you the tourist sights, but shares with you their personal opinions and stories about the common spaces that are inhabited by all.

Strange Cargo became cartographers – mapping the town of Folkestone, but not as an A to Z map, or tourist guidebook might describe physical routes, or conventional histories, but in the form of personal realities that come from people’s experiences (and opinions of what and where is of significance) of specific places in the town. This pocket sized A6 book, includes a map with a key for visitors to locate the places being described, and blank pages for individuals to add their personal experiences to those already recorded. The book will eventually become a historic artefact in its own right – a fragment to indicate that the work once existed.

"Everywhere Means Something to Someone -the people’s guidebook to Folkestone" has been commissioned by Andrea Schlieker, Curator of the 2011 Folkestone Triennial for the Creative Foundation. To purchase your copy please visit our shop.