“Seek those public places that are ‘hidden in plain sight’ and  visited by very few people”.

The Grandstand to me is a place of history. A site that has many stories to be told yet there is no longer anyone to tell them. Now a rundown community centre, the once beautiful grandstand is no longer that. The cold rooms and dusty tables show us that although the site is still used it is not well maintained and looked after. However, it has so much potential when it comes to finding a ‘performance’ space. From the large open spaces to the claustrophobic corridors there are many places that could be used within our site specific ‘performances’.

For our group in week one, we fell in love with a corridor at the back of the Grandstand. This corridor was part of the building that had been slightly maintained to its original condition. The antique style tiles and the detail in the brick work seemed authentic to the original building and gave us lots of inspiration about creating a piece of work that showed the origins of the site.

The corridor contained large windows which seemed to frame the outdoor space. The windows overlooked onto the back of the Grandstand and then beyond that the Grandstand could be seen. In some ways it could be described as an “unintended theatre”, creating a performance space out of what is already there.

This space is definitely one that we will have to consider for our final ‘performance’. The coldness of the small corridor against the openness of the golf course creates a great dynamic which I would love to explore further.