Shoppers share dreams for digital art project

Artists and participants at the Rochdale border post

Shoppers in Rochdale have shared stories about their dreams and nightmares, as part of a digital art project about the edges of existence and the borders people cross in their everyday lives.

The ‘Borderlines’ project saw a ‘Border Post’ erected in the Exchange Shopping Centre on Saturday (1 October) representing the border in to dream land. Young people from the Rochdale Youth Service then asked passers-by to stop for a moment to send a message or a tweet about their dreams. Respondents ranged in age from teenagers to pensioners – many of them tweeted for the first time.

The project was part of a creative writing project called ‘Tell us Another One’ based at Cartwheel Arts in Heywood and funded by Big Lottery Fund and Arts Council England.

Young people from Rochdale Young Carers and Rochdale Borough Youth Council have worked with artists from Cartwheel for the past eight weeks to develop the project.

All the messages received on the day can be viewed on the project website. The site shows responses from Rochdale, and also from Oldham and Bury, where the project was taking place simultaneously.

Artist and facilitator Vik, who led the project, said: “It was exciting to bring three parts of Greater Manchester together digitally like this – passers-by were not only taking part in Rochdale, but were watching the live website and seeing comments coming in from Oldham and Bury too. And it was fascinating to see the things other people dream at night.”

www.tellusanotherone.org/live