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soapbox says:

This book is the outcome of the Remapping High Wycombe project by Cathy and John Rogers. Urban planners, surveyors, architects, and developers had descended on the town of High Wycombe in England producing studies, plans, axonometric diagrams for a new town centre redevelopment. A “mixed use retail-driven scheme” called ‘Eden’ would rise in an area once known as The Western Sector. The purpose of our project was to re-map and re-imagine the town before it changed forever.

In March 2005, Cathy Rogers and John Rogers were presented with an Art Plus award, one of 10 awarded in the South East. Art Plus is the UK’s biggest award scheme for art in public spaces, led by Arts Council England, South East and South East England Development Agency (SEEDA). ) The scheme seeks to improve our environment - whether streets, schools or other public spaces – by including the creativity of artists in their design.

The project - Remapping High Wycombe – was in response to the redevelopment of the town centre. John Rogers, a writer who grew up in High Wycombe, embarked upon a series of walks – or ‘dérives’ – a practice pioneered by the Situationists, an international artist group founded in the 1950's. His journeys, purposeful drifts stalking moods, atmospheres, hidden histories and lost voices, took him from the town centre carpark at the heart of the Eden development through the Wycombe streets and eventually to discover a matrix of ancient footpaths that link significant sites around the town. Some of these journeys represent a personal topography of the area, others are reports of more public interventions.

A structure and method of engagement was developed by his sister, Cathy, who also worked with films of the encounters with the community.
The work would form a parallel scheme, a psychogeographical vision of the area. There is a DVD to accompany the book.

‘Journeys Beyond the Western Sector’ captures a town undergoing radical change and looks into the question of how such developments alter our sense of place.

“Remapping High Wycombe : journeys beyond the western sector”
is currently available exclusively through Lulu.com.
www.lulu.com/content/367816

For more information on “Remapping High Wycombe : journeys beyond the western sector”

email: wycombederive@yahoo.co.uk



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