Guns for Goods

‘Guns for Goods’ is an exciting partnership between Salford University, a Charity – CARISMA – and the Greater Manchester Police to develop community leadership in an enterprise that will convert gun metals, reclaimed from the police armoury, into design concepts and goods for manufacture; thus enabling a direct source of potential income to sustain the process.

The project is part of the work of Paul Haywood, who is Professor of Creative Community Engagement in the School of Art and Design. He is currently Associate Head for Enterprise and Engagement, School Widening Participation Champion and he contributes to the MA in Contemporary Fine Art and the new work based learning Masters in Creative Education He is collaborating with Sam Ingleson on a three year AHRC Knowledge Transfer Fellowship developing a method of creative social campaign activism. This follows a body of practice with Sam over a number of years experimenting with creativity in enterprise interventions as a means of supporting civil actions.

• It is a Community led enterprise, which converts gun metals reclaimed from the police armoury, into design concepts and goods for sale;
• Some of the recovered metal becomes fashion items and other artefacts which are sold in local markets. And this leads to a direct source of income for the community. Guns are more easily and willingly collected from crime areas in the city, lives are thus saved and the community sees a very real return on its investment – a win-win for all.

Having spent his early career in a mixture of jobs to support his self-employment as an artist working on social and community based initiatives in the region, Paul Haywood has gained an international research profile from his public realm projects working with colleagues from the creative sector, local authority professionals and regeneration practitioners.

For a number of years he has been involved in a programme of practice based research with a range of collaborators looking at the potential involvement of artists in the interpretation of urban sites and other landscapes. He is specifically interested in colour and colour occurrence as a contributing tool to landscape character assessment and to understanding socio-cultural identity related to geography. He has been working with designer Maxine Kennedy for more than 10 years and they have surveyed a number of urban sites as a means of redefining landscape painting and interpretation. Most recently they have sought to extract and experiment with pigment from the landscape; to take found materials from the built and natural environment, grind those materials and mix them with binder for application as paint, dye or print. For more information on this project consult the paper by Paul Haywood (2011), “Supporting Arts and Enterprise Skills in Communities through Creative Engagement with the Local Area” in the proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Arts in Society, University of Sydney, Australia. Published in the International Journal of Arts in Society, Issue 5, Feb.