Wash out

Sadly, the weather for the final weekend of the Saltaire Festival was a bit of a wash-out. Chilly grey skies on Saturday and incessant drizzle on Sunday. Added to that, I managed to injure my back on Saturday morning. Don't ask me how... I just bent down to pick something up and - aaargh! I did have a hobble round in Saltaire for a while but neither I nor the light was in a good frame of mind for photography. So the finale went undocumented by me, though you can see a few photos on Paul's blog Leeds Daily Photo.

I did however manage to visit some of the exhibitions. The photo above shows part of a multi-media installation in one of the houses on Ada Street, "Ghosts of Ada Street" (by David Honeybone, Jonathan Lindh, Jean Sagheddu, Lynette Willoughby, Terry Wragg & Sue Wray) suggesting "the faint remains of lives lived and generations moved on". It was a thought-provoking comment on Sir Titus Salt's legacy - his benevolent provision for his workers within his 'model village' but also his expectation that the residents should be 'model villagers'. He tried to impose a great many regulations but, as in the case of the Wash-House spurned (see my post of 13 August 2009), some of these rules had limited success. There are echoes in the present constraints on residents imposed by Saltaire being a conservation area.